Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • COMMENT

Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto

Pandemic politics highlight how predictions need to be transparent and humble to invite insight, not blame.
By
  1. Andrea Saltelli

    1. Andrea Saltelli is a professor at the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway, and at Open Evidence Research, Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.

  2. Gabriele Bammer

    1. Gabriele Bammer is a professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

  3. Isabelle Bruno

    1. Isabelle Bruno is an associate professor in political science at the University of Lille and a researcher at Lille Center for European Research on Administration, Politics and Society (CERAPS, CNRS/University of Lille), France.

  4. Erica Charters

    1. Erica Charters is a professor in the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, UK.

  5. Monica Di Fiore

    1. Monica Di Fiore is a researcher at the National Research Council, Rome, Italy.

  6. Emmanuel Didier

    1. Emmanuel Didier is a professor at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, CNRS, at the École Normale Supérieure, and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris, France.

  7. Wendy Nelson Espeland

    1. Wendy Nelson Espeland is a professor in the Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.

  8. John Kay

    1. John Kay is a professor of economics at the St John’s College, University of Oxford, UK.

  9. Samuele Lo Piano

    1. Samuele Lo Piano is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of the Built Environment, University of Reading, UK.

  10. Deborah Mayo

    1. Deborah Mayo is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

  11. Roger Pielke Jr

    1. Roger Pielke Jr is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA.

  12. Tommaso Portaluri

    1. Tommaso Portaluri is an innovation manager at IN Srl, Udine, Italy, and president of CEST – Centre for Excellence and Transdisciplinary Studies, Turin, Italy.

  13. Theodore M. Porter

    1. Theodore M. Porter is a professor in the Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

  14. Arnald Puy

    1. Arnald Puy is a Marie Curie Global Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, and at the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway.

  15. Ismael Rafols

    1. Ismael Rafols is a senior researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

  16. Jerome R. Ravetz

    1. Jerome R. Ravetz is an associate fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford, UK.

  17. Erik Reinert

    1. Erik Reinert is a professor at the Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and honorary professor at the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, UK.

  18. Daniel Sarewitz

    1. Daniel Sarewitz is a professor at the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University, USA.

  19. Philip B. Stark

    1. Philip B. Stark is a professor in the Department of Statistics, University of California Berkeley, USA.

  20. Andrew Stirling

    1. Andrew Stirling is a professor at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, UK.

  21. Jeroen van der Sluijs

    1. Jeroen van der Sluijs is a professor at the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway, and at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

  22. Paolo Vineis

    1. Paolo Vineis is a professor at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK.

View saved research
Cartoon of scientists and policymakers inspecting the inside of a black box that is outputting a policy document

Illustration by David Parkins

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates perfectly how the operation of science changes when questions of urgency, stakes, values and uncertainty collide — in the ‘post-normal’ regime.

Access options

Access through your institution

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

$32.99 / 30 days cancel any time
Learn more

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

$1.95 to $39.95
Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 582, 482-484 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01812-9

References

  1. Mayo, D. G. Statistical Inference as Severe Testing (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Devlin, H. & Boseley, S. ‘Scientists criticise UK government’s ‘following the science’ claim’ (The Guardian, 23 April 2020).

  3. Stirling, A. ‘How politics closes down uncertainty’. Available at https://go.nature.com/3kjvutz.

  4. Behrend, M. R. et al. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 14, e0008033 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Kay, J. A. & King, M. A. Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making Beyond the Numbers (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Puy, A., Lo Piano, S. & Saltelli, A. Geophys. Res. Lett. 47, e2020GL087360 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Sarewitz, D., Pielke, R. A. & Byerly, R. Prediction: Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature (Island Press, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Porter, T. M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton Univ. Press, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Ferguson, N. M. et al. Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand (Imperial College London, 2020).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Espeland, W. N. & Stevens, M. L. Eur. J. Sociol. 49, 401–436 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bruno, I., Didier, E. & Vitale, T. Partecipazione e Conflitto 7, 198–220 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Supplementary Information

  1. Additional information and references

Related Articles

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing