Professor Frances Lee says leaders used expert advisors as shields during COVID, while dissenting scientists were denied a platform.
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00:00And I'm guessing the situation also, the dynamic changed when we started to see presidents
00:05and prime ministers holding regular press briefings alongside scientists, such as Dr.
00:11Anthony Fauci in the USA, where everyone was assured that the policy was to follow the
00:17science, as the term became very well known.
00:20How did that strategy develop?
00:23Well, I think for political leaders in the U.S. and in other places, it was easy to sort
00:30of hide behind their expert advisers.
00:32I mean, these were highly consequential decisions with devastating effects on society.
00:38And it was it was much easier for them to say that what they were doing was merely following
00:45expert advice.
00:46And so in order to sustain that, it was necessary to make sure that dissenting voices among
00:53scientists didn't get much of a platform.
00:55And so you then began to see efforts to suppress such questions on social media and and an
01:04editorial line maintained quite tightly at the major newspapers raising, you know, sort
01:14of making such questions off limits.