We know nothing without others

DR ST CLAIR KING

SOME OF us are going on trust of the acknowledged experts that there is a covid19 virus ravaging the world population and that there are vaccines which, though they will not prevent one getting the virus, boost the immune system such that the impact of the disease will be mild and prevent the death of the patient. Further, that to prevent infection one should wear a mask, wash hands often – sanitise – and keep one’s distance from others.

The important point being made here is that in general we ourselves do not have the knowledge/evidence personally that any of the above is true. Hence, for our beliefs and decision-making we depend on the knowledge of many others.

Still, there are others who in the extreme do not believe there is a covid19 virus and that they should be vaccinated or even wear masks. Evidence of this is the world over with massive demonstrations in cities against actions that the various governments have imposed, since they say the pandemic is imagined, and these government mandates violate their constitution rights to, say, congregate, to go to the beach, etc.

Indeed, the Ministry of Health, the Government, is using the recommendations of the WHO in trying to combat this virus as though they are gospel; the trust is placed in this organisation since in no way does the ministry experts have the personal knowledge nor the facilities to replace the recommendations of the WHO with their own evidence.

For example, there was talk without any proper demonstration of evidence that certain drugs were available to combat the disease. However, these drugs were not approved for use in TT until and if they were WHO-approved. Hence, any knowledge that these local ministry experts appeared to have is just shared knowledge, a shared understanding of information from those they trust. Indeed, the claim was that they are going with the science.

All that science does is maintain a protocol among its many researchers and practitioners worldwide via publications, conferences, cross-checking of postulated, a peer review process, so that whatever we think we know is really shared knowledge among the many and created by many.

As an individual much of what we believe that we know we cannot (or do not attempt to) prove from our own experiences or from evidence we have produced ourselves. Much of our “knowledge” depends on what others have done and we trust that what they tell us is correct.

For example, much of what I know I have been taught in my degree programmes. Building on this which I believed to be true (I did not try to prove that what I was taught was correct or otherwise) I did my own research and contributed to knowledge by my own original work, which I published and that became part of universal knowledge via the protocols of science. We stand on the shoulders of acclaimed giants to add to the knowledge of the world.

Hence the concept of science is the collaboration of many who share their knowledge and in cross-checking, testing and researching come up with postulates that drive international knowledge. These postulates can change as new knowledge comes to the fore and even to correct errors or deliberate fraudulent claims of some researchers. This is what science is about.

In TT we are not without our naysayers, the deliberately unvaccinated, those who cry out that their constitutional rights are being violated, their bodies are sacrosanct and only they can decide what goes into them – no mandated vaccination programmes. Yet some have criticised our government, the Ministry of Health, for not using certain drugs which to them, without the evidence, could have saved many lives, simply because the ministry refused to take its own decision to approve the drugs.

The ministry’s stance is that until the WHO approved the drugs it would not, since it does not have the evidence, the knowledge that these drugs are safe and perform as required. This approach, depending on science, also protects the public in general.

With the recent emergence of the omicron variant, the knowledge about its characteristic is still unknown and as expected the scientific community worldwide is, via tests and observations, seeking the knowledge of how to protect people from the destructive effects of this new variant. We do not know how effective the existing vaccines will be on this variant and there is much speculation on its increased speed of transfer among the population, whether the available vaccines help or not.

In a situation like this, what should the ministry do? Surely with its own knowledge, the ministry cannot strike out on its own into the unknown and besides testing and observing the speed of infection can only await the shared knowledge as it evolves from the science.

There is a spectacular example of this sharing and dependence on knowledge in the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) experiment designed to prove Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves, which indeed it was able to do.

The head of this project tells us that fewer than half of the authors of the paper that announced the success of the experiment in identifying such waves even went to any of the experiment sites. To justify the experiment by a person based on his knowledge he would need to understand aspects of physics, astronomy, electronics and mechanical engineering. Is there anyone who knows all of these things?

Hence, this is an experiment producing knowledge but no one person understands all of the system in use, which demonstrates the need for collaborative activity, sharing of knowledge and trust in each other; hence the dependence on the work of many to develop knowledge. So much so that the Nobel Prize is now seen as archaic since, more and more, the creation of new knowledge is the work of a collaborative team.

Over the years I have tried to share my knowledge with my students and even helped to advise governments. But little of my knowledge was created by my own efforts in research; most of it depended on the work done by others and shared via the methodology of science.

The knowledge of anyone is contingent on the knowledge of others and this is the scientific process.

Dr St Clair King is Prof Emeritus in The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UWI, St Augustine