Life in the Pandemic VI: Bigging up science - but a bit too much?

You may not have heard of Jennifer Doudna. But then there was a time when no one had heard of Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein. And of course, her name may not become as well-known as theirs. But, perhaps it will. Doudna played a key role in working out how to edit the genome using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. While this has opened up a can of ethical worms, it has transformed genetics and molecular biology and could transform medicine and a lot else besides. She recently had some interesting things to say about COVID19 and science. In an invited article in the Economist (June 5^th) she wrote that “After covid-19, science will never be the same—and this will be for the better.” Among other things, because of the role science has played in the pandemic, the public’s attitude to it will be transformed (for the better). Science itself will be fundamentally altered (improved), becoming more accessible through modern communications, more collaborative, and more nimble because of it. She likens all of this to a “Kuhnian paradigm shift”, a “new era” that she welcomes.

The problem is that her expertise is much narrower that the issues she tackles. You might think that a prominent scientist with an international reputation is exactly the right person to opine on big issues like the future of science and the public’s relationship with it. Her views are certainly cogent and worth examining. But on the particular issues she has no special expertise and therefore caries no particular authority beyond that of any other intelligent person (with or without scientific expertise). And full disclosure, if you choose to read on, exactly the same applies to me. The first thing that peaked my interest was her use of the idea of a Kuhnian paradigm shift. I’ve discussed before the odd state of affairs that scientists tend to be rather poorly educated in the philosophy of science, and that some have been happy to celebrate their ignorance. Professor Doudna at least discovered and read Thomas Kuhn’s classic essay “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Published originally in 1962, it’s a fascinating read. It’s also something of a product of its time that philosophers of science have to some extent left behind (for a kindly appraisal see here). From Kuhn, Professor Doudna picked up the idea of paradigm shifts. In Kuhn’s account these occur when a period of “normal” science in some mature field of scientific endeavour is disrupted by “revolutionary” science, resulting in a new theory (or paradigm – a set of theories, methods, observations, way of looking at the world) overtaking an existing one. Paradigms and paradigm shifts quickly moved out of philosophy and went mainstream. The problem was that these notions came to be used in a very lazy way, and that’s how they are used in Professor Doudna’s article.

There is no paradigm shift going on science currently. Even if you thought science was one thing, a single institution, with a single methodology and single output (and this is far from the case), if you believed that it was a single entity that could be changed by a seminal happening like a pandemic, there’s no evidence that it is. And if science is about anything, it has to be about evidence. But science isn’t one thing. An analogy would be that of the distinction between sport and rugby. “Sport” describes a collection of things; “rugby” names one of the things in the collection (along with football, tennis, cricket etc). Sport is a collective noun, and so is “science”. There are commonalities between neurophysiology and geology, and key features of methodology that they might share (eg a common commitment to the collection of data of various kinds), but there are big differences too. The idea that there is something going on across all of science, that “science” is changing in some fundamental way, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. To which the eminent professor might retort that she isn’t claiming that it is. But that’s what she has written.

What is perhaps in a state of flux is the public’s attitude to science. Certainly there's been a lot of public exposure for certain elements of the scientific enterprise. For months here in the UK we’ve watched daily press conferences where the mantra has been “we’re following the science”. There are things this means, and things it doesn’t mean, or at least shouldn’t. It should certainly mean that scientists of various kinds are feeding into a process that informs government decisions. Science provides a set of tools that can describe what a virus (in this case COVID19) can do and is doing in a population. It provides tools that can predict to a given level of precision what the virus is going to do, at least in terms of the numbers infected and the numbers likely to die over a given period of time. It has identified drugs that are useful (like dexamethasone) and drugs that aren’t (hydroxychloroquine – sorry Donald). It’s worth pointing out that the product of the scientific exercise is rarely, if ever, a single, simple number; science, particularly biological science, deals with ranges of numbers with uncertainties baked in. And scientific explanations and answers never come with cast iron guarantees. They are not guesses, but neither are they infallible. At various stages, judgements have to be been made; these are human judgements and therefore potentially flawed judgements. Through discussion, debate, further testing, replication, or refutation, we hope the flaws are spotted and eliminated. It’s never the clean, clever, clear process that after the fact even scientists (and some philosophers) tend to construct. Don’t misunderstand me, science provides a sound means of finding the answers to certain types of question. But when it comes to the decisions that a government might have to take in a pandemic, often the questions are broader and more complex than science is equipped to deal with. This is not to argue that it is in some way flawed and that a better science has to be developed. Just that it is limited. So what “following the science” cannot mean is that the only information flowing in to government is scientific information. Because many of the decision that are being taken are big, complex, tricky, properly political decisions.

