ABSTRACT. The success of public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic is sensitive to public trust in experts. Despite a great deal of attention to attitudes towards experts in the context of such crises, one significant feature of public trust remains underexamined. When public policy claims to follow the science, citizens are asked not just to believe what they are told by experts, but to follow expert recommendations. I argue that this requires a more demanding form of trust, which I call recommendation trust. I argue for three claims about recommendation trust: recommendation trust is different from both epistemic and practical trust; the conditions for well-placed recommendation trust are more demanding than the conditions for well-placed epistemic trust; and many measures that have been proposed to cultivate trust in experts do not give the public good reasons to trust in expert-led policy.
Nonetheless,there are some political and social crises in which even a small degree ofsuspicion of scientific authorities can have disastrous consequences. One suchcrisis is the climate change emergency. It is often with a focus on the climatecrisis that social epistemologists and philosophers of science have tackled arange of questions around trust in expertise, including how we can defend therationality of trusting experts and what measures we can take to cultivate suchtrust (see e.g., Anderson 2011; John 2016). Public health crises are alsohighly sensitive to public trust in experts, and the COVID-19 pandemic is noexception to the principle that when epidemics pose serious threats to thehealth of whole nations, distrust of the relevant public health experts canhave serious consequences.
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Despitea great deal of attention to attitudes towards experts in the context of suchcrises, one significant factor in public trust in experts remainsunderexamined. The vast majority of philosophical work on public trust inexperts has addressed questions about epistemic trust: forming beliefs on thebasis of the testimony, broadly construed, of scientists and scientificcommunities. But as the COVID-19 pandemic shows us, a distinct kind of trust inexperts is needed when experts not only provide information and data, but also playan instrumental role in the formation of science-led policy. When public policyclaims to follow the science, citizens are asked not just to believe what theyare told, but to follow expert recommendations. I argue that this requires adistinct form of trust, which I call recommendation trust.
I will argue for three claims about recommendation trust. The first is that recommendation trust is different from both epistemic trust and a third form of trust, also popular among philosophers, which I call practical trust (Section 3). The second is that the conditions in which recommendation trust is well-placed are more demanding than the conditions for well-placed epistemic trust (also Section 3). This is because to have good reason to follow an expert recommendation I must not only believe that the expert is sincere and competent in their field, but also that the action they recommend is in my interest. This leads me to argue for my third claim (Sections 4 and 5): because the norm that governs the rationality of recommendation trust is more demanding than that which governs epistemic trust, many measures that have been proposed to cultivate trust in experts do not help to cultivate recommendation trust in science-led policy. In short, experts have a higher bar to clear when we are asked to follow their recommendations. If we are to ask the public to trust the recommendations of scientists, we must acknowledge that this is different from asking novices to accept facts. When science leads policy, it must work harder to merit public trust
Myaccount depends foremost on the assumption that public trust in experts is bothnecessary and desirable for an effective public health response to thecoronavirus pandemic.[3]One reason to think trust in experts is particularly important in the contextof the pandemic is that most current public health policies in response to thecrisis depend on a significant degree of voluntary compliance. Many countrieshave taken social distancing measures to reduce infection rates to a manageablelevel. This usually involves radical lifestyle changes for citizens, includingthe closure of businesses, workplaces, and many public spaces, bans on travelfor all but essential journeys, and complete self-isolation for those atgreater risk of serious illness. It is fair to assume that it would be wholly unpracticalto apply social distancing solely through comprehensive policing and directenforcement. And I am confident that even if compliance with social distancingcould be guaranteed wholly through coercion, this would be undesirable.
A state could coerce compliance with social distancing in ways thatare less direct than totalitarian policing. The simple threat of such measuresmight be enough to persuade the public to comply. I am also taking for grantedthat we would prefer voluntary compliance with a public health policy tocompliance secured solely through public fear of what the state might do tothem if they do not comply. But note that this is not an all-or-nothing test ofthe desirability of a public health policy, as if such a policy either dependson states applying coercive power to all citizens, or it does not depend onsuch power at all. Any state-enforced policy, even where it is granteddemocratic legitimacy through public trust, will involve exercising coercive powerover the few who refuse to comply. In this respect, trust in government securesnot just a sufficient level of compliance with government policy, but alsosufficient public support for the policing of that policy. It would be wrong tothink that a public health response secured through trust would involve nocoercive state power at all.
