Dr. Fauci is attracting a lot of attention for his weekend remarks that attacks on him are attacks on science, because “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” Some of the criticisms are that he is revealing himself as the partisan he always was, some are that he has grown enamored with his own sense of self-importance. I can’t really speak to these, but I have a more fundamental criticism of Mr. Fauci–he needs to have a lot more humility about his role in the “science” of pandemics. And more importantly, we in the public are too quick to listen to him as authoritative in the Covid-19 virus.

For most secular elites, science is put on a pedestal replacing God: there is no higher authority that can be appealed to. And if you represent science, then who can critique you?

He made the comment in an interview with Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, who asked him about his critics, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY). “It seems another layer of danger to play politics around matters of life and death,” Brennan said.

“Exactly,” replied Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “To me, that’s unbelievably bad, because all I want to do is save people’s lives. And anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this. So if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about. But if they get up and aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people can recognize there’s a person there.”

“So it’s easy to criticize,” he added. “But they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave.”

We need to give Mr. Fauci tremendous respect–he’s spent his career looking at infectious disease, and his technical acumen in his area is likely quite robust.* But as I argued in this post a year ago,

With Covid-19 especially, when there is little understanding (and we have learned a lot in the last six months) to lock in at any one point to a particular scientist’s view–no matter how eminent that scientist is–is simply foolishness. There are always going to be competing claims, and further, it is not simply one type of scientist that we should listen to. Should we not listen to the voices of mental health professionals as well as epidemiologists? Do the voices of economists have any place in the discussion? What about the ethicists?

This point is still apropos today: Mr. Fauci at best represents a narrow view of science that is in his specific area, and there are many other voices that should be heard about Covid policies that should be enacted. For example, we knew that when we shut down the hospital systems for all elective surgery procedures we were condemning some to die that otherwise might live if they would have that procedure done. We knew that there would be tradeoffs that had to be made–its not possible in a world of scarce resources to get something for nothing–there is a real opportunity cost. Economists are experts at helping understand tradeoffs–that’s part of the science too. And political scientists could help us understand what is likely possible in a society that values constitutional rights, and what is politically possible to enact. The ethicists could help us think through all of the competing claims to scarce medical resources. Even with the narrower field of virus biology, there are specialists that look into how infections are spread, how viruses mutate, how different therapeutics might help, etc. For one person to be looked at as the expert to help us think through this is not simply hubris on his part (although it is a lot of hubris), but it is our failure to realize that we’re placing a burden on an individual that cannot be borne: Covid-19 is a complex problem that has to have a multitude of inputs to even have a chance of understanding how we might get through this. Shame on Dr. Fauci for claiming he has the capacity to represent all of science, and shame on us for ever expecting anyone to ever be the expert that can be wise enough to guide us through an unbelievably complex process. So in contradiction to the title of my post, we should listen to Dr. Fauci, as one of many inputs in a complex social process. But his voice is likely not the beginning, and it is certainly not the end of the voices we need to listen to.

* Hard for me to really know as I’m not an expert in his field, but let’s grant that he is a top-tier scientific expert.