Ijzerman et al. questioning the social and behavioural science (SBS) condition about if it is suitable or not “for making policy decisions” in actual Covid-19 crisis lack more of the epistemic humility they ask for than SBS will have now. NASA scaling-framework and examples coming from the field of social-personality psychology pretending to embrace all psychological, experimental and field economics, sociology, anthropology and even educative sciences, are not only ambitious: it is very close to absurd. Not all the argument coming from Ijzerman et al. is inaccurate. The need for more exhaustive population studies, the improvement for reported precision, stimulus generalizability and validation and with independently replicated findings as well, are fundamental for sustainability and replicable effects in cultural, historical, political and structural scenarios. The problem is what they call dynamics in all the previous list: a NASA’s scale adaptation for every discipline, method, participants and outcome sound not rigorous, but limiting.

¿Energy particles or rocket’s fuel has an internal process that might reduce their participation or response in lab testing between TRL4 and TRL8? ¿Cognitive scarcity might represent a concern for efficiency transition between a material resistance technology between TRL3 and TRL6? It is hard to take those questions barely seriously.

We, SBS scientist, should need rigorous frameworks, but they sure not will be coming from “mature” science. Our immaturity has now powerful frameworks like nurturing care for children development in vulnerable communities (Banerjee et al., 2019; Black, 2020). Also, probably Covid-19 pandemic intensifies adverse effects and impact the breach between vulnerable and not at-risk families (Gupta & Jawanda, 2020). We will need educative efforts against the pandemic, including designs of behavioural health strategies in caring communities (Kaslow et al., 2020) and general models as well (Van Bavel et al., 2020). However, we will have more tendencies not oriented only to bottom-up or politics interventions and, with all parsimony and scientific rigour, explore integrative interventions with inclusive community-based programs (Guralnick, 2020) and family-at home centred framework (Giraldo-Huertas et al., In review).

Dynamics and humility at best will do not pretend to unify psychology or any other social and behavioural science under linear and continuous escalated process. We hope to learn that from crisis and scientific contributions to human wellbeing, just like rocket science does.

References

Banerjee, A., Britto, P., Daelmans, B., Goh, E. & Peterson, S. (2019). Reaching the dream of optimal development for every child, everywhere: what do we know about ‘how to’? Archives of Disease in Childhood, 104:S1-S2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2019-317087

Black, M. (2020). Nurturing Care Framework and Implementation Science: Promoting Nutrition, Health and Development among Infants and Toddlers Globally. In: Black, M., Delichatsios, H., & Story, M. (Eds). Nutrition Education: Strategies for Improving Nutrition and Healthy Eating in Individuals and Communities. Nestlé Nutrition Institute Workshop Series, (Vol. 92, pp. 53-63). Karger Publishers. DOI: 10.1159/isbn.978-3-318-06528-2

Giraldo-Huertas, J., Rueda-Posada, M., Quiroz-Padilla, M., Jauregui, M., & Shafer, G. (In review) Integration of developmental screening and executive function measurement for social intervention in 2-to-6 years-old children in a LMIC.

Gupta, S. & Jawanda, M.K. (2020). The impacts of COVID‐19 on children. Acta Paediatrica, 109, 2181-2183. https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.15484

Guralnick, M. (2020). Applying The Developmental Systems Approach To Inclusive Community-Based Early Intervention Programs. Infants & Young Children, 33(3), 173-183. DOI: 10.1097/IYC.0000000000000167

Kaslow, N., Friis-Healy, E., Cattie, J., Cook, S., Crowell, A., Cullum, K., Del Rio, C., Marshall-Lee, E., LoPilato, A., VanderBroek-Stice, L., et al. (2020). Flattening the emotional distress curve: A behavioral health pandemic response strategy for COVID-19. American Psychologist, 75(7), 875–886.

Van Bavel, J., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., ..., & Willer, R. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 460–471. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562- 020-0884-z