Knowledge production in times of COVID-19 pandemic: reforming relations between science and society?

Years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic were marked by decrease in trust in science and crisis of expertise. By the beginning of the pandemic once solid authority of science has eroded, while confidence in scientific knowledge has been replaced by diversity of conflicting opinions and proliferation of claims to expertise. One reason for tensions in relations between science and society is an extremely resilient image of scientists as cracking the nature's secrets in a remote space, isolated from society. When in a specific moment public acquires a possibility to observe actual science-in-the-making, popular expectations regarding how reliable facts and trustworthy experts look like, become disappointed. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions of global uncertainty and necessity to nonetheless make decisions with life and death implications provoked changes in knowledge production. These changes, including unprecedented accessibility of science's “backstage” for observation and participation, can become foundation for bridging epistemically separated communities which otherwise will continue to drift apart from each other.