English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Pawson’s article raises the important question of what constitutes good and bad modelling during a pandemic. His article makes the case for more involvement of social scientists to capture the complex adaptive nature of governmental policy. While articulating a welcome critique of epidemiological models, his article fails to recognise that all model use simplifications which make some models better than others. I will suggest a useful way of differentiating between good and bad, useful and less useful, models based on the difference between idealisation and abstraction, concepts I borrow from Onora O’Neill and political theory. They allow us to apply a more nuanced criticality to the current models used by the government. Refining our critique of the government’s COVID response is important since we need to account for the fact that current government responses to the pandemic, while open to criticism, have had some effect in reducing infection rates.

From abstract to ideal–The limits of models. A reply to Pawson’s ‘boxed in by models’