Though I am taking for granted that public trust is a necessary partof a desirable response to the pandemic, I do not assume it is sufficient.There are many reasons for this. One is that citizens may be willing but unableto comply with government policy. Emerging research on public behavior during thepandemic in the UK indicates that although willingness to follow socialdistancing measures is generally high, the ability to self-isolate is notevenly distributed, with the most economically disadvantaged unable to comply(Atchison et al. 2020). Thus, some citizens who trust policymakers enough to bewilling to follow policy might not be able to do so.
My framing of the issues so far might be accused of confusing twovery different matters: public trust in scientific experts and publicwillingness to comply with government policy. If some readers worry about this,then all the better for the purposes of this paper, for the distinction I wish toargue for is very similar to the distinction between trust in science per se and compliance with scientifically-informedpolicy. But before proceeding to put some conceptual distance between trust inscience and trust in technocracy, it is worth noting some observations aboutthe tandem pairing of government policy and scientific expertise that we see inmany (though not all) government responses to the coronavirus crisis. What wefind in the pandemic is that when science has a significant role to play inpolicy, trust in experts and compliance with government go hand in hand.
Limited though they are, there are lessons to be learned from thecoronavirus pandemic about the nature of the public trust that supportsacceptance of (at least putatively) science-led policy. Before outlining thoselessons directly, it will help to be more precise about the kinds of trust thatare relevant to the pandemic.
As I am primarily interested in differences between recommendationtrust and epistemic trust, I will stop short of a full account of these threeforms of trust. A comprehensive definition of recommendation trust would needto do more to distinguish it from other, deceptively similar ways in which weform beliefs about what we should do. Say I am taking a trip by car with afriend. The friend recommends I avoid the M25 this afternoon because of thelikely traffic. But I have good reason to think that taking a detour route willtake just as long, despite the heavy traffic on the M25. There are a number ofways I might do as my friend suggests, in response to their suggestion, withoutthereby following their recommendation. Perhaps I avoid the M25 to humour myfriend (I know they tend to be insecure about others not taking their traveladvice). Perhaps I avoid the M25 because I know that my friend has a phobia oftraffic jams and is too proud to cite this as the reason for asking that wetake a detour. Perhaps my friend is an intimidating person, and I fear theconsequences of questioning their advice. Doing as my friend recommends for anyof these reasons is not trusting their recommendation.
Note also that the same principle applies to public trust in therecommendations of politicians and experts. If members of the public accordwith the recommendations of government because they fear what the government woulddo were they not to follow its recommendations, then the public is not actingon trust, but on fear. Policy that depends on this form of compliance isprecisely the coercion-based policy that earlier I suggested we would prefer toavoid. Moreover, compliance with public health recommendation is significantlydifferent from compliance with law. I will restrict my focus to the question ofwhen we have good reason to follow public health recommendations issued byexperts.
One very common concern about epistemic trust is that to believewhat we are told by experts we must believe without the warrant available toother kinds of belief (Burge 1995; Hardwig 1985, 1991; John 2018; Kukla 2007).Experts know about things I do not know about and sometimes could not knowabout. But many areas of expertise are areas in which it is important fornon-experts to form true beliefs. Such beliefs must be formed without access toall of the evidence and without expert ability to understand the evidence. Thisthreatens the possibility of both knowledge and rational belief about a widearray of basic facts. Do I know whether the Earth is flat without travelling?Should I believe that penicillin can be used to treat infection without firststudying biochemistry? Knowledge of such matters depends on the rationality ofbeliefs grounded in the testimony of others, and the rationality of such beliefsis questionable in ways that the rationality of other beliefs is not. 152ee80cbc
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