THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF SCIENCE AND THE CRISIS OF EXPERT KNOWLEDGE

Vvedenskaya E.V.

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the democratization of science has become especially urgent, as hundreds of thousands of researchers and experts around the world have been working on various aspects of the disease and treatment methods under conditions of uncertainty, and the acceleration of scientific discoveries and their dissemi-nation has become vital. One example of the democratization of science during the COVID-19 pandemic was the provision of open access to scientific data and publications, which had both positive and negative sides. The pandemic was accompanied by the phenomenon of post-truth, when emotions, personal beliefs and opinions become more in-fluential than facts and evidence in the formation of public opinion and decision-making. It is demonstrated that this phenomenon has serious consequences for society, leading to the spread of misinformation that undermines public confidence in institutions and science. The pandemic has exacerbated the crisis of expertise, resulting not only from the problem of the participation of the general public in the production and dissemination of knowledge, but also the inevitable politicization of expertise. The very concept of truth turned out to be embedded in the social, historical and political context, indicating that there is no neutral point of view from which to evaluate the claims to knowledge. As a result, scientific expertise becomes not an objective source of power, but another form of power.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic; democratization of science; biopolitics; crisis of scientific knowledge; post-truth; protscience; participation.

DOI: 10.31249/scis/2023.02.01

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