Science, non-science, anti-science: struggles around public health in the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The article analyzes the conflicts surrounding public health in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic from a genealogical perspective. The research problem develops from two questions, namely: how did scientists interpret denialism in the case of Brazil? How does genealogy allow us to reconstruct the warlike situation experienced between science, non-science and anti-science during the pandemic? The article is the result of qualitative research that uses a literature review focused on texts published between 2020 and 2022, with the following objectives: 1) to observe how the phenomenon of anti-science was characterized by the academic field; and 2) to carry out a genealogical reinterpretation of the analyzed literature. The central argument deals with the dominant understanding of denialism as an event external to science and discusses the developments implied in this conception. Using the genealogical method, the article reconstructs the historicity of modern medical-scientific knowledge, in addition to adding to the debates on denialism a socio-anthropological interpretation of how some medical positions and organizations linked to science subsidized anti-vaccine movements, the defense of early treatment and similar episodes.

Keywords:
genealogy; science; scientific denialism; COVID-19 pandemic; public health