David Broniatowski
@broniatowski.bsky.social
Professor at The George Washington University in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering.
Computer science
29%
Sociology
16%
We don’t need louder certainty.
We need clearer responsibility — and institutions willing to bear the consequences of restoring legitimacy.
We need clearer responsibility — and institutions willing to bear the consequences of restoring legitimacy.
Standing up for science shouldn’t mean asking science to rule.
It should mean insisting that science not be used as political cover — and not be sacrificed when that cover fails.
It should mean insisting that science not be used as political cover — and not be sacrificed when that cover fails.
That path is less satisfying emotionally. It offers fewer villains and no quick moral wins. But it’s how trust is rebuilt without turning science into a faction.
The harder path is insisting on answerability:
clear separation between advising and deciding,
visible ownership of decisions by political leaders,
and honest acknowledgment of value tradeoffs.
clear separation between advising and deciding,
visible ownership of decisions by political leaders,
and honest acknowledgment of value tradeoffs.
If we frame accountability primarily as purification — who belongs, who is beyond the pale — we risk deepening the legitimacy crisis we’re trying to solve.
But history is clear: removal never cleanly restores legitimacy. It provokes backlash, rebellion, and renewed challenges to authority. Institutions have to be prepared to absorb that — not pretend it won’t happen.
Sometimes legitimacy does require removing bad actors from positions of authority. Avoiding that conversation isn’t realistic.
Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggested that when procedural authority weakens, groups compensate by tightening identity and policing boundaries. That move can feel stabilizing — but it accelerates polarization, purity tests, and endorsement of conspiracy theories.
But there’s a risk here. Activism shifts authority from process to moral identity: trust us because we are on the right side.
This is where activism enters — understandably. When institutions fail, moral clarity feels like the only thing left to stand on.
When decisions inevitably went wrong under uncertainty, science became the fall guy — not because it lied, but because responsibility had been misallocated.
Politics has parties, elections, leadership turnover. Science doesn’t. In the blame economy, that asymmetry matters.
Experts stepped in to help. That was understandable. But science is built to advise, not to decide — and it lacks the institutional machinery to absorb blame when decisions go badly.
During COVID, scientists didn’t seize power. Political leaders delegated it — often publicly — because they were unwilling or unable to make hard, value-laden decisions themselves.
But I think we need to ask a harder question:
what kind of authority are we actually defending when we defend “science”?
what kind of authority are we actually defending when we defend “science”?
I want to start with agreement: there has been real harm, real misinformation, and real bad faith from people in power. Silence was never a neutral option.
When Authority Slips
What Moses Can Teach Science About Legitimacy
substack.com
This is a thread for people who care deeply about science and democracy — especially those who feel the pull toward “standing up for science” in a moment of real institutional failure (longer version at this substack: substack.com/home/post/p-...).
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But here’s the hard part: removing a person often doesn’t fix the underlying problem, especially if the problem is how decisions get made, not just who made them.