Finding things out during the pandemic has been hit and miss: there’ve been miracles, and there’s been junk. What matters is not just what we think we know about how to intervene to improve human health, but how we think we know it. Methods can be inspired, flawed, or both. Michael Blastland tells the short and still-changing story of how science has been trying to get better at finding things out.

Contributions from:

Professor Sir Angus Deaton, Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. Maria Popp. Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care, Emergency and Pain Medicine, University Hospital Wuerzburg. Professor George Davey Smith, Director of the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. Sheena McCormack, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at University College London

Producer: Ben Carter Editor: Jasper Corbett Sound Engineer: Graham Puddifoot