17 June 2020 | 15:00 | Online
The ubiquity of idealized models in science has given rise to a debate about how scientific understanding relates to truth. For factivists, models provide understanding only if the central information they rely upon is (approximately) true. For non-factivists, understanding is often also provided by the explicit falsehoods that figure centrally in such models. We analyse the evolution of the IHME model, a prominent epidemiological model used to estimate the death toll resulting from COVID-19, and argue that our analysis favours factivism about understanding.