Will the experts really be back when this coronavirus crisis is over?

Overt dissent towards the government, including from scientists, has grown only in response to the UK’s relatively poor performance during this crisis, writes Mary Dejevsky

The blame game has started between ministers and scientists (EPA)

Long, long ago, on 3 March to be precise, the prime minister gave his first coronavirus press conference at Downing Street. The essence of his message was that we, the UK population, should take sensible precautions – washing our hands to ‘Happy Birthday’ (twice), remember that? – but not worry ourselves too much, yet.

For many, though, it was less Boris Johnson’s decision to hold a press conference that was most remarked upon – after all, putting himself out there, fronting his own public relations, the personal as political, had been a hallmark of his way of operating since he was mayor of London. It was rather the stage-management.

The prime minister was not alone; standing at similar lecterns to his left and right respectively – and a lot closer than they would be standing now – were the government’s chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty. Nor was it just their presence that struck observers but the way in which the prime minister deferred to them, and to the need to follow “scientific evidence” – for which he was widely praised.

The clear message here was that the “experts” were back; they were at the heart of policy-making, and they needed to be heard. Which was quite a change. Ever since Michael Gove had said in an unguarded moment during the EU referendum campaign that he thought the British public had “had enough of experts”, not just Gove, but the ever-cheery Johnson and all his Brexiteers had given every impression of scorning “experts”.

Despite efforts by Gove to backpedal, his notorious phrase became almost as polarising as Brexit itself, not least perhaps because educational attainment was found to be such an indicator of the way people voted in the referendum. Nor did it end there. Hostility towards experts seemed only to be reinforced across the government after Johnson entered No 10 and his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, declared that in recruiting new advisers, “you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates”, but “weirdos” and “misfits”.

Now it is, of course, worth noting that Gove, Johnson, Cummings and a slew of government ministers have arts degrees from Oxbridge – as, I should probably admit, do I. Nor is it fair to brand Gove and the rest as inherently anti-intellectual: Cummings might not have wanted more Oxbridge arts graduates, but he was quite keen on data scientists and the like.

Nonetheless, the presence of the chief medical and scientific advisers behind the lecterns at No 10, and the deference they were shown by ministers marked a considerable change, as does the rotating cast of individuals styled “doctor” and “professor” who have followed. There seemed, in fact, to have been a full-scale rehabilitation of experts – with hopes even expressed that the sudden prominence of scientists might inspire today’s children to choose careers that could usher in a golden age of Nobel laureates.

There are now signs, however, that the new age of the expert could be more fleeting than either they, or the apparent converts in this government, might have expected. The pivotal moment might have been earlier this week when Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, in what appeared to be as much of an unguarded remark as Michael Gove’s original “experts” put-down, said this: “If the science was wrong, advice at the time was wrong, I’m not surprised if people will then think we then made a wrong decision.”

She was duly slapped down by No 10; this is not, after all, a juncture when any government would want its science-based message diluted. But her words resonated: and this is because a certain fragmentation could already be observed within what had seemed, on the one hand, to be a cast-iron coalition between scientists and ministers, and, on the other, a sturdy scientific consensus.

It is true that there had been some scientific dissent even before Johnson announced the “lockdown” of the UK. Shortly after his 12 March address in which he had memorably warned that “many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time”, more than 200 scientists published an open letter demanding far tougher restrictions than Johnson was then proposing.

Although the validity of this intervention was questioned by some at the time – it turned out that some of the signatories were mathematicians and PhD students, rather than established medical or other scientists – it was in the end more of a help than a hindrance to the government. It contributed to a mood where the public was not only prepared to comply with, but actively pressing for, measures beyond those that Johnson’s government was ready to impose. Government and science were pointing in roughly the same direction.

Once the lockdown was in force, however, there emerged – quietly at first and then more boldly – several strands of scientific opinion that contested the judgements presented at the daily Downing Street press briefings that were variously said to be “led”, “guided” or “advised” by “the science”. And as the death toll in hospitals, and then including care homes, inexorably mounted to Italian and Spanish levels, the questioning became louder and clearer.

By then, too, there were initial results from alternative models. South Korea and Germany were presented as arguments for a stricter lockdown and the pursuit of the testing and tracing that the UK had abandoned early on. Was it science – as initially argued – or a shortage of tests that had brought a change in UK policy? At the other end of the scale was Sweden, which had persisted with something akin to the “herd immunity” policy that the UK appeared to have considered at the start. Who were the scientists who sat on the advisory body (Sage)? How were they chosen? Did anyone (the prime minister’s chief adviser, for instance) try to bend their ear?

The ethics, even the legality of the lockdown itself was also challenged, with the unlikely figure of retired Supreme Court judge, Lord Sumption, becoming the standard-bearer of the rebels.

All these are entirely valid questions, and some have been partly answered. Most members of Sage are now known. Some of their deliberations are now public, forced perhaps by a group of non-Sage scientists establishing an open “Independent Sage”. There will also be a view that, at a time of undoubted crisis, vocal dissent risks undermining the national effort. Any inquiry must wait.

The answer to this, however, has to be that the overt dissent, including from scientists, has grown only in response to the UK’s relatively poor performance. Yes, the NHS managed to cope through the peak of the pandemic, and that is a success. But the rate of deaths, especially among the elderly, who were supposed to be protected, is one of the highest in the world. And it is now clear there were other scientific opinions out there. Is it not reasonable to find out why the government took the course it did?

Of course, the buck stops with the government, and science is just one – albeit a big – factor ministers must take into account. The economy, the social fabric, other health aspects, also come into their decision-making. But it is now clear that there was never just “the science”, but different scientific arguments. It is also clear that the particular course chosen might have been based on a huge overestimate of potential deaths.

Judgement will await any inquiries that are bound to come. But if their modelling and the principles on which it was based prove faulty, science and scientists may not emerge unscathed. In that event, it may turn out that we have come full circle. The “experts” will forfeit the public respect they were lent during the early stages of the pandemic and shut back in their box as a quarrelling elite adrift from the real world. In that case, the criticism of Johnson and the rest could well be not that they scorned “the experts”, but that they trusted them too much. Maybe Michael Gove was not completely wrong.