Din their platform of World on December 22, 2021, the philosophers Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Gabriel Dorthe eloquently plead for “An investigation into the status of scientific statements in current technosciences” and for attentive listening to the way in which those resistant to vaccination construct their discourse and its meaning. On the first point, they quite rightly recall that science is not immune to conflicts of interest that are often poorly supervised, that it is subject to competitive pressure which can lead to fraud and that the cult of innovation and the funding associated with it can lead researchers to oversell the results of their research. Regarding the antivax, they rightly oppose their stigmatization as fools or gullible, arguing that they too have a system of values relating to their body, science, power and manner. to make a common world. It is, however, a pity that the argument of the two authors of the forum is doubly weakened, firstly by the concealment of the need for action in a pandemic context and, secondly, by the use of a well-known rhetorical device. which consists in transforming into a scarecrow what one wants to denounce.
Consider first the need to act. Even the most brilliant polemologist must abandon pure theoretical thinking in favor of action when he finds himself on the front line. The same goes for scientists who, faced with a health emergency, must advise the political power on measures to protect the population, even when these are not a panacea. Thus, while all the available data confirm that vaccines have a relative protective effect (decrease in the risk of contamination, except perhaps for the last variant, less serious forms of the disease, fewer deaths) and reduce the risk of saturation of hospitals, it is normal for scientists and politicians to work together to try to convince the 5 to 6 million unvaccinated French people that it is in the general interest that they stop their vaccine secession.
Unfortunately, in an emergency, it is difficult to exert such pressure – which should never be guilty and even less contemptuous – without adopting measures rightly perceived as discriminatory (health and vaccination pass) and infringing on individual freedoms. But in the interest of building a common world, it is sometimes necessary, in dramatic circumstances, to temporarily forget special interests in favor of those of the entire population.
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