Open Letter to Tracey Brown, Director of Sense About Science

The Free Speech Union held a debate with Sense About Science which included much discussion about scientific debate during the covid experience. The Co-Chairs of HART attended and Dr Clare Craig has since written this open letter to the head of Sense About Science, Tracy Brown, regarding her position that minority scientific arguments were blurred with arguments on values and it was this that did the most damage to scientific debate:

“Dear Tracey,

First of all thank you very much for Wednesday night, there was clearly a lot of thought and preparation that went into your talk. I made a point from the floor at the end and I fear I failed to communicate well hence wanting to follow up. I plan to publish this as an open letter and will happily publish any response from you as well.

You made a good case for trying to separate out value based arguments from scientific evidential ones in order to enable rational scientific debate proposing, for example that the impact of masking at a societal level should have been kept separate from arguments about any benefits of masking.

However, you also advocated that those scientists who did not have the support of the scientific establishment were guilty of creating an environment where open scientific debate was not possible and became overly politicised. 

I put it to you that those writing about the lack of benefit from masking and those who combined arguments about risks and benefits had nowhere to be heard except for sites like The Daily Sceptic. Moreover, the mainstream scientists absolutely failed to separate value judgements. Minority scientists with a view that there was little benefit to intervention would not be dismissed on the basis of evidence but on moral grounds. They were “putting lives at risk.” One of the core tenets of science – to respectfully engage with those asking evidence based questions – was abandoned and behaviour reverted to something reminiscent of the Salem witch trials in the levels of fear, hatred, panic, vindictiveness and shaming of dissent.

I wonder if you are fully aware of how experts who had valid scientific views, many of which have already been shown to have been correct, have been treated?

It is unrealistic to hope for a forum for scientific debate that is stripped of emotion. Scientists are human and come to the debating table with a set of values of their own along with emotion. This is inevitable. A more realistic aim is to have rules in terms of respectful speech, no censorship and an evidence focused open debate.

However, I strongly contest that the problem lay with those scientists who had no platform and no power.

You used as an example being able to debate the modelling around transmission in schools without having to contend with arguments about values i.e. the ethics of shutting schools and inverting the principle that adults should protect children. It is a good example to illustrate the problems.

First of all, where should that debate take place?

The medical journals would arguably be too slow, if they were an option (and believe me they absolutely were not for a huge number of experts with views that sat at the edge of the political discourse).

Pre-prints might work - but even they refused to publish (and continue to).

Here is the current wording on the main medical preprint server, MedRxiv, for example:
"All articles are screened on submission for... material that could potentially endanger the health of individual patients or the public. The latter may include, but is not limited to, studies describing dual-use research of concern and works that challenge or could compromise accepted public health measures and advice regarding infectious disease transmission, immunization, and therapy."

The co-founders of MedRxiv, claimed that they had a duty to censor anything that might "threaten critical public health measures." 

This is a value judgement. It was used to censor people discussing science. This undermines the claim that this debate could have taken place stripped from values. There were a clear set of values that were protected and, not coincidentally, they were the values of the dominant narrative and dissenters were crushed.

The media had OfCom making similar threats to broadcast media saying,
“We remind all broadcasters of the significant potential harm that can be caused by material relating to the Coronavirus… Ofcom will consider any breach arising from harmful Coronavirus-related programming to be potentially serious and will consider taking appropriate regulatory action, which could include the imposition of a statutory sanction.”

The main print and online media outlets were signed up to the "Trusted News Initiative" which prevents deviation from a party line - the very thing the media is meant to be for! There were other ways in which the print press were controlled e.g. the Telegraph's science editor was threatened on the phone by the MHRA when she reported the AstraZeneca blood clots for the first time. Only now, belatedly, are questions being asked about the neutrality of the TNI values.

What does that leave? The only choice was to publish on independent websites.

Debate did take place on Twitter. Twitter is obviously the opposite of the emotionally devoid forum I envisaged earlier, but it's worse than that. Twitter was and is subject to EU law which says that if they do not stamp down on "misinformation" they can be fined up to 6% of their global revenue. Other social media sites including YouTube and even Amazon were being pressured by the US government to censor scientific debate. 

Certain trusts in the NHS issued gagging orders with emails from chief executives banning staff from speaking to the media under any circumstances. There were even suggestions that dissenters from the dominant narrative be criminalised. There has been a huge amount of self censorship as a result. 