When and how school children are going to return to school has become a major bone of contention over the last few weeks. Scientific advice may be able to provide an estimate of how many children would be infected and how many might become seriously ill (probably a very small number) if all children went back to school right now with no social distancing. This estimate might contrast with an alternative estimate of how many might be affected if only 20% of children of a given age went back now, all wearing masks with 2m between them. A risk can be calculated. But that’s the easy bit. What level of risk is acceptable, what level of sickness is acceptable, given the needs of children for their education and the other social, economic and  health benefits that being in school brings? That’s a much trickier question that science on its own can't answer, and shouldn't be asked to. Other disciplines and experience are needed. Hopefully all kinds of information is being fed into the decision making process before judgements on these kinds of issue are made. But given the prominence that science has been given in the pandemic, what happens to science when the judgements made become controversial and disputed? Will science get the blame?

Professor Doudna only sees an upside. But the prominence of science in the pandemic, or at least the lip service being paid to it, could create a backlash. That would be dangerous. Vaccination against disease is a real success story. It’s a science that has been worked on for centuries, and its wide-scale adoption in the 20^th century saved millions of lives and delivered hundreds of millions from misery. Yet in our time we have to contend with the phenomenon of the anti-vaxers, who are already gearing up to decry any COVID19 vaccine as some dangerous conspiracy. In the US, Dr Anthony Faucci, has been found lamenting recently on the impact of a growing anti-science bias. Scientist should beware of becoming just another elite disconnected from the mass of people (who, it turns out, pay for most of the science through their taxes) and talking down to them. A bit of care is needed. And perhaps a bit of humility too. Science does have its limits and scientists do have their flaws. Personally, I’d be careful about bigging science up – too much.

Life in the Pandemic V: Trump and the tragedy of the closed Bible.

You may perhaps have seen the video or the photographs. On Tuesday 2^nd June, President Trump emerged from the White House and walked with his usual large entourage to the nearby St John’s Episcopal Church. He was then photographed awkwardly holding a Bible. Not his own Bible we learned, but “a Bible”. It was, at all times, a closed Bible. At a the very least this stands out as a striking metaphor; it may also provide a key to understanding a number of facets of the Trump era. It appears that the Bible is a closed book to Donald Trump.

We don’t just have those images to go on. Although President Trump has claimed on a number of occasions that the Bible is his favourite book (indeed that it is better than his own book “The Art of the Deal”), he has in the past been unable or unwilling to say which particular verse, or passage, or even testament he liked, claiming it was a personal matter. He was more forthcoming in January 2016. In a speech at Liberty University, he actually did pick a particular verse, reportedly saying "2 Corinthians, 3:17, that's the whole ballgame." If you have a Bible to hand, open it and read the verse in context (always a good idea). Having done exactly that, this pick strikes me as an exercise in random association rather than exegesis.

What is more telling is his record in business and politics. This allows an assessment as to the closeness of the mapping between the manner of life and values described in the Bible, and those exhibited by the Donald. Even restricting the evidence to the recent past, the record is not encouraging. It was an unguarded moment, caught on the infamous Access Holywood tape, that revealed a profoundly unbiblical (not to say disturbing) attitude to women and sex. His attitude to other human beings in general falls well short of what one would expect someone heavily influenced by Scripture to exhibit. At a rally in Huntsville Alabama, on Sept 22^nd 2017, he stirred up the crown by attacking NFL players who protested during the US national anthem (he accused them of “disrespecting the flag”) using the term “son of a bitch”. Note that what they were doing was neither illegal or disrespectful. One suspects that this language is tame compared to how Trump talks about friends and foes in private. To be fair, it would be naïve to expect any prominent politician, US president or otherwise, to be linguistically gentle with their political opponents. Other US presidents have undoubtedly used choice language at various times, but not with the brash cynicism and relish of President Trump, and rarely in public. Whatever the influences on his choice of language, about people or other subjects, it’s not the Bible.

