After slogging through months of a botched-to-nonexistent pandemic response by a president who put his own political considerations over what the science told him, the American people seemed to have traded him in for a leader who pledged to make facts and data the basis of his anti-coronavirus program. Already assembling a team of highly qualified experts and public servants to lead the charge against the coronavirus, an anxious public hopes the presidential transition will usher in a new era of science-led government. That’s the hope, anyway.

That president-elect Joe Biden would “listen to the scientists” and pursue a pandemic response “informed by science and by experts” was one of the most repeated and central pledges of his candidacy. The editors of Scientific American gave Biden their first presidential endorsement in 175 years for “offering fact-based plans” and policies based on “legitimate science” and “expertise.” Upon winning, a flood of announcements from the press and elsewhere proclaimed he was about to restore science to its rightful place at the heart of policy-making. House speaker Nancy Pelosi even justified accepting a far worse stimulus package than one she earlier nixed because “we have a new president — a president who recognizes that we need to depend on science to stop the virus.”

But as the Biden transition rolls on, there are already worrying signs that the incoming administration’s pandemic response is going to rely on science in the same way the Democrats rely on science when it comes to climate change: as a useful bit of branding to set them apart from their opposition, but something to be largely ignored if they feel the solution is too politically unpalatable. Worse, there are signs that experts are, in turn, recalibrating their advice to better align with this political messaging.