Project title
Crisis and Catastrophe: Science-Based Policy Justification under Urgency and Uncertainty
Research question
How can we make justified policy decisions in a crisis, where we need to act quickly, but on limited and uncertain information?
Project description
In a crisis, we generally have to act very quickly. But acting quickly means acting under uncertainty. Uncertainty can pose a lot of problems for policymaking – it’s difficult to see what the implications of policies will be, and thus to choose between options, and to justify our choice. It’s hard to see how to hold policymakers responsible, if they’re not in a position to tell what the consequences of their decisions will be. And where policymakers are departing from their usual, slow, reliable procedures, it can be more difficult to trust them.
But justification, responsibility and trust are indispensable, even – perhaps particularly – in a crisis. My research here will thus centre around three questions:
1) What procedures or circumstances legitimize policy action in the face of severe uncertainty?
2) What are the responsibilities of scientific advisors and policymakers when acting on highly uncertain information?
3) How can we retain public trust in scientific expertise and scientific advice under uncertainty?
Selected publications
- “Expertise, Values, Scientific Advice – and the Vaccination of Children” (2025), Diametros, 22(82): 37-52. https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.2010
- “Justification for Coercion in a Public Health Crisis: Not Just a Matter of Individual Harm” (2024), Monash Bioethics Review, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-024-00196-0
- “When is Lockdown Justified?” (2022, with Philippe van Basshuysen and Mathias Frisch), Philosophy of Medicine, 3(1): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2022.85