RAPID: Collaborative Research: A Comparative Study of Expertise for Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic

在政策制定者努力避免COVID 19造成灾难性的健康和经济后果之际，他们正在努力解决一个难题：是什么让专家知识在公共政策中使用时可信、合法和可靠？这一问题尤为紧迫，因为国家和区域当局正面临科学上的不确定性和跨越地缘政治边界的快速变化的事件，而迅速采取行动的必要性与将政策建立在丰富的专业知识和令人信服的分析基础上的必要性之间存在矛盾。确定可靠的专业知识来源的方法是至关重要的，但它们在很大程度上仍然属于政府，因为它们的机构、研究传统、文化承诺和公民信仰各不相同。PI将在10个地区进行多地点调查，以获取有关COVID 19危机的详细信息，然后进行严格的比较分析，以更好地了解专业知识和信任之间的关系，这是决策者在信息分散和政治两极化时代至关重要的联系。向重要的政策分析人员和政策界有效传播成果是这一项目成功的关键。为了实现这一目标，项目执行人将利用他们及其合作伙伴与科学决策者以及国家和国际组织的广泛联系，他们已经组建了一个研究伙伴小组，其中包括10个地区的知名STS学者，他们同意参与该项目。该团队将收集和分析每个地区与COVID-19政策制定有关的出版物和公共文件。这些材料将为基于STS的各区域知识和决策核算提供基础，以便进行对本项目至关重要的比较。为了提供这一说明，他们将建立一个基本政策时间轴，跟踪每个区域应对这一流行病的关键事件和决定。跟踪这些行动将使他们能够记录变化，并分析问题的框架和证据收集方式的变化。他们还将收集有关不确定性（如科学知识的范围和局限性）和争议的信息，重点关注每个地区冠状病毒政策中最具争议的方面。此外，他们将跟踪精心挑选的对象，因为它们被纳入政策讨论。这些对象包括特别有影响力的流行病学和认知模型，广泛传播的视觉表示，关键的政策概念，以及关于医疗干预措施的可用性，有效性和未来前景的知识主张。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

As policy makers work to avert catastrophic health and economic outcomes due to COVID 19, they are struggling with a difficult question: What makes expert knowledge credible, legitimate, and reliable for use in public policy? That question is especially urgent since national and regional authorities are facing scientific uncertainty and fast-moving events that cross geopolitical borders, and the need for quick action stands in tension with the need to ground policy in robust expert knowledge and convincing analysis. Ways of identifying trustworthy sources of expertise is essential, but they remain largely vested in governments with their differing institutions, research traditions, cultural commitments, and civic beliefs. The PIs will conduct a multi-sited investigation in ten regions that will capture detailed information about the COVID 19 crisis as it unfolds, and then conduct a rigorous comparative analysis to provide a better understanding of the relationship between expertise and trust, a critically important nexus for policy makers in an era of decentralized information and polarized politics. Effective dissemination of results to critical policy analysts and policy communities is key to the success of this project. To achieve this goal, the PIs will utilize the extensive connections that they and their collaborative partners have to science policymakers and national and international organizations.The PIs have assembled a team of research partners, well established STS scholars in ten regions, who have agreed to participate in the project. This team will collect and analyze publications and public documents pertaining to COVID-19 policy making in each region. These materials will provide the basis for STS-based accounts of knowledge and policymaking in each region for the comparisons that are central to this project. To provide that account, they will build a basic policy timeline tracking key events and decisions in each region’s response to the pandemic. Tracking these moves will enable them to document change and analyze variations in how issues are framed and evidence is gathered. They will also collect information on uncertainties (such as scope and limitations of scientific knowledge) and controversies, with a focus on the most contentious aspect of coronavirus policy in each region. In addition, they will track carefully chosen objects as they are incorporated into policy discussions. Such objects include particularly influential epidemiological and epistemic models, widely circulated visual representations, key policy concepts, and knowledge claims about the availability, effectiveness, and future prospects of medical interventions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.