But this is all vanishingly unimportant compared to the other major characteristic of Donald’s time in power  – his total disregard, and apparent undisguised contempt for, truth. From arguing the toss about the trivial matter (to most) of how many people turned up to his inauguration, via the more serious issue of persistent and repeated falsehoods about the US economy to potentially deadly attempted deceptions about the pandemic in the US, the abuse of truth has become the hallmark of his presidency. It is so common-place, that it has become part of a new normal. It has spawned a vast fact-checking industry, which provides publicly accessible databases, where one can search for his lies by topic or source, or filter by time period. The rate at which he has thrown off false or misleading claims since the beginning of his presidency is currently 15.6 per day, cumulatively 19, 127 as of the 29^th May, 2020. Again to be fair, some of these will be matters of interpretation and context, and the number may be inflated to a degree by anti-Trump political bias. But it is clear that there is evidence of a commitment to falsehood here, not just an occasional slip. Deception and obfuscation have become matters of policy.

Of course it is generally held that all politicians are liars. There’s the old joke about how you know when a politician is lying – his lips move. But until recently actually telling a bald-faced, slam-dunk lie could be a career ending move. Famously in the House of Commons because all members are “honourable” members, it is unparliamentary language to call someone a liar (or a blackguard, guttersnipe, stoolpigeon or traitor). This led to the use of the Churchillian “terminological inexactitude” (first used in 1906 in a slightly different way), as a suitable euphemism. Yet it remains the case that politicians of all parties were careful in what they said, and were sometimes careful to say nothing at all. They knew the seriousness of being caught out being flatly dishonest. Even though Tony Blair arguably did not lie in the run up to the Iraq war, he is still marked by large sections of the UK population as being slippery and shifty and therefore not trustworthy. But in further contrast to Trump, you would never catch Blair (whose Government famously did not “do God”) holding a Bible at a photo-op. Or Gordon Brown (who was raised in a manse) or Tim Farron (who is open about his Christianity). Trump holds the Bible up and proclaims it is his favourite book, and resorts to lies at an alarming rate as a matter of policy and strategy. His is an approach that is starkly different to anything we’ve seen before.

If you think President Trump is a stupid man, you will be tempted to put his behaviour down to his stupidity, and his preference to fantasy over reality. But there is a calculated and brazen quality to the depth and breadth of what he says and how he says it. And I don’t think he is stupid. Which in a way makes the situation much more serious. It also means he is much more culpable for his abuse of truth, which is where we come back to the Bible. You will find leaders who lie in the Bible. That’s because it is, in part, a record of real people and their lives. And most real people, you and me included, have a problem with truth. Abraham is a famous Bible liar (he told the same lie twice with potentially disastrous consequences). David is another one who lied and schemed to get his hands on another man’s wife, with disastrous consequences for him, his family and his nation. But their lies also brought shame, and in David’s case clearly recorded (and quite possibly public) repentance (just read Psalm 51). They knew their lies were a problem, not a solution.

The solution for Abraham, David and countless others right down to today, is to respond to God and His word. Sooner or later President Trump will learn the same lesson. He could learn it from the pages of his Bible (and perhaps, like David, repent), but he’d have to open it first.

Life in the Pandemic IV: Where should we place our faith?

There is a lot of faith about at the moment (something I noted previously). Some of it is obvious, some of it less so. But it’s there. Indeed it always is, because faith is indispensable to life. You might be tempted to respond to the question above by objecting that you have no faith to place. But such a response would naïve at best, and delusional at worst. Faith is woven into the fabric of our existence, as a moment’s reflection will demonstrate. Let’s start with something trivial.

You are probably sitting on a chair as you read this. How do you know that it will support your weight? You don’t. But you are trusting that it will, all the same. This is a (trivial) form of faith; a “trust in” something. Of course, you have no reason not to expect the chair to support you and you will feel that you have ample evidence from the past that it will support you. So reliable has this evidence always proved, that you would never think of weighing it carefully, or indeed of conducting a thorough investigation. If you were to take such an approach to something as straightforward as sitting in a chair, you would presumably feel it only appropriate to apply it to much else and life would quickly become intolerable. However, as David Hume, the arch sceptic and Scottish enlightenment philosopher pointed out: “It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future….”; the fact that the your chair has never collapsed under your weight before is a guarantee of precisely nothing. But you don’t care. And so you sit; serenely - or perhaps just a little less serenely that before?

You could point out that the worst that could happen, even if the worst came to the worst, would be a rapid decent to the floor from not too high a height. The result would be minimal damage, and, if you’re alone, zero embarrassment. So on the one hand there is a realistic expectation of no problem arising, because you are confident in the object of your faith (the chair). On the other hand even if a problem does arise, nothing too troubling is going to happen. This is all true. It also tells us things that are generally true about faith. It’s not so much the faith that we exercise that’s particularly important, rather it’s the object we place it in (faith is always “in” something). And the context is key; what does placing our faith in that object do for us and what would happen if it let us down?

