In The regime of ‘post-truth’: COVID-19 and the politics of knowledge (at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2021.1965544), Kwok, Singh and Heimans (2019) describe how the global health crisis of COVID-19 presents a fertile ground for exploring the complex division of knowledge labour in a ‘post-truth’ era. Kwok et al. (2019) illustrates this by describing COVID-19 knowledge production at university. Our paper focuses on the relationships between health communication, public health policy and recommended medical interventions.

Divisions of knowledge labour are described for (1) the ‘infodemic/disinfodemic research agenda’, (2) ‘mRNA vaccine research’ and (3) ‘personal health responsibility’. We argue for exploring intra- and inter relationships between influential knowledge development fields. In particular, the vaccine manufacturing pharmaceutical companies that drive and promote mRNA knowledge production. Within divisions of knowledge labour (1-3), we identify key inter-group contradictions between the interests of agencies and their contrasting goals. Such conflicts are useful to consider in relation to potential gaps in the WHO’s infodemic research agenda:

For (1), a key contradiction is that infodemic scholars benefit from health authority funding may face difficulties questioning their “scientific” guidance. We flag how the WHO ’s advice for managing COVID-19 departed markedly from a 2019 review of evidence it commissioned (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35444988).

(2)’s division features very different contradictions. Notably, the pivotal role that pharmaceutical companies have in generating vaccine discourse is massively conflicted. Conflict of interest arises in pursuing costly research on novel mRNA vaccines because whether the company producing these therapies will ultimately benefit financially from the future sales of these therapies depends entirely on the published efficacy and safety results from their own research. The division of knowledge labour for (2) mRNA vaccine development should not be considered separately from COVID-19’s in Higher Education or the (1) infodemic research agenda. Multinational pharmaceutical companies direct the research agenda in academia and medical research discourse through the lucrative grants they distribute. Research organisations dependant on external funding for covering budget shortfalls will be more susceptible to the influence of those funders on their research programs.

We spotlight the overwhelming evidence for the importance of (3) personal responsibility. In the COVID-19 pandemic, its discourses seemed largely ignored by Higher Education leadership and government. We flag how contradictions in (3)’s division of knowledge labour in a pandemic can explain such neglect. Personal responsibility is not a commercial site for generating large profits, some of which may be donated in supporting academic research. Research into effective, low-cost interventions seems to be at odds with the economic interests of both grant recipients and Big Pharma donors. Replacing costly treatments with low-cost alternatives would not only greatly diminish the profitability of existing funders, but also reduce the pool of new ones, plus the size of future donations. It is also important to reflect on how else the scientific enterprise at university lends itself to being an arena for misinformation. New information in science that refutes existing dogma does not become accepted immediately. Therefore a period exists when new ideas will be considered as misinformation especially by those with an agenda to suppress its acceptance.

However, from the perspective of orthodoxy, views that support new paradigms are unverified knowledge (and potentially "misinformation"). Any international health organisation that wishes to be an evaluator must have the scientific expertise for managing this ongoing ‘paradox’, or irresolvable contradiction. Organisations such as the WHO may theoretically be able to convene such knowledge, but their dependency on funding from conflicted parties would normally render them ineligible to perform such a task. This is particularly salient where powerful agents can collaborate across divisions of knowledge labour for establishing an institutional oligarchy. Such hegemonic collaboration can suppress alternative viewpoints that contest and query powerful agents’ interests.

This paper alerts researchers to a broad range of ‘post-truth’ moments and flags the danger of relying on global health authorities to be the sole custodians of who is allowed to define what comprises an information disorder. Challenges to scientific propaganda from authorities captured by industry should not automatically be (mis-) characterised as low quality or harmful information. Rather, the digital voices of responsible dissenters can be valuable in protecting scientific integrity and public health (for example, @ProfTimNoakes should not be blocked from his Twitter account for expressing dissent!)