Rationale, aims, and objectives: The disciplinary profile and the quality of production of knowledge on Corona pandemic is studied. This scientific field is called 'Medical Corona Science'.
Methods: Criteria of analytical philosophy of science and science studies are systematically applied.
Results: It is shown that mainly auxiliary medical disciplines such as virology and epidemiology but not clinical disciplines provide Corona knowledge. We see a laboratory-centered, technology- and data-driven science, largely ignoring clinical issues. Therefore we call these approaches "Medical Corona Science" (MCS). We see the need to adapt to features of a 'post-normal science', a 'mode 2 science' and of 'Integration and Implementation Science', especially as clinical knowledge must be integrated. There is also a severe lack of theoretical considerations that could help to frame the pandemic as a complex dynamic system.
Conclusions: We suggest a deeper meta-scientific discussion of the epistemic value of MCS and propose the application of tools from systems science.
Keywords: COVID-19; Corona virus; post-normal science; systems medicine.
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.