Trung Nguyen Trong Quoc¹, Nitzan Rimon-Zarfaty¹, Silke Schicktanz¹

¹ Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Centre Göttingen

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic placed political decision-makers under intense pressure and brought scientific policy advice to the centre of public and ethical debate. German public health measures restricted fundamental rights, raising questions of legitimacy, responsibility and ethical decision-making. Whilst previous research has focused on institutional and governance aspects of COVID-19 policymaking, this study empirically and ethically examines the science–policy interface through the experiences of experts who served as scientific advisers in policymaking, with specific regard to decision-making processes, related tensions and the ethical challenges involved in providing pandemic policy advice.

Method: 15 semi-structured interviews with German scientific advisers in the fields of infection prevention, public health, virology and epidemiological modelling were conducted and analysed using content analysis.

Results: Scientific policy advice involved formal and informal interactions with political actors in a context of uncertainty. Advisers reported challenges relating to unclear political objectives, inconsistent alignment with their scientific recommendations, selective prioritisation of expertise, limited opportunities for systematic evaluation of measures, and increasing divergence between scientific advice and political decisions. These confronted advisers with ethical conflicts between their professional commitment to evidence-based advice and political actions involving restrictions on fundamental rights that were not always transparently or scientifically justified.

Conclusion: The findings reveal ethical tensions at the intersection of science and politics, raising questions of professional integrity, accountability and the legitimacy of public health decision-making. We discuss these findings in light of the normative ideal of evidence-based policy-making — which aims to align political decisions with the best available scientific evidence. By revealing hierarchies of evidence and political motives, the study highlights tensions between ideals of scientific objectivity and political responsibility. These tensions challenge the legitimacy of scientific policy advice and the ethical foundations of democratic public health governance, calling for critical reflection on professional integrity, the limits of value-neutral evidence transmission and political accountability in future public health crises.