Science requires the free exchange of ideas and arguments. Any genuine scientific undertaking should be open to as many informed voices as possible. As we’ve known for millennia, iron sharpens iron. We all benefit from intelligent, spirited debates. And our public debate over COVID-19 policy’s relationship to scientific truth has raised our public debate to the highest of stakes.

Ideally, when we debate, we expose holes in each other’s arguments. We uncover flaws in each other’s assumptions. We notice the formerly unnoticed. We tug at a singular thread that can unravel an entire tapestry of flawed thinking. That’s all part of coming to know the truth together. The public debate over COVID-19, even up to this moment, has shown us that we desperately need common sense, informed by scientific truth and fashioned through robust, open debate.