Why science won’t ace its coronavirus test

A New York Times article published earlier this month proclaimed that, according to scientists, “never before have so many of the world’s researchers focussed so urgently on a single topic.” It went on to describe the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine and drugs for treating it, involving global collaborations of medical researchers. Epidemiologists are also labouring tirelessly to save us from the virus by modeling its spread and directing mitigation efforts. Meanwhile, some macroeconomists are working overtime to save us from the epidemiologists.
But that hardly accounts for most of the world’s researchers, who specialise in disciplines as alphabetically diverse as aerobiology and zoopathology. In the US alone there are likely hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers who have the desire and knowledge to contribute to the fight against the coronavirus. And those of us working in academia continue to command the resources and professional autonomy needed to refocus our work, despite having decamped from proverbial ivory towers to dingy basements.
So why haven’t we seen a dramatic shift in academic research priorities across all disciplines? One reason may be lack of coordination. Under normal circumstances, science works remarkably well as a decentralised process, where researchers identify problems they’re passionate about, study them with very little oversight, and then hope to convince their peers that their work is inspiring, profound or useful. Good research projects are deliberative and careful, often taking years from conception to publication.
In a crisis, however, the usual scientific process is inadequate. When it comes to dealing with the coronavirus, time is of the essence, and the relevance of a project is determined by its potential to save lives, aid mitigation efforts, or alleviate the epidemic’s damage to society.
Scientists need an up-to-date, detailed understanding of the situation on the ground in order to pinpoint feasible problems whose solutions truly matter. This understanding, in turn, can only arise from a system for large-scale coordination and information sharing between the scientific community and those managing the response to the pandemic at all levels — which doesn’t exist (at least in the US).
It would be a mistake to dismiss the absence of such a system as yet another way in which we were woefully unprepared for a pandemic. Admittedly, until a few months ago pandemics were roughly in the same category as sharknadoes from the public’s perspective: Most people who feared these potential catastrophes were film critics. But coordination and information-sharing are also required if scientists are to effectively respond to more familiar disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and oil spills.
—Bloomberg