Covid-19 shows why an infodemic of bad science must never happen again

Once the coronavirus pandemic is over, we must work out how to stop the spread of poor information that has helped make a bad situation that much worse

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THE covid-19 pandemic has upended many of the things that we once took for granted, but perhaps the most insidious is what it is doing to our ability to tell fact from fiction.

Science remains the best tool we have – though by no means a perfect one – for creating reliable knowledge. It is playing a central and mostly heroic role in the fight against the coronavirus. Yet it is also becoming hard at times to sort good science from bad, and worthwhile hypotheses from conjecture, hyperbole and nonsense. The result is widespread confusion and scarce resources being …