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Daniel Bausch has come to dread the words an abundance of caution.

In the context of the response to the current West African Ebola crisis, Bausch knows if he hears that phrase hes not going to like the rest of the sentence.

Public health officials saying Were doing things out of an abundance of caution that usually means is Were doing something that has no scientific basis whatsoever, but were going to do it anyway, says Bausch, an Ebola expert at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, La.

Public health experts and scientists point to a variety of measures that have been taken in the worlds response to the Ebola outbreak where it seems an abundance of caution some call it politics have trumped science.

They include: Entry screening at airports half a world away from the countries in the grip of the outbreak. Closing borders to millions of West Africans from three affected countries because 13,000 people have been infected. Trying to force into mandatory quarantine health-care workers who have risked their lives to volunteer in Ebola treatment centres.

The latter example has received the most public attention, thanks to two nearly back-to-back developments. Dr. Craig Spencer, a New York City resident who had volunteered with Medecins Sans Frontieres, tested positive for Ebola six days after returning to the United States from Guinea. Spencer had been out jogging and had eaten in a restaurant before he realized he was ill. When he spiked a fever, Spencer called MSF and the citys public health department.

A couple days later nurse Kaci Hickox, an MSF nurse returning from West Africa, found herself quarantined in a tent in a parking lot in New Jersey after that state decided all returning health-care workers would face mandatory quarantine regardless of whether they have symptoms. Hickox had flown into Newark en route to her home in Maine.

She went public with her strenuous objections. When she was released and allowed to travel home, Maine also tried to quarantine her until a court ruled against the state.

These events, plus an earlier case where an American nurse coming down with Ebola travelled on a plane, have raised questions about whether returning health-care workers pose a risk to the societies they are rejoining. But as elected officials deliberate on the right course to take, public health leaders warn that treating returning health-care workers like pariahs could hamstring Ebola control efforts by dissuading doctors and nurses from volunteering.

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Is quarantine merited for Ebola-exposed health-care workers? The science says no