Agent of Change or Representative Agent? The Role of the Scientific Advisor

This paper examines the ethical dilemmas facing scientific advisors in politics, who must negotiate between their personal ethical commitments and the demands of representative agency in their role as public officials. It seeks to answer three questions: First, should scientific advisors conceive of themselves as responsive to the government, to some conception of the public interest or to their personal sense of justice and morality? Secondly, how can a commitment to an ethical stance be squared with the neutrality and objectivity that is traditionally taken to be the source of their scientific authority? And finally, what are the obligations of scientific advisors who find themselves under an administration that is actively hostile to science and scientists? The paper seeks to answer these questions through a case study of how public health experts in the U.S. justified their different health recommendations for outdoor religious gatherings, anti-lockdown protests and Black Lives Matter protests as well as an analysis of how top U.S. scientific advisors understood and justified their role within and relationship to the Trump administration.