Center for Open Science: Impact Report 2020

"The credibility of science has center stage in 2020. A raging pandemic. Partisan interests. Economic and health consequences. Misinformation everywhere. An amplified desire for certainty on what will happen and how to address it. In this climate, all public health and economic research will be politicized. All findings are understood through a political lens. When the findings are against partisan interests, the scientists are accused of reporting the outcomes they want and avoiding the ones they don’t. When the findings are aligned with partisan interests, they are accepted immediately and uncertainty ignored. Politicization can seem like a black hole inexorably sucking in the scientific community and making the science just another source of information—its credibility based on agreement with one’s pre-existing ideology. All is not lost. Science has a protective force against the forces of politicization, transparency...."