Andrew Gwynne is a Labour MP and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention in the current Labour government. He is spreading misinformation about COVID transmission on behalf of either civil servants or the NHS’s IPC (Infection Prevention and Control) cell. See this Bluesky post by Al Haddrell which has a letter signed by Gwynne and to an MP (Tim Farron) who was written to Gwynne of behalf of a constituent.
The transmission of COVID is complex science; Gwynne has a degree in Politics and Contemporary History. I assume he is clueless about the science of COVID transmission and is just signing letters written, I assume, by a civil servant or NHS employe. The civil servant/NHS employee may think they understand COVID transmission but they clearly have not read and understood the scientific literature, and so are deluded about their level of understanding.
One problem is that those setting IPC guidance in the NHS do not engage with outside scientists, such as those in universities. They seem to be a some sort of bunker, fighting a rearguard action against the evidence while falsely claiming to follow it.
A more general problem is people in a position in power of influence uncritically listening to “experts” who may have impressive credentials but don’t know what they are talking about. This is not a party political point, I wrote a letter on another airborne disease, measles, and got a similar letter from Gwynne’s Tory predecessor, Maria Caulfield. The letter is part of an earlier blog post.
It is difficult for people such as Gwynne, who cannot evaluate the quality of science. But this all the more reason to not have a system in which someone with a BA in Politics and Contemporary History is given complex science by a secretive body that is not exposed to evaluation by other scientists.
And this not just a problem confined to the transmission of diseases, I worry that the similar problem contributed to one of the largest miscarriages of justice in UK history: the wrongful prosecution of many sub-postmasters by the UK’s Post Office. I assume typical judges know about as much about complex software design as Gwynne does about the transmission of diseases. So how is a judge to know that the testimony of an “expert” witness from Fujitsu is reasonable, or not?
This is a systemic problem, that really needs the vital science (and perhaps some software development?) to be done in the open, where many qualified eyes can see and check it. But I am not sure how to do this, those in IPC in the NHS don’t seem keen on openness.
Chance & Necessity 