The complex relationship between science and policy - Open science communication (3)

14 February, 2022

In the excellent webinar hosted by SLACOM, LACOG and The Lancet Oncology during London Global Cancer Week Dr Nelson Teich (Minister of Health in Brazil 17 April 2020 – 15 May 2020) shared this illuminating account:

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“The problem for a minister to run a country health care system in the middle of a crisis where, instead of cooperation, you have competition, you have political fights, and you have to make decisions without knowledge about the disease. You don't have vaccines or treatments. available. So you're in the middle of the development of them. And what I say is it's one of the problems, with, you know, one of the things…. we learn a lot… it's about information science.

People talk about Science as if it were something absolutely precise, perfect: “Follow the Science”. But Science is absolutely unstable. So, especially when there's something you don't know a lot about it, you learn every day. Then you have to change every day.

This is another problem. You have to change because this is the natural evolution, because we have more knowledge every day. And, by the way, those changes are treated as... they become a reason for people to criticise you, when you have no collaboration and you have only fights. It's much more difficult to run the system in the middle of a crisis.”

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I have no reason to doubt Dr Teich’s experience, which suggests that in response to a foreseen crisis for which no meaningful preparations had been made, both Science and the Political Decision Making process can act independently as unstable agents. The full record of the webinar can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohhASxDJzEo

Kind regards,

Mark

HIFA profile: Mark Lodge is Director of Programme Development at the International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research, Oxford, UK. The INCTR is dedicated to helping to build capacity for cancer treatment and research in countries in which such capacity is presently limited, and thereby to create a foundation on which to build strategies designed to lessen the suffering, limit the number of lives lost, and promote the highest quality of life for children and adults with cancer in these countries, and to increase the quantity and quality of cancer research throughout the world. www.inctr.org mlodge AT canet.org