Stephen Hilgartner, Benjamin Hurlbut, and Sheila Jasanoff argue that US discourse about lack of trust in science needs to be reframed and show that treating political disagreements as being mainly about evidence undermines democracy. They also propose ways to build a more progressive politics of science. 

The piece, which addresses disputes over the authorization and rollout of vaccines, appeared in Backchannels, the Society for Social Studies of Science blog. The post links anti-vaccine sentiment to political rupture between João Doria, São Paulo’s governor, and President Jair Bolsonaro. 

CompCoRe held its seventh All Teams meeting. Participants presented updates on their countries and discussed national controversies surrounding vaccination.

The USP Journal described the CompCoRe Interim Report in an article titled “Tensões políticas levaram Brasil a fracassar no combate à covid-19, aponta relatório”(“Political tensions have led Brazil to fail to combat covid-19, report says,”). The article discussed the similarities between the Brazilian and US responses to the pandemic, quoting Marko Monteiro (Brazil team) on how political polarization has been detrimental to the effective containment of the virus. Full article in Portuguese here and English translation here.

Iris Eisenberger spoke about “Human Rights Requirements and Statistical Modelling” as part of a conference on “Digital Governance in the Times of Covid-19” organized by Bar Ilan University. She presented findings from her study on legal issues related to modeling.

Iris Eisenberger and Nikolaus Pöchhacker (Austria team) shared early findings from their project on “REASON – Legal requirements for statistical modelling” at the University of Graz. By analyzing the Austrian government’s press conferences on the coronavirus,  they show that referencing “science” helped resolve the tension between rational decision-making and epistemic uncertainty. However, these appeals to “science” remained vague and did not cite specific research organizations, scientists, or publications.

Risk communication scholar and CompCoRe member Mikihito Tanaka (Japan team) addressed CompCoRe findings in a talk on “New Development of Risk Communication: Insights from the Pandemic.Tanaka spoke at  SciREX, a government program on Science for RE-designing Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, a program funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

Peru team members Rogelio Scott-Insua and Sebastián Zárate spoke about early CompCoRe findings and upcoming vaccination campaigns in the context of Peru’s public health and political crises. Mitocondria Comunicación Científica and Jugo de Caigua, a leading online political magazine in Peru, hosted the hour-long conversation.

Peru team leader Rogelio Scott-Insua gave an interview to Distintas Latitudes, a pan-Latin American e-magazine focused on social issues, about the gender-gap in healthcare and vaccine access in Peru. The article “Abriendo las puertas de la perspectiva de género en planes de vacunación latinoamericanos,” (Opening the Door to Gender-Based Perspectives in Latin American) also cited experts from Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador.

An article titled “Por que respostas tão diferentes à pandemia?” (Why are there such different responses to the pandemic?) noted Brazil as an important case in the study and reviewed initial CompCoRe findings. Comments from Brazil team members Marko Monteiro and Alberto Urbinatti describe how the project is helping to shed light on Brazil’s pandemic response.