In the pandemic we’ve all been exercising faith is spades, and it has been a matter of life and death. In fact, we’ve been exercising our faith not in a single object, but a chain of objects. The politicians have been saying repeatedly that they have been exercising faith in the scientists advising them (“do x and our model shows that y people will die as opposed to y + another big number). This advice has been closed to the rest of us. Until recently, even the names of those sitting on the SAGE committee (who thought that one up?) were unknown to the UK population. Indeed it took a campaign to have the list released. We in turn placed our faith in the politicians (ie “do x because the scientists tell us if we do x….etc”). In fact the reason why we are probably prepared to trust the second lot, was precisely because they were claiming to trust the first lot. Surveys show that by and large scientists are trusted more than politicians. So, as a population we have “done x” and the result has (probably) been fewer deaths in the pandemic so far than would otherwise have been the case. But a lot us relying on this chain of faith do not, and probably cannot, understand the science underpinning what we’re being asked to do. Hence we are exercising faith, and when it really matters.

The observation that this exercise of faith is central to what we’ve been doing recently isn’t peculiar to me; others have made it too. Eve Willis, writing in Prospect magazine, also spotted the centrality of faith to what has been going on (“During coronavirus, eventrusting in science feels like a form of faith”). While she doesn’t provide a particularly penetrating analysis (maybe she didn’t intend to), it is revealing that a self-confessed non-believer is now willing to cut us believers the sort of slack that was probably absent previously. However, she doesn’t really get faith, because one of the things she tells us is that “I increasingly fear that this pandemic will make a believer out of me..”. But in fact she is a believer already. As she touchingly continues “We simply have to trust those with expertise…”.

Her conclusion though is interesting: “The grip of a crisis demands we surrender control—and quite rightly—to forces bigger than us: the long arm of a newly-paternalistic state, the unknowable complexities of science. Why not faith, too? Find comfort where you can; we’re in this for the long-haul.”. Her argument is that faith brings comfort. If it works for you that’s fine; in current circumstances, I might try it too. And here she means faith in organised religion. I’ve noted before the importance of expertise in the current crisis. Science, limited and uncertain as the information it provides inevitably is, does provide a guide to how we get through the pandemic. It is not the only kind of analysis we need, and it won’t help us with all of the decisions we have to make. But it will take us an important part of the way.

However, any comfort you obtain from placing your faith in what cannot support it, will be temporary, unsatisfying and futile. So for the really big issues, your really should ask what, or who, are you putting your faith in. What can it (or He) really deliver? What is the evidence that as an object of faith it (or He) has delivered in the past, or is delivering in the present. My contention is that for the biggest of big issues, the answer is not to be found in a system, code or ritual. And certainly not in some blind general adherence to “religion”. Faith can save, but only if its object is the correct one.

Life in the pandemic III: The ultimate act of self-isolation.

So much that might once have seemed strange now seems normal. I used to work in an office in a building in the middle of a busy city centre University campus. For the last few weeks I have been going to work in my dining room. In previous years, we would have gathered on the morning of Good Friday with about three hundred other people, in Bridge Chapel, to reflect on a pivotal event in the history of humanity – the death by crucifixion of Jesus 2000-ish years ago. Yesterday we sat in our front room, viewing prayers, songs and talks on the interweb. Today, a bright, warm, spring day, we might well have headed off somewhere to have a meal or a walk. We actually spent it at home, only going out for our one-hour, Government-mandated exercise (cycle ride for me, walk for my wife). We are of course “self-isolating”, our contribution in the fight against the Covid19 pandemic.

Self-isolation for us is far from intolerable. There are three of us in a large, comfortable house in a pleasant street in a quiet neighbourhood. And as there are three of us, we’re not that isolated. We see other folk from time to time walking past, and when we’re out and about for our walks or bike-rides. We’re in contact with our family and friends by means of the wonders of modern technology. We are safe, and well fed and watered. Solitary confinement this is not. I realise these are not the happy circumstances of everyone. Calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline have increased 25% since the start of the lockdown, prompting the Government to announce today an extra £2M for domestic abuse services. Staying at home for some does not equate to being in a place of safety. For the old person living on their own, self-isolation might well be more like solitary confinement, particularly if they have no family or neighbours to keep an eye on them. Never-the-less the experience for many of us, at least in the short term, while trying, is far from tough. And of course it serves a purpose.

