"Listening to Science"

With COVID, as with climate change, there is a lot of silly talk about "listening to the science" going around, as if the science talks to us with one distinct unmistakable voice. It is not so much science as it is what Hayek called "scientism" - the appeal to phony scientific authority to justify a particular, usually political, position.

The context is one in which we are dealing with what Hayek referred to as "complex phenomena" - a system in which multiple variables all interact with each other in multiple ways and, therefore, in which there are no simple causal connections. There is no simple path to '"the truth" - ruling out all but one explanation for any observed result is impossible. So "listening to the science" one cannot hear an unambiguous message - not for climate policy, not for covid policy, not for any complex systems of which biological systems and social systems are two prime examples - and, oh, also planetary weather systems.

Which implies what? Simply that we should not put so much faith in the confident, yet rival, claims of scientists when it comes to these systems and should require a heavy burden of proof when allowing politicians to use these claims to control our lives and restrict our options.