Last I called an old friend, Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Morse was the subject of a book I wrote nearly 30 years ago about emerging viruses, in which he basically predicted our current catastrophe. Today he feels a bit put off by the frenzy.
最后，我打電話給我的老朋友，史蒂芬·莫爾斯，他是哥倫比亞大學(xué)梅爾曼公共衛(wèi)生學(xué)院的流行病學(xué)教授。將近30年前，我寫了一本有關(guān)新興病毒的書(shū)，莫爾斯是書(shū)中的主題人物，他在書(shū)中基本上預(yù)言了我們眼前面臨的浩劫。如今他對(duì)這股研究熱潮有些反感。
"This is not the way I would like to see science being done... it's happening so quickly," Morse told me. He strained to look for a bright side. "A lot of knowledge is becoming available," he ventured. And if some of that supposed knowledge ends up being wrong, he said, seeming to strain even harder, couldn't that be construed as a good thing? "Science is a self-corrective process. Maybe even the effort to correct the errors will lead to improved knowledge." Maybe. But I didn't feel better when we hung up.
“這不是我想看到的科學(xué)研究的方式...發(fā)生得太快了。”莫爾斯告訴我。他勉強(qiáng)找出好的一面。“這使得有大量的知識(shí)可用。”他試著說(shuō)。而如果某些所謂的知識(shí)最終發(fā)現(xiàn)是錯(cuò)的，他似乎更勉強(qiáng)地說(shuō)，這難道不是件好事嗎？“科學(xué)是自我修正的過(guò)程，甚至或許這個(gè)修正錯(cuò)誤的努力，將會(huì)造就出更完善的知識(shí)。”或許吧。但當(dāng)我們掛了電話，我并沒(méi)有感覺(jué)到好一些。
Still troubling me were a couple of things. First, the politicization of the process could upend everything. Even if science closes in on a more accurate view of COVID-19 and how to treat and eventually prevent it, that might not be how the story is spun. Enough conflicting interests and alliances exist for the truth to be turned on its head without too much effort, making it seem as if scientists who amended their views based on new evidence were pretty much wrong from the start.
有幾件事仍然困擾著我。首先，科學(xué)過(guò)程政治化可能會(huì)搞砸一切。即使科學(xué)揭露了COVID-19更清晰的樣貌，以及如何治療，最終是預(yù)防它的方式，也不見(jiàn)得會(huì)被如實(shí)呈現(xiàn)。互相沖突的不同利益和陣營(yíng)，足以使事實(shí)輕易地被扭曲掩蓋，讓根據(jù)新證據(jù)修正觀點(diǎn)的科學(xué)家看起來(lái)很像是一開(kāi)始就錯(cuò)了。
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