We have all become used to the mantra of “stay at home, save the NHS, save lives”; that’s the UK version, but it has its equivalents across the globe. The aim is to stop the transmission of the virus, so that fewer get infected at any one time, fewer are hospitalised, fewer need access to intensive care, and the whole system copes. My inconvenience makes a small, but I hope, tangible contribution to the overall effort. It seems incomparably insignificant to the efforts being made by so many on our behalf on the healthcare frontline. But the message is clear: isolation (even if it turns out not to be that isolating) saves lives.

Isolation is, of course, the central point of what transpired on that first Easter, and is one of its more controversial aspects. Easter really has not got a lot to do with pastel outfits, chocolate eggs (and the hunting thereof), and roast lamb rather than beef for Sunday lunch. Much as tinsel and trees obscure the meaning of Christmas, the aforementioned distract us from a supreme act of self-isolation that saves lives.

There are four accounts of the death of Jesus to be found in the Gospels and all of them repay close attention. Among many things that are striking about them, one is that they are all relatively matter-of-fact about the detail of what was done to Jesus at the cross – you won’t find much blood and gore. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, the original readers of the Gospels were familiar with crucifixion; they needed no reminder of the suffering endured by those condemned to die in this fashion. It was a cruel punishment, certainly; unusual it was not. But secondly, brutal as the physical suffering of Jesus was, in and of itself this could achieve little. If this was simply about the untimely albeit brutal death of a man for some political or religious but ultimately human cause, it would have been then, and would remain now, obscure. Far from unique. But the key to what was going on, and what makes it unique, was not what could be seen. It was something that was unseen, but was evidenced by that most desperate and devastating of all the statements that Jesus made during His suffering. After three hours of darkness, lasting from noon until 3pm, He is recorded as crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. A cry of dereliction; a cry of isolation.

There is much about the mechanics of what transpired in those hours of darkness that I’m not capable of understanding. But this much is clear, in the darkness something fundamental changed. Just a few hours previously, Jesus had prayed in Gethsemane, addressing God as His Father, His Abba. But now, that relationship is broken; He can no longer address God as Father, but only as God. With the help of the rest of Scripture, we can reconstruct what has happened, and it is breathtaking. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us” is how Paul puts it in 2 Cor 5:21. As such, He is cut off, abandoned, isolated.

This state of affairs could have been avoided, and could not have been imposed. As you track through the events that preceded Jesus’ death on the cross, all the way from His arrest in the garden where he had prayed, via His show-trial and abuse, to the cross were he suffered, it’s clear that He is not being driven by events, but that He is driving events. His arrest, His trial, the procession out to Calvary, perhaps right to the very point of His isolation, a halt could have been called. So this was something He did and to that extent His isolation was self-isolation.

 Just as His suffering was qualitatively and quantitatively, breathtakingly, different from mine, so also is what was won by it.  His being isolated from God, His being cut-off, and as sin-bearer also bearing the answering anger of God for sin, wins for me the end of an isolation that is naturally mine. In my natural state I am isolated from the God I was made to know, with all the consequences that flow from that isolation. But that isolation was ended the moment I came into the good of His sacrifice for me. Does sin make God angry? You bet. And I was a target of that anger, until a great transfer took place – my sin to Him, His righteousness to me (that’s the other half of 2 Cor 5:21).

Our self-isolation in the great pandemic is endurable, partly because of that greater act of self-isolation that restores me to the most basic relationship I was created to be in. And the best bit? Have to wait for Sunday for that.

Life in the pandemic II: Between hubris and humility

In the midst of the pandemic that we continue to endure, there have been intriguing, even welcome, moments. Acts of kindness, like folk shopping for their elderly neighbours and then refusing to take payment for it; healthcare workers coming off shifts, being boosted to the front of supermarket queues. There has been the conspicuous bravery of those healthcare workers tending to the seriously ill in full knowledge of the risks posed to their own health. There have been moments of solidarity, like when us normally reserved Brits stand at our doors and in our streets and applaud all those on the front line. There’s been stupidity too of course, like the burning of 5G phone masts after nonsense on social media linked them to the spread of the virus. And there’s been the scary, like attacks on people of Asian heritage blaming them for the virus. But in general there’s been a lot to admire in the response to the pandemic (so far) and perhaps also a touch of pride. Maybe collectively we’re not as selfish or self-absorbed as we sometimes appeared to be pre-virus. Maybe we are not a “snowflake” generation, and can endure and prevail like our forebears who faced wars and disasters in their time.

