Science has nothing to do with the Bergamo prosecutor's investigation

We live in times in which the separation between different powers, tasks, prerogatives and competences has collapsed, leading to a dangerous confusion and the accumulation of roles in people who use one in place of or together with the other to gain authority and convince their interlocutors. I am referring to what has been happening these days following the deliberate media attention that has been sought for the investigations of a prosecutor's office into the start of the pandemic in Val Seriana and for the main expert of this prosecutor's office, Andrew Crisanti.

Until now, we were already persecuted by journalist-judges, prosecutor-politicians and prosecutor-communicators, politician-scientists and scientist-politicians. We are now witnessing a further leap in level: we have the scientist-expert-politician-media, a very useful figure to rekindle the sleepy television evenings of the Italians orphaned by the duel between virologists, which has now gone out of fashion due to the evident satiety of the public. With obvious disregard for potential conflicts of interest, the reporters request the new host to pronounce themselves in all capacities simultaneouslyreviving that virtual judicial process that the average quadratic television justicialist likes so much: you want the accusations, the defense - possibly impersonated by some other distinguished professor - and the debate, far away, of course, from the gloomy guaranteed procedure of the courtrooms, and from vital but arrogant technicalities, so typical of both science and law, which one willingly does without in the name of a simulation dedicated to entertainment.

Now, I do not intend to comment on the merits, both as regards an expert report filed and the related statements made to the press, over which I would also have some competence, as well as the nature and legal robustness of the prosecution system, on which however I have no competences, and I can only limit myself to listening to the experts; however, I want, as I have done on other occasions, to limit myself to reminding my readers that, in this whole discussion, science, at least for now, has nothing to do with it, nor should the scientific community be pulled by the jacket in any way. It has nothing to do with it because data and problems dealt with in science are presented, analyzed and discussed in a very different way: the news of an expert report and allusions to its possible contents are not enough to trigger a scientific debate, and indeed, in general, not even the detailed reading of an expert opinion is enough, because it is, by definition, nothing more than a document of a legal nature - in this case, moreover, solicited by the prosecution - and not a discussion that with scientific method and objectives can be evaluated by the community of researchers in the same way as an article in Nature. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with it, because the venue in which the debate is taking place today does not in any way allow for a discussion that is not also and above all directed by politics, law, common opinions and public perception; quite other, and of necessity, are the forums where a more or less serene discussion between researchers can take place, where the true yardstick of judgment is that of the method, analytical rigor and evidence in favor of this or that hypothesis on the natural world .

Finally, it has nothing to do with it the way the argument is conducted, between the cheering and the curses of more or less large slices of the public and spectators, who often overwhelm the arguments to line up behind the banner of this or that, not to really understand or to assimilate the detail of an analysis and evaluate it the method in depth. Let the magistrates and the experts go ahead; but please do not pretend or imagine that what we are observing is the shared result of an analysis by the scientific communitywhich would do well to keep as far away as possible from the controversy, remaining on the data proper to it, without starting to reason about investigations and examinations more proper to courts and police than academic chairs.