ABSTRACT
The introduction frames the book as a “sense-making exercise” about what went wrong at the science–policy interface during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It argues that a scientific orthodoxy emerged – a politico-epistemic system marked by methodological rigidity, scientific dogma, suppression of dissent, illegitimate indirect political authority, and scientific injustice. The authors stress this is not an “anti-science” work; rather, it distinguishes between situations where science should merely inform policy and those where it legitimately directs it, and asks how to tell the difference. The chapter situates the pandemic’s dynamics within the philosophy of science’s recent applied turn, introducing the idea of orthodoxy as a small group or institution coming to stand for “science” itself. This conceptual framework is offered as a way to organize and explain pandemic-era disputes, poor predictions, and unjust policies – so that similar failures might be avoided in the future.