The Government certainly continues to try to evoke that spirit of battling through that has been likened to the “blitz” spirit. Whether it’s the plucky engineers and manufacturers heroically struggling to mass produce medical ventilators or parents inventing ways to educate their own kids in their own homes (and quite possibly thinking wistfully of the teachers who had that burden up until a few weeks ago). By pulling together, by getting our heads down, by all doing our bit, we can win the struggle. You can’t fault them for the approach. Much more is likely to be achieved by encouragement than by coercion. And if in a few short weeks the crisis abates or even passes, if there’s a return to something that approaches normality, we will undoubtedly heave a collective sigh of relief and indulge in pats on the back all round. We’ll be proud that we did it. Don’t get me wrong. We should all be doing our bit. And we should be applauding the heroic contribution of so many. There is something genuinely touching about many of the stories emerging. There is selflessness to be celebrated, and cynicism to be avoided. But pride can quickly slide into hubris, and I do feel slightly conflicted about some of what’s going on.

Even among Christians, it seems that so far we’ve been concentrating on the practical things we should be doing and not thinking too much about what it all means. Of course, for many people the idea that there is any “meaning” to be gleaned from a pandemic makes no sense. Viruses come and go; they are neither good or bad, they’re just viruses. Occasionally a dangerous one comes along and a pandemic results. It has happened before, and will probably happen again. At least this time we have technology and science that wasn’t available to combat the Black Death or Spanish flu. But this pandemic is not a natural disaster (like an earthquake or volcanic eruption). It was caused by human activity and behaviour in a way that earthquakes are not. The spread of the virus and its effects have been enabled and amplified by human activity and behaviour. And to be fair, stopping the pandemic, or at least the speed of its stopping, will also depend on human behaviour. So at a minimum, there will be lessons for us to learn from our behaviour good and bad.

Big events, particularly big, bad events should cause us to pause, think and reflect. This is a global pandemic, the biggest of big events, so there is thinking to do. If nothing else, it is a dramatic reminder of how fragile life is - as fragile as it always has been. I don’t know how much time Boris (our Prime Minister) has for God and His ways; I suspect not much. Boris has been in an intensive care unit in a London hospital for the last few days. I am sure this is not what he was anticipating just a few weeks ago when he won a decisive election victory, and obtained the prize that he had spent years working, scheming, (lying?) and plotting for. I really do hope he recovers fully (he appears to be on the mend), and returns to do the job he was elected to do. But I also hope he returns with a changed perspective on his personal fragility, on his ability to control circumstances, and yes on the God he has probably spent his life ignoring. A bit more humility. And if Boris’ perspective should change, why not mine? But Boris is of course just one individual.  

I am emphatically not drawing a straight line either between Boris and the judgement of God, or between the pandemic as a whole and the judgement of God, although there are some Christians who are happy to do exactly this. But neither do I think that it is misconceived to look for explanations and meanings in current circumstances from a Biblical perspective (as N.T. Wright recently argued in Time magazine). Any explanation will be far from simple; any meaning will apply at multiple levels. And I claim no particular insight or authority. Indeed the Bible itself warns us about making bold explanatory claims in tough circumstances. God Himself challenged the “friends” of a man who suffered unjustly, who offered simple explanations for his predicament: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). I’m fully aware that there is a huge knowledge gap in the current situation. But not knowing everything is not the same as there being nothing to know.

I do know that these events are not just happening. Yes, there are natural and naturalistic explanations for much of what is going on. But underpinning all of these are the purposes of God. That’s a problem as much as an explanation. How a global pandemic, with the suffering and struggle implied, maps to the purposes of a good, faithful and gracious God raises difficult issues. Some will argue that it raises insurmountable arguments against even the existence of such a being. However, I also know that He is to be trusted, even when, as in current circumstances, I don’t understand His purposes either in their detail or their totality. And I also know that, given events of Good Friday, the same God in the person of His Son, endured suffering to good purpose. So there is no room for smart, slick, simple, arrogant, told you so, single Bible verse pronouncements here. No proud boast that thanks to my reading of the Bible I (or we) have it all worked out. But He knows all the things I don’t. So there is plenty of room for humility and trust.

It’s dark today, but Sunday is coming.

Life in the pandemic I: The return of the experts….

It wasn’t that long ago that some were lamenting the death of reason and the revolt against experts. TV studios were filled with serious looking people trying to work out how it was possible for on the one hand Donald Trump to be elected in the United States and on the other the UK voting to leave the EU. Clearly, they intoned, the populus of both countries had taken leave of their senses. Expertise was under attack and ignorance was being encouraged, commended and rewarded. There was perhaps some truth in this.

