It is now commonplace around the world to witness daily press conferences by political leaders in the company of scientists who provide updates on the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries around the world have convened expert groups to guide the response to the pandemic although the composition of these groups varies. Rather exceptionally in Germany, apart from scientists, philosophers, historians, theologians and jurists have played a major role advising the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on public policy about the pandemic (Matthews 2020). In the UK, the government officials have frequently referred to “the science” represented by a national advisory group of scientists in justifying public health policies (Devlin and Boseley 2020). “The science” has indeed become a valuable commodity in the political arena. The narrative that commodifies “the science” as a singular endeavour points to a significant oversight of how sub-fields of a particular domain of science—let alone different domains of science—operate. Take, for instance, the following distinctions between public health epidemiology and clinical epidemiology:

中文翻译：

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在公共政策和科学理解中为“科学”带来细微差别

现在，在世界各地见证政治领导人与提供 COVID-19 大流行最新情况的科学家一起举行的每日新闻发布会已司空见惯。世界各国都召集了专家组来指导应对大流行病，尽管这些专家组的组成各不相同。在德国，除了科学家、哲学家、历史学家、神学家和法学家之外，在德国就大流行的公共政策向北莱茵-威斯特法伦州提供建议方面发挥了重要作用（Matthews 2020）。在英国，政府官员在证明公共卫生政策的合理性时经常提到以国家科学家咨询小组为代表的“科学”（Devlin 和 Boseley 2020）。“科学”确实已成为政治舞台上的宝贵商品。将“科学”商品化为单一努力的叙述指出了对特定科学领域的子领域——更不用说不同的科学领域——如何运作的重大监督。例如，公共卫生流行病学和临床流行病学之间的以下区别：