During the crisis of the pandemic, it has been revealed that there is a strong distrust between common understanding and everything relevant with the current public health hazards and scientific knowledge. Especially, the abovementioned distrust is strongly associated with the COVID-19 epidemic.

This distrust was very prevalent since the beginning of the Pandemic on how it can be related or compared with the common flu, on how it can be transmitted and what health interventions are necessary which in turn has led to strong feelings of mistrust towards the use of novel vaccines to counter the epidemic.

Everything mentioned thus far are not new concepts regarding the health sector but it is a strong indication on how weak of an effect scientific methods have on affecting legal concepts on its own and to present scientific knowledge to the public with a convincing manner.

Strong emotions of mistrust and distrust make people having doubts on accepting the opinion of scientists. If you also take into consideration the element of fear and the constant threat of lives, it will have a strong impact on increasing these emotions of doubt.

Additionally, another significant effect which may in turn increase these emotions of doubts is that many scientists are inclined to use narrative language through the use of media, in order to explain the effects of a disease or an illness using simple language. This helps on making the information more comprehensible by the general public but many times it might make the information even less believable.

What does this mean exactly?

In many cases this might be irrelevant and insignificant but narrative language could make the listeners that information that they receive are derived from myth and not accept them as scientific facts.

Especially for the current COVID-19 epidemic, scientific opinion was not clear and categorical from the start which in turn fostered emotions of doubts, strong enough that made some individuals think that the pandemic itself is a myth.

These events were present since the start of the pandemic. During this time period the questions surrounding the disease were very prominent. Not many information was known regarding the type and characteristics of the virus and how it can be transmitted. Additionally, at the beginning therapy approaches were very controversial and hypothetical which in turn also contributed to the current mistrust that exists regarding the vaccines.

On the contrary, many deniers that believe the disease to be nothing but a myth were successful on spreading misinformation regarding the illness and promoting even more doubts among the general populace by taking advantage the narrative language scientists tend to use.

All these factors together have helped create a strong disbelief and mistrust among the general public which is very difficult to change.

Many believe that through public education and knowledge these perspectives can change but it is not that simple. Even if we manage to force most of the population to have a scientific mind or follow a scientific approach to the matter at hand, still each individual will have their own perception of the situation which they will need to find ways to make the information being accepted by the rest. This is something very present between scientific communities and branches already.

Usually the promotion of scientific ideas is done through consents, taking into account all the social conditions, interests, circumstances and many other factors that come to the surface at any specific point in time.

For example, Galileo would have been burnt at the stake for being a wizard if he made his discoveries a hundred years prior.

An important side note regarding the narrative form of scientific communication is that many classical philosophical and novel scientific theories have failed to make a difference within legal systems and thus failing to differentiate science with politics.

For this exact reason, in a democratic society, science has a counselling role to play when it comes to politics and political decisions.

Even though science has an important role to play when it comes to counselling and advising governments, the last call falls upon political authority. Therefore, a scientific opinion becomes more concrete when an elected party accepts and/or approves it.

Perfect example of this situation is the Advisory Epidemiological Committees that were introduced due to the pandemic in Cyprus. Scientific suggestions presented in this case were not applied as they were meant to. On the contrary, they are presented to the party in power which they are considered seriously and then the party in power makes the appropriate political decisions for which the people are accountable for to follow.

What it is important is that scientific law making procedures are being coordinated by the committee, by creating an organizing social order and act as political advisors to the government.

The search for truth is organized by the scientific committee by researching evidence through the rules applied of the scientific method.

These procedures indicated that decisions made during the critical times of the pandemic that were scientifically supported and widely accepted by the political parties, helped on being accepted by the general public more efficiently.

Let us not forget that we also live in a digital era, where each and every one of us has access to the media and can transfer false information very easily whilst using the title of a ‘’scientist’’ and using a title that suggests reliability.

This makes narrative information and pseudoscience to be more easily comprehensible and accepted by more instead of real concrete scientific data.