Both experts and expertise came in for a bit of a kicking, particularly in the US. Experts formed a convenient target of course. This was partly because the terms were rarely clearly defined. Blame was attributed to an amorphous group, without examining too carefully if it was experts who were the problem, or the political decision makers. Many of the latter seemed unwilling to engage properly with a whole range of issues, inform themselves using appropriate expert input, and take and be accountable for the decisions that people elected them to take. In the UK we got into the Brexit mess (remember that?) partly because of this sort of political cowardice. A host of complex issues, requiring a range of expertise to unpack them, was boiled down to a binary choice and forced on a population that consistently claimed that it was generally ill-informed, and in some cases actively deceived. A proportion of the population appeared to be delighted with this general approach. On both sides of the Atlantic the notion gained traction that the experts had done too many of us no good at all. They were therefore of little value and could happily be dispensed with. How things have changed.

As I have pointed out before, there are many situations in life where we are happy and indeed obliged to depend on the expertise of others. I do not have the first notion about how to fly an aeroplane, but (until recently) I needed to use them from time to time. What to do? Well, fortunately for me there are experts in flying aeroplanes; they are called airline pilots. There used to be quite a lot of them flying aeroplanes with skill, and able to fly me safely from point A to point B. I was really glad to avail myself of their expertise. And not just theirs. It turns out that while they were using their expertise for my benefit, they in turn were depending on the expertise of lots of other people, like air traffic controllers, aircraft maintenance engineers, and a whole host of others. Together, all this expertise could safely transport me thousands of miles at a time. I was happy to trust them to do so. Clearly some experts have their uses.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where expertise turns out to be a matter of life and death, potentially for thousands. The centrality accorded to expertise in these pandemic days has been clear for all to see. At least in the UK great stress has been put on policy being informed by scientific and medical experts. Day after day the Prime Minister or other senior ministers have appeared flanked by experts to whom they constantly defer. Of course there could be a deep cynicism at work. It could be, and no doubt some will argue it is, simply the politicians using the claimed expertise of others as cover for them taking very unpopular decisions. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think that in life-critical situations, it turns out we have no problem taking experts and expertise seriously. This is our attitude in aeroplanes, and it appears to be our attitude in the pandemic. At least for the most part.

Perhaps the consistent undermining and downplaying of expertise is recent times explains why governments are finding that advice, sound advice based on science, is frequently being ignored. Just this week, it has been stressed just how important it is that in the current pandemic we socially isolate ourselves and not meet with others unless it is necessary. Other experts have told us that there is no necessity to panic buy and hoard foodstuffs and other thing (like toilet rolls - for reasons no-one seems able to fathom). And yet the flagrant disregarding of “advice” now means the state taking powers to enforce what the science says should be done. All over Europe, and now in the UK, there will be police (and in some places military) enforcement of the advice. Expertise is back, and with teeth.

It is still the case that not all expertise is the same and we need to understand some important distinctions.  For the appropriate expert, flying an aeroplane is a well constrained and defined task. While it is not true to say that there are no unknowables, there are relatively few. Do things in a certain way, in a certain order, and a safe flight will result – usually. “Usually” in this context means almost always; in 2018 there were only 0.36 fatal accidents per million flights. However, the expertise we’re depending on in the pandemic is different, although it is no less expertise. Here there are very many unknowns. We are dealing with a new virus and while information about it is accumulating, no one has anything like the full picture. So the scientific advice that decision-makers are relying upon is a best effort, based on the information to hand. And sometimes, experts looking at the same evidence may well interpret it in different ways. There are different models of how the virus is spreading, leading to different projections of how the pandemic may develop, and potentially different recommendations about the actions that should be taken to improve the situation. Then factor in that any advice issued has to be heard, understood and acted upon by millions of citizens. You can see how the unknowns in this situation rapidly multiply. But the experts and (in this case) their scientific methods are all we’ve got, and a lot better than the alternative - either doing nothing, or doing anything.

The experts have returned. Time to exercise a bit of faith; although let’s be clear – that’s what we’re doing. Putting our faith in experts and their expertise (again). And on a planetary scale.

Don’t be duped (or even gooped….)

I may have invented a new word. As far as I can tell there is currently no verb “to goop”. However, goop does exist as both a common and proper noun. In the dictionary “goop” is defined as a sludge or slimy concoction. “Goop” (capital G) is a completely different box of frogs. It started off as a newsletter, authored by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. It has since become a money-spinning “lifestyle brand”, and most recently, in the form of “The Goop Lab”, a 6-part Netflix “documentary” series. There is of course the obligatory website, a cursory look at which suggests that Goop is primarily a shop window for expensive cardigans and handbags, quack remedies and lifestyle hacks. To be fair, you’ll find various disclaimers on the website, and in Netflix series, that those behind Goop are not making medical claims. However, if people don’t buy their stuff they don’t make any money, so I suspect the hope is that the disclaimers will be quickly passed over and forgotten as you move on to various opportunities to part with your cash. I confess I’m not fashionable and I’m tight with my cash, so Goop wasn’t really on my radar. That is until the boss of the NHS mentioned it in a recent speech.  

Sir Simon Stevens is the Chief Executive of the National Health Service in England. He is clearly frustrated by health “fake news” and more importantly its effects. Political fake news is bad enough. And you could argue that it has led to a number of alarming consequences in recent years. But health fake news can have fatal consequences. Essentially his charge was that Goop, particularly with the reach given it by Netflix, was spreading health fake news widely and quickly.  In his remarks he grouped Goop with snake oil salesmen and anti-vaxers. It was, in his view, not a source of useful, health-related information. Nor was it providing health-related but basically harmless entertainment.

In response, beyond the widely reported and relatively anodyne statements put out by Goop directly, Gwyneth herself went on the record to reject this criticism. She feels it is unfair primarily because she claims that Goop doesn’t give health advice at all. And it might be that that the professionals are just over-reacting to bit of entertaining fluff, with the expected sniffiness of professionals and “experts”. One Guardian columnist while agreeing with what Stevens had said, reckoned there wasn’t too much to be concerned about. The public were smart enough to work out that Goop was an over-priced, modern snake oil operation. “It’s just a wellness brand – expecting it to hold toscientific/medical criteria is like expecting a lip gloss to do a handstand.” I’m not sure I get the allusion, but you get the idea.

So what about Gwyneth’s claims that advice isn’t being issued and scientific claims are not being made? On the Goop UK site, under the “About” tab, it’s not too difficult to find language that at least drops heavy hints that both scientific and medical thinking are central to Goop’s operations. Under “Wellness” we read “We have a tightly edited wellness shop of products vetted for efficacy by our in-house research scientists, and we’ve also created five vitamin and supplement protocols with doctors to cover all the bases.” (emphasis mine). And as for the Netflix series, it is called the Goop lab. I accept that on one level this all falls short of clinical advice and scientific claims. But at the very least there is a particular kind of signalling going on. It strikes me that they want a veneer of intelectual respectability, and think this comes from signalling the involvement of a degree of scientific and medical competence.

This isn’t just me being over sensitive (I am after all a scientist, and I do clinical research). Or if it is, I’m not alone. Dominic Pimenta, a cardiologist writing in the Independent put it this way:  “The problem is that the Goop“lab”  gives itself the appearance of scientific rigour, while in fact offering pseudoscientific laziness: they cite“trials and experiments” without evaluating them, and talk to “practitioners and doctors” without critiquing their conflicts of interest (of course the largest conflict of interest on the show is Goop's, a billion-dollar brand selling, among other things, alternative health products).” It appears Gwyneth and her chums want the respectability that comes from hinting that they are taking a scientific and responsible approach, without doing any of the hard (and expensive) work that this entails. This would after all impact on the bottom line.

Of course part of the problem is that we don’t really need Goop to tell us how to be well at all. We know what leads to wellness, and it is not expensively packaged supplements, coffee enemas, and various beads and balls stuck in unmentionable places. It’s simple, boring stuff like a diet with plenty of fresh fruit and veg, a reasonable amount of exercise and as much sleep as you need. Accompany these with a degree of intellectual stimulation (analogue or digital) and engagement, and a network of meaningful human relationships and psychologically you’ll probably be the right side of fine. None of this costs a fortune or need involve Goop or any other website.

Mind you, this will only keep you in temporal (and therefore temporary) good nick. Without wanting to sound deliberately preachy (which of course means I am about to), while these simple measures will keep us in good physical and psychological health, they won’t ultimately satisfy our most basic need. At the beginning of his “Confessions” Augustine of Hippo pointed out that “..our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” It’s that restlessness that Goop and much else in modern life seeks to address or at least distract us from. Inevitably it fails.

Don’t be duped. To quote the Psalmist: “For he satisfies the longing soul.” (Psalm 107:9). The "he" in this case is of course the God who created and sustains us (whether we recognise it or not).