The piece you’re about to read is from Klick Health’s Life (Sciences) After COVID-19 series, a collection of expert perspectives designed to inform and inspire the life sciences community for the coming changes and opportunities we anticipate as a result of this global health crisis.
The Insight
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how the application of scientific principles to policy making and business is no longer optional.
The scientific method is something that every sixth grader can probably recite by heart, but few end up truly understanding sufficiently to apply to real-life situations. A hypothesis (or number of hypotheses) is generated from a careful evaluation of available evidence. That hypothesis is then put to the test in a controlled experiment where the impact of an intervention on a particular system can be evaluated. From that evaluation, conclusions can be drawn about the nature of the system, and new evidence can be probed for more refined hypotheses to then be tested. Iteratively, we come closer to an objective truth about how that system—and interventions targeting it—work. Putting the scientific method into practice involves developing a framework that incorporates this general process and tailoring it to the question at hand.
Despite its relative simplicity as a process, up until a few months ago, science had been having a serious public relations problem. The popular perception of science, particularly in North America and Western Europe, was that it was stodgy, dated, not relevant to the day-to-day experiences of regular people, and “just another way of looking at the world.” Popular skepticism of everything from the safety of genetically modified crops and the need for vaccinations to the veracity of the moon landing was growing slowly and steadily in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. What’s more, the rise of social media platforms where ill-informed hucksters spoke on apparent equal standing with scientists—who had devoted their lives to understanding complex ideas—fed into this growth and further fueled the fire.
The popular perception of science, particularly in North America and Western Europe, was that it was stodgy, dated, not relevant to the day-to-day experiences of regular people.
Then COVID-19 hit. Oh, what a difference a pandemic makes. Around the world, but particularly in the U.S., we are witnessing a series of real-world, scientific experiments about public health policy in the face of a disease that still has more unknowns than knowns. Policymakers have chosen to consult with various infectious disease experts—not all of whom agree on everything—to formulate different plans to mitigate the scope of the pandemic and then determine how to reopen, literally testing different hypotheses about how diseases spread or various mitigation strategies can work in the real world. They’ve brought in new expertise to deal with an entirely new situation. Or they haven’t. Unlike many aspects of public policymaking, these sets of public health directives (or lack thereof) have immediate, easily measurable metrics to gauge their effectiveness: the number of COVID-19 infections; the rate of increase or decrease of those infections; and the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19. Some geographic regions have slowed COVID-19 infections to a crawl, others have determined how to control an inevitable wave of infections, while others are being consumed by them.
Forward-thinking people in the business world are starting to think ahead of the pandemic and about how their companies can adapt to a world with COVID-19. Developing a scientific framework for their plans will be critical to not only surviving, but thriving in a world that is fighting COVID-19, and the post-pandemic world that comes after.
After the pandemic ends:
How can businesses apply the scientific method to their own reopening plans in a way that protects their employees, customers, and core business?
What can businesses do to develop similar scientific frameworks to enhance their own offerings and practices?
The Evidence
Few things connect the worlds of law enforcement, professional sports, and regional governance, but one notable exception is how the application of scientific methodology revolutionized core aspects of how they make decisions and perform.
With the profusion of various TV shows incorporating forensic science like CSI across locales, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago that forensic science didn’t exist.
Criminals were typically identified and convicted based on eyewitness testimony, which we now know can be of dubious reliability and objectivity. In that same world investigators primarily used their “gut instinct” which is again unreliable and subjective. It took incorporating scientific frameworks into a prominent law enforcement agency to begin changing the culture of catching and convicting criminals. That organization was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The FBI evolved from an organization whose agents operated primarily on individual instinct to one that utilized a scientific approach to finding and convicting criminals. Their general hypothesis was that objective data collection and analytic techniques would be superior to investigator instincts and eyewitness reports. They introduced fingerprint analysis as a forensic technique, then, encouraged by early success, added handwriting and typographic analysis, behavioral science, as well as ballistics studies.
It required training an entire generation of “G-men” to think differently, and changing an organizational culture to not only accept but celebrate the forensic scientists who weren’t out in the field. But the net result was the creation of one of the most effective and well-respected law enforcement organizations in the world.
The Power of Scientific Rigor
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Author
Michael Lieberman, PhD Neuroscience
Managing Director, Research & Development
Mike leads the medical, behavioral, and engineering disciplines within Klick Consulting, applying scientific methodology and expertise to client problems across the healthcare landscape. He also serves as the executive director of Klick Health’s applied science research and development laboratory. Prior to joining Klick, Mike built and led an award-winning medical strategy team at a healthcare advertising agency.
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