Strong leadership and science are orthogonal dimensions. You can have strong leadership that makes decisions based on evidence and scientific arguments, or not.

Strong leadership and science are orthogonal dimensions. You can have strong leadership that makes decisions based on evidence and scientific arguments, or not. I would argue the first is always better than the second. Again in the current crisis the decisions based on scientific evidence (pandemic models developed previously) was to act early and quickly with lots of testing. Most countries did not follow this, but I would say this had nothing to do with what the "scientific approach" was. Somehow people here conflate scientific with need to wait/establish all information. However in the end science is a method to establish truth/knowledge about the world around us. It can guide our decisions, but it's not a decision making method.