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Non-Specialist Scientists and Doctors Should Stop Speculating About COVID-19

Non-Specialist Scientists and Doctors Should Stop Speculating About COVID-19

Photo: Jon Tyson/Unsplash.

I am a scientist and I have a PhD, so technically I can attach the prefix ‘Dr’ to my name. However, I don’t know anything about COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus. This is because though I’m a scientist, I’m not a subject expert. I am an astronomer. And if you ask me about viral outbreaks on exoplanets, I don’t know anything about that either!

I feel it’s important for me to acknowledge this for a simple reason: there have been far too many non-specialists who have been spitballing about COVID-19 in the media over the last few months. This is dangerous and needs to stop.

These non-specialists include a experts of scientists in the pure sciences – like mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, chemists and biologists, plus a range of medical professionals encompassing both invasive and non-invasive branches.

Astronomers giving gyan about COVID-19 is bound to be a joke. However, let’s keep in mind that a professional qualified in any random branch of medicine would on average be as well-informed about the intricacies of COVID-19 or some other coronavirus disease as the next person you meet.

It would be as wise to ask for advice about COVID-19 from, say, an ophthalmologist or a dermatologist as if you consulted a carpenter if you’re having acid reflux. Granted that all these individuals are all well-versed in their specific fields – but they simply aren’t qualified or knowledgeable enough to formally comment on the health care aspects of the ongoing pandemic.

On a case-to-case basis, of course, the people qualified to comment are:

1. Virologists – Scientists who study viruses

2. Epidemiologists – Scientists specialised in the study of epidemics

3. Infectious disease modellers – Scientists who mathematically model and simulate the propagation of diseases using computers

Every other branch of medicine plays an auxiliary or supporting role in managing this pandemic. So if you’re looking for advice about what you should do, please make sure you’re not talking to a non-specialist, and certainly not taking their word to be gospel. General medical advice is very different from specific advice, especially when it relates to a new virus and thus a new disease.

More than a few scientists around the world – including astronomers and physicists – have attempted to take advantage of the pandemic to publish a few papers discussing disease transmission models and testing strategies based on what they have read. Setting aside questions of propriety, it’s hard to say if these papers will move the virological, epidemiological or therapeutic needle. However, what’s more likely is that these less-informed studies could misinform the already poorly informed, confuse policymakers and encourage support for strategies that could backfire. Simply put, in the middle of a pandemic, they could cost lives.

And even if not at the level of papers, many scientists – but of varied persuasions – have also been issuing poorly substantiated statements about immunity, prophylaxis, vaccination, clinical trials, etc., presumably to hit the limelight, but in the process end up misguiding social media users and other gullible people. It’s vital to separate wise words from the mouths of specific subject experts from shallow waffling by an array of non-specialists who may or may not be fulfilling purposes of their own.

Scientists receive a lot of training, of different forms and types, before they become specialists. But mostly after high school, and almost entirely after undergraduate education, specialised studies qualify us in unique ways to solve the problems each one of us has set out to solve – and disqualifies us in unique ways to solve most others. This isn’t just about treading on each other’s toes; it’s about accountability. Issuing statements or hypotheses is easy – but backing them with enough confidence to ensure nobody will die as a result is something else.

This is also why it’s important that we follow the general government advisories and guidelines because they are prepared in consultation with proper subject experts from both India and abroad based on the best knowledge currently available. That is, it’s okay for these advisories to become better as times change and new information becomes available but it’s not okay if each one doesn’t reflect what we really knew in that moment.

As a non-expert myself, it’s hard for me to tell who may be able to answer my questions about COVID-19 better and who I can also access more. However, the thing about the pandemic of a virus that spreads really fast is that the risks are too high to get your advice from anyone other than a specifically qualified expert.

Aswin Sekhar is an astrophysicist at the IMCCE, Paris Observatory.

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