What Do Leaders Mean By “Science”?
While debate rages about lockdowns, ideology goes under the radar
In his own words, California Governor Gavin Newsom is on record repudiating what you may have thought he meant by science. In response to a claim that lockdown metrics should not be monolithic by county lines, he responded:
You believe in growth and you don’t believe in inclusion? Then we’re going to leave a lot of people behind. And one of the things we value as a state is inclusion. And we believe that we’re all better off when we’re all better off. Leaving communities behind in order to game your testing and your case rates I don’t think is right.
I wrote this article for data scientists as well as other concerned readers. But scientist or not, if you’re at all interested in the question of definitions…I don’t need to point out the holes and assumptions in what he said above. But if you’re reading this quickly or late at night I don’t mind helping out:
- Is he saying the effort to increase inclusion isn’t leaving others behind if they’re walled off in a county where certain metrics happen to be higher?
- Valuing inclusion is a vague notion. Do we value anything else? I suspect we do. To what degree?
- To say a county is “gam[ing their] testing” suggests…
