Following the Science: Political Epistemology and the COVID- 19 Epidemic in the UK

遵循科学。2020年，英国的政府部长们经常引用这一说法，以在COVID-19疫情期间将政策干预与政治区分开来。但追随科学意味着什么呢？这个研究项目将考虑“科学”，在形成科学知识和政策建议的生产因素方面，以及政府“遵循”这一点的方式;换句话说，这些科学发现如何转化为政策？通过这次调查，它将考虑科学和政府政策之间的关系，通过评估社会，政治和经济因素影响科学的方式，在一定的背景下产生，各种方法和学科的内在逻辑，主导当代科学的政策设置，以及政府如何利用这些建议来制定政策反应。通过批判现实主义和政治认识论，并结合社会学和科学哲学的见解，它将寻求确定塑造英国对COVID-19的反应的因果关系过程，并使用这个案例研究来得出关于公共政策背景下社会学和哲学因素与科学知识之间相互作用的更广泛结论。

Following the science. This refrain was frequently invoked byGovernment ministers in the UK in 2020 in order to construe aseparation between policy interventions and politics during theCOVID-19 epidemic. But what does it mean to follow thescience? This research project will consider both 'the science',in terms of factors that shape the production of scientificknowledge and policy recommendations, as well as the waysin which governments 'follow' this; in other words, how arethese scientific findings translated into policy? Through thisinvestigation it will consider the relationship between scienceand government policy by assessing the ways in which social,political and economic factors influence the science that isproduced in a definite context, the internal logic of variousmethods and disciplines that predominate contemporaryscience in a policy setting, and the ways in which governmentsuse those recommendations to formulate policy responses.Through a combination of critical realism and politicalepistemology, and incorporating insights from both sociologyand philosophy of science, it will seek to identify the causalprocesses that shaped the response to COVID-19 in the UKand use this case study to draw broader conclusions about theinteraction between sociological and philosophical factors andscientific knowledge in a public policy context.