The COVID era has been difficult for scientists whose ideas run against the grain of powerful scientific and government bureaucracies. Even for university scientists with unblemished reputations in the before times, the price of speaking up has been vilification by social media companies, the media, and, unfortunately, even scientific journals and our fellow scientists. It is a wonder that any scientists dared to speak out, with only their commitment to the truth as a reason to do so.
In a recent letter to the House, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” his social media empire to censor speech it didn’t like. His company often acceded to those demands, and “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” Zuckerberg now admits it was wrong. At the behest of the government, Zuckerberg’s Facebook censored even true speech about dangerous gain-of-function research, school closures, and COVID-19 vaccine injuries.
No scientist wants the information they share on social media to be labeled as “misinformation” or to have their accounts suspended for scientific speech, which Zuckerberg’s under-qualified censors often did. Such labels represent a direct smear on scientists’ reputations—the coin of the realm in science; as a consequence of this censorship regime, many scientists opt to stay silent or watch from the sidelines, not being willing to risk such a label.
Meanwhile, scientists who do choose to participate in debates about science or public health policy are met with slanderous attacks, not just by social media companies but by scientist bruisers who lobby accusations of racism, sexism, antisemitism, false allegations of conflicts of interest, and even mass murder at us rather than engage in good faith debate. The public, who would benefit from sober, reasoned discourse, is instead presented with bluster from scientific bullies who intimidate their targets into silence.
We’ve both experienced it firsthand.
One of the authors of this piece, Jay Bhattacharya, coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) in October of 2020, which called for the focused protection of the vulnerable elderly, for opening schools, and for lifting lockdowns. In response, the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a piece falsely alleging that the GBD had received support from the dreaded Koch brothers. In Left-leaning academia, such an accusation is like the mark of Cain, and many scientists feared associating with the GBD as a result, though they agreed with its ideas.
Embarrassingly, the BMJ had to issue a correction to the article because there was no Koch funding for the GBD. But the defamatory damage was already done, and many scientists stayed silent as schools closed and children were harmed, even though they knew better. They did not want to be similarly smeared.
Next month, a conference will be held at Stanford University, featuring civil discussions among scientists who differ on how best to manage pandemics and prevent their occurrence. Four-plus years into the COVID-era, it is far past time for such a discussion.
Amazingly, some scientists and media figures have vilified the conference for including lockdown skeptics like Dr. Vinay Prasad of UCSF and Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University among the speakers. A Baylor doctor, Peter Hotez, a devotee of Tony Fauci and author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, accused the conference of indulging in “anti-science aggression” for the crime of having scientists who disagree speak with one another. “While I’m all for free speech, this type of anti-science aggression doesn’t have to be promoted by the Stanford leadership, given the chilling message it sends to the serious science faculty/students,” wrote Hotez on Twitter in a typical act of projection. Elsewhere he wrote about “antiscience as a killing force,” further explaining “My point: “health freedom” antiscience aggression = a leading killing force”.
Scientists should be able to disagree on public health policy without being branded monsters. The public is watching this spat and has lost trust in science, medicine, and public health.
Society forfeits the benefits of science when scientific discourse is hijacked by dogma, when dissenting views are silenced out of fear of career repercussions, and when questioning the prevailing narrative invites accusations of bigotry or even murder.
Science thrives on skepticism, on challenges to the status quo. When the pursuit of scientific truth is sacrificed on the altar of ideological conformity, science ceases to be a beacon of enlightenment and instead becomes a tool of oppression. Let’s hope the upcoming Stanford conference marks the beginning of a course correction.
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford Medical School and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bryce Nickels is a Professor of Genetics at Rutgers University, Lab Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and co-founder of the non-profit Biosafety Now.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
