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No such thing as following the science

Fr. Jadyn Nelson, Minot

If I had a nickel for every time that I’ve heard “follow the science” since last March as a way to strengthen one’s argument for responding a certain way to the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, I’d be a millionaire. The problem is that I haven’t been collecting!

Actually, the issue is that I know of no one who does not have some data to back up their argument, and yet, we are still vigorously at each other’s throats. The “maskers” versus the “anti-maskers,” the pro-vaccination camp versus those less excited about taking a COVID vaccine, and those who are pro-social control versus the light-touch-of-government folks, all have numbers behind their reasoning.

The problem, I suppose, is that we have forgotten that the value of numbers is quantitative in nature, and the value of actions is qualitative in nature. The scientific method needs philosophy in order to become an apprentice to determining behavior. In other words, raw data does not, by itself, tell us what we ought to do. We must interpret the raw data; we do so based upon a philosophical approach to the situation that precedes our understanding of what the data means. Many people of good will can look at some key characteristics of the disease and come to very different conclusions about how we should respond to the situation.

I’ll use a simple example. According to North Dakota Department of Health records, the mortality rate of Covid-19 by age category states that in North Dakota, 93% of deaths have occurred in individuals over sixty years of age, 82% of deaths have occurred in individuals over seventy years of age, and the vast majority have co-morbidities. Furthermore, the World Health Organization reports that the disease’s Infection Fatality Ratio is probably between 0.5-1.0% . Okay… so now what? What part of 0.5% or 93% states that a particular behavior is warranted? Nothing in those numbers explicitly tells us that we must regulate the capacity of restaurants. Nothing in those numbers tells us that the right thing to do is to limit visitors to elderly in long-term care facilities and hospitals. Nothing in those numbers tells us that this is a state of emergency. The reason numbers alone cannot tell us what to do is that they are amoral, and they are amoral because morality necessarily includes the evaluation and assessment of what is good or evil, which numbers alone cannot do. For that we need moral reasoning built on sound principles and a well formed conscience.

For decades, our society has embraced a post-modern moral philosophy that eschews objective morality. Moral relativism owns the day. No one in the 21st Century ought to dare evaluate the goodness or evil of another’s actions based upon principle, especially principles derived from an analysis of human nature and its powers. Morality is about feeling and subjective experience; we’ve convinced ourselves of it. Then came a situation that required us all to begin evaluating the goodness or evil of our own and others’ actions based upon whether or not they would contribute to infecting us or someone we love, and suddenly other people’s actions became quite important. No more room for moral relativism, everyone needs to be on the same page.

Naturally, many people turned to the one source of truth in their lives to tell them how to act: Science will get us through this pandemic! Follow the science! So, we looked to Dr. Fauci and the other ministers of science to tell us what to do… and there was no consensus because we have neglected the importance of moral philosophy under the false promise of a purely scientific moral calculus also known as data-driven decision making.

None of this is to say that the data is not an important component in our public discussion about how to navigate this pandemic. Nor is it a denigration of the great good that results from the application of the scientific method to understand the workings of our world. Rather, it is simply to point out that we should really stop assuming that those with whom we disagree about how to respond to the pandemic are not “following the science.” The science has nothing to say directly about the morality of human action. Moral philosophy and even moral theology, on the other hand, do have much to say about how we should respond to this pandemic. Perhaps, in this moment, we might realize again the importance of principled moral reasoning, our study of it in schools, and reserving a place for it in the public square. The common good depends on it.

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