It is worth remembering how much "misinformation" has become accepted truth thanks only to people risking career and reputation to report the truth.  Here are a few examples of claims treated as misinformation that, at a minimum, are now serious and credible viewpoints and in many case demonstrably true:

1. The virus has seasonal transmission – now clearly proven

2. It was man made – although this claim is still contested by some, this is gaining in credibility

3. It was spread long distance through aerosols not close contact by droplets. The WHO accused the aerosol physics experts of spreading misinformation, took until December 2021 to admit to "long range aerosol spread" and have still not taken on board the implications of that in terms of which interventions have any possibility of working.

4. The vaccines affected women's menstruation. Clearly true - The European Medicines Agency (EMA) admitted that in October 2022.

5. The vaccines caused Bell's palsy in a small percentage of recipients. Clearly true The EMA and MHRA have now admitted that "facial drooping" occurred in up to 1 in 1000 doses.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I feel sure there will be more to come in time.

None of these facts would be acknowledged in a world where people were personally attacked (here are a few things I've been called) and not knowing how it would affect careers and reputation going forward. (Not to mention the massive time and resource commitment because anyone risking the above needs to be absolutely certain on their facts and wording).

The big question is why defending these facts created that response. The answer is that those in power (within science) wanted any debate to be held only within parameters of their choosing. Anyone challenging core assumptions would be outside of those parameters and accused of not understanding what was at stake and being a threat to life. That was a value judgement.

I would like to return to the example of a debate on transmission in schools. (We will ignore the fact that school closures were driven by political pressure from teacher unions including the later lockdowns and they threatened to use safety law to tell all teachers not to work on 4th Jan).

A person defending their model would come to the debate with certain emotionally driven positions - this is inevitable as they are a human – such as: 

1.     This is my model and I have worked hard on it and think it's the best that it can be in the circumstances. This is my contribution to society. I’ve contributed years to this and now is the time for me to shine.

2.     I believe the assumptions made in the model are fair (but they are based on my values because there was no other way of building assumptions in).

3.     I hold certain beliefs about the threat society faces and the duties of its citizens.

Moreover, the parameters of any debate would be framed under the premise that:

1.     Close contact droplet transmission was the prime driver of spread and that therefore reducing close contact would reduce spread. (Ignoring the fact that spread was far too rapid for this to be true and long distance aerosol spread was the prime driver).

2.     There was a deadly virus on the loose to which no-one had any defence, everyone was susceptible to each variant and human intervention could control its spread.

3.     Any harm to children has to be weighed up against the imagined harm to society from my false assumptions.

I could show you why all of that was wrong - but for now let's just accept that the framework is a value system of its own. This was the problem with having any scientific debate. This was why engagement was impossible. This was why people like me were attacked for sharing evidence that undermined people's framework.

If I wanted to have a debate about the science of school transmission, first we would need to strip away the arguments about not inverting the precautionary principle and that adults have a duty to protect children and not the other way around, so that the scientific evidence base could be addressed. I would quote the real world observational evidence that transmission in schools was minimal, including the following:

1.    Covid was not a threat to children

2.   Children play an insignificant role in transmission of Covid-19

3.   Teaching was a low risk profession re covid.

4.   Living with children may even reduce the risks of the disease

5.   Transmission in schools has not been significant 

6.  I would then explain why a virus that is spread long distance through the air is not transmitted by close contact and that interventions that reduced close contact were all destined to fail.

In retrospect, the trajectory in children followed the trajectory in the community (as you would expect from an airborne virus) and school closures and openings did not impact on that.

The forum for having that debate was harmed far more by those in positions of power and in the scientific majority than those in the minority. We were repeatedly dismissed with being told "the science is settled" and that we should "follow The Science". In fact, those in the majority felt they had nothing to gain by engaging in debate.  John Stuart Mill was right when he articulated that there are four ways to gain from debate (even when you believe you are right):

1.     They are right and you learn something.

2.     They are partially right and you refine your beliefs.

3.     They are wrong but by engaging in debate you refine and deepen your reasoning.

4.     They are wrong but by engaging in debate you prevent your views becoming dismissed as dogma that cannot be questioned. 

Public health experts advocating to keep schools open faced public smearing and severe repercussions, including illegal server hacks and interventions from counter-terrorism units. All the signatories of an open letter pointing out the bad decision making around vaccinating children were referred to the Counter Disinformation Unit by the health department. The UK government and various organisations, influenced by pharmaceutical companies, used extensive resources and social media manipulation to suppress dissenting voices and promote official narratives during the pandemic. I could go into much more detail on this.

What is most disappointing is that scientists, like myself, needed more than ever before the support of Sense About Science and yet did not receive any.

I would really like to explain more if you are interested.

Kind Regards,

Clare

Dr Clare Craig

Co-Chair HART”