Things that depress me, a thread. I am a sociologist of science and I teach and research about scicomm (among other things.) I justify what I do because I believe that, imperfect thought it may be, science is still the best resource to make good decisions.1/...

I believe that people would be better off if they heeded scientific advice (regardless of questioning how advice is produced and how much free choice people have in a context of infrastructural constraints). I believe that policy decisions would be better if 2/...

they relied on evidence-based knowledge, among other things (such as democratic debate and deliberation). I've spent much of my career watching how politicians proclaim that science is the answer and that many of our problems are caused by people not believing in science. 3/...

And then I watch, in the middle of a pandemic, when scientific advice would be crucial, politicians making decisions haphazardly. Announcing measures that have no scientific basis (limited though evidence may be at this point). 4/...

Disregarding experts they had spent years and vast amounts of money training. Wasting time pretending the virus would magically go away in Summer. Not making contingency plans, scenarios, forecasting, efficacy studies. I also blame academia. 5/...

Academia watched things go by. They didn't mobilise, they didn't work together to raise the alarm, to propose solutions. They didn't even take care of reopening universities in safety or preparing for going virtual. 6/...

And now I don't know what to tell my students? That at a time of crisis we go back to magical thinking and gut instincts? That people should do things not because there is evidence for that but "because I told you so"? 7/...

That "follow the science" applies only to people, not to governments? So what's the point of scicomm? PR for research institutions? This depresses me. 8/end.