Mr. Lauterbach, if you read in the subtitle of your book that politics must keep up with science, you automatically think it is a text about the pandemic.

Science had probably rarely made such a massive entrance before.

For example, if we think of the older debates about nuclear power plants, there weren't always nuclear physicists or energy experts in the media.

Jurgen Kaube

Editor.

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That's correct.

When Chernobyl blew up, in 1986, I was doing my doctorate at the Institute for Nuclear Medicine at the Jülich nuclear research facility.

At that time, my supervisor, Ludwig Feinendegen, was head of the radiation protection commission and a key advisor to Helmut Kohl.

Many of the answers to the questions at the time – How dangerous is the radiation?

How long does that last?

Can you pick something up off the ground?

What's in the mushrooms?

– our institute was involved at the time.

That was the first major technological crisis.

And you are right, that was a small group that spoke for science at the time.

De facto, however, political advice from science has hardly played a role.

Questions about the future, whether we need nuclear power or how dangerous it is, were largely answered by politicians on their own.

Corona has gotten a lot better now, but it's not perfect yet.

Now, for example, the government's expert council meets almost every week.

There was another meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Both the Minister of the Chancellery, Wolfgang Schmidt, and I took part, as is almost always the case.

In my view, the Expert Council is the best example of how scientific policy advice should work.

Active experts who present short, very to the point papers, while the responsible ministers sit in the negotiation.

In my view, the Expert Council is the best example of how scientific policy advice should work.

Active experts who present short, very to the point papers, while the responsible ministers sit in the negotiation.

In my view, the Expert Council is the best example of how scientific policy advice should work.

Active experts who present short, very to the point papers, while the responsible ministers sit in the negotiation.

They differentiate between problems for which scientists can be consulted, based on whether they can be solved in one way or another, or whether one says that there is really only one possibility: one cannot decide against the problem, and there is also no solution when it comes to solutions great scope.

The big paradigm for this is climate change.

Should one really assume that science speaks with one voice here?

During the pandemic, the arguments were quite controversial.

Even in the Expert Council, the scientists do not always all agree.

The council is also interdisciplinary.

This leads to surprises even among scientists.

Psychologist Cornelia Betsch, for example, recently conducted a study to find out how popular the Novavax vaccine is with “lateral thinkers”.

One would actually think that the "lateral thinkers" had all been waiting for the "dead vaccine", now it's here, so let them vaccinate.

And what is the result of our vaccination campaign?

That was exactly what Ms. Betsch had predicted.

The substance is not taken sufficiently.

So the argument against certain vaccines was just an excuse.

There is a notion that the scientific argument exists only in the plural.

One should therefore not expect a uniform view from science.