Pandemics, policy, and the power of paradigm: will COVID-19 lead to a new scientific revolution?

ABSTRACT: Critical historical analysis of the 19th-century cholera and 21st-century coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemics suggests that in conflicts over pandemic-mitigation policies, the professional backgrounds of principal opponents reveal dominant and minority scientific paradigms, presaging possible epistemological shifts. Epistemic conflict over cholera helped spur biomedical expertise as the dominant paradigm for U.S. public health science and policy beginning in the 20th century. This paradigm was reflected in federal government reliance on infectious disease physicians as the primary scientific decision makers in the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, epistemic conflict over challenges to behavioral and social well-being in 2020 may highlight discordance between the dominant biomedical paradigm us

SUBMITTER: Fairman KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8882036 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature