“Blaming credentialed, legitimate scientists can also backfire.”
On Tuesday, I discussed a paragraph in an article titled Misinformation Blaming and Labelling May Damage Health, Science and Policy Making by Dr. John Ioannidis. I want to revisit it because I’m interested in how we got to this sad moment, with MAHA/MAGA politicizing science and esteemed doctors enabling it all.
One step on the path was the deceptive depiction of overt political actors as apolitical, neutral scientists. Here again is Dr. Ioannidis’s paragraph:
Blaming credentialed, legitimate scientists can also backfire. Rigorous organized scepticism and evidence-based questioning are quintessential for science and desirable. Emotional pre-emptive rejection of scientific arguments may suggest to the public that science is an authoritarian, even retaliatory, process. Some scientists self-anoint themselves as “science-based” communicators and obsessively blame other legitimate scientists with whom they disagree, even without clear evidentiary basis for such accusations. They may attack opponents as quacks. For the watching public, legitimate science becomes indistinguishable from overt pseudo-science. Quackery can only benefit from having serious scientists and serious arguments relegated to the same status. Moreover, when sometimes “science-based” blamers are subsequently proven wrong, in retrospect their obsessive behavior becomes a total embarrassment for science. Science is better served by elevating standards of reasoning and methodological rigor than by engaging in rhetorical escalation or questionable analogies.
Notice Dr. Ioannidis’s repeated emphasis on credentialed, legitimate, serious scientists who made serious scientific arguments. He feels such exalted souls need to be treated gently, with care, deference, and respect. Anything less would be a “a total embarrassment for science.”
However, despite Dr. Ioannidis’s protestations, we are not required to treat doctors who minimized COVID and openly pushed their policy objectives in the media and to MAGA politicians as if they were conducting scientific research the whole time. It turns out, the doctors who shared their policy opinions regarding COVID on Fox News were not the ones who made scientific breakthroughs regarding COVID, and scientists who chose to enter the political arena this way have forfeited the right to be regarded as mere scientists.
“His arguments in a string of appearances on Fox News, CNN and other news networks were seized on by right-wing firebrands seeking to discredit public-health officials and reopen the economy.”
Indeed, while I was seeing a lot of people suffer and die at an overwhelmed NYC hospital in April 2020, Dr. Ioannidis was busy giving interviews to far-right MAGA propagandists on Fox News saying COVID was overblown. “They vast majority of them don’t even realize they have been infected,” he said after the host listed his impressive scientific credentials. This is how he spent his time at the start of the pandemic, minimizing COVID in front of a camera, utterly indifferent to the experience of frontline doctors. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Ioannidis produced an enormous amount of absurdly confident content like this in 2020, and all of it aged horribly. Don’t take my word for it. Although Dr. Ioannidis won’t do so, I urge you to watch it for yourself. It’s important to remember exactly what he said during these media appearances because these media appearances are why we criticized him for here at SBM. “I think there’s no reason to fear,” he said. “We have data.” This virus had just arrived on our shores when he said this in April 2020. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Many others made rigorous criticisms of his scientific papers, namely the infamous Santa Clara antibody study. According to statistics professor Dr. Andrew Gelman:
I think the authors of the above-linked paper owe us all an apology. We wasted time and effort discussing this paper whose main selling point was some numbers that were essentially the product of a statistical error. I’m serious about the apology. Everyone makes mistakes. I don’t think they authors need to apologize just because they screwed up. I think they need to apologize because these were avoidable screw-ups. They’re the kind of screw-ups that happen if you want to leap out with an exciting finding and you don’t look too carefully at what you might have done wrong.
However, Dr. Ioannidis used this study to once again get himself in front of a camera, where once again he minimized COVID and advocated for his favored pandemic policies. COVID is in the “same ballpark as seasonal influenza” he said. “I think the devastation can be extreme, and it can be far worse than anything coronavirus can do,” he said about measures to contain the virus. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Rather than respond to his critics in good faith, Dr. Ioannidis acts as if the mere act of disagreeing with the policies he pushed on TV fundamentally undermines all of science itself. Apparently, anyone who criticizes what he said on Fox News six years ago is guilty of a “pre-emptive rejection of scientific arguments“- emphasis added. However, while Dr. Ioannidis now claims to have been making “scientific arguments“, the truth is he used the cover of science to advocate for his favored policies. For example, here he is saying we should never lockdown again. That’s not science. That’s policy.
Dr. Ioannidis championed his favored policies all the time, always while claiming to be conducting “scientific investigations”. An article from 2020 titled A Top Scientist Questioned Virus Lockdowns on Fox News. The Backlash Was Fierce discussed his media appearances, not his scientific discoveries. It said:
His arguments in a string of appearances on Fox News, CNN and other news networks were seized on by right-wing firebrands seeking to discredit public-health officials and reopen the economy…
He had appeared at least 18 times on major cable news networks, repeatedly questioning the severity of the pandemic. He acknowledged that his statements might have been exploited for political purposes but said the alternative — silencing his doubts, or withholding them from certain audiences — is dangerous as well.
“I think it’s very scary when we try to suppress scientific thinking and investigation, whatever the reason might be,” he said.
Dr. Ioannidis even made a vanity documentary where he discussed his pandemic policy positions. “We took a lot of measures we should not have taken,” he said. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Policy positions should be informed by science, but they are not themselves science. Dr. Ioannidis is obviously free to express his policy positions on Fox News and anywhere else he wants, but no one should pretend these media appearances are “scientific thinking and investigation.” Going on Fox News is going on Fox News. No one forced Dr. Ioannidis to minimize COVID on Fox News, and no one needs his permission to criticize him for this. It wasn’t legitimate, serious science.
“In late March, as COVID-19 cases overran hospitals overseas, Ioannidis tried to organize a meeting at the White House.”
Direct political advocacy is also not legitimate, serious science, and Dr. Ioannidis was not above this either in 2020. According to an article from July 2020 by Stephanie Lee titled An Elite Group of Scientists Tried to Warn Trump Against Lockdowns in March:
Stanford University scientist John Ioannidis has declared in study after study that the coronavirus is not that big of a threat, emboldening opponents of economic shutdowns — and infuriating critics who see fundamental errors in his work
But even before the epidemiologist had any of that data in hand, he and an elite group of scientists tried to convince President Donald Trump that locking down the country would be the real danger.
In late March, as COVID-19 cases overran hospitals overseas, Ioannidis tried to organize a meeting at the White House where he and a small band of colleagues would caution the president against “shutting down the country for [a] very long time and jeopardizing so many lives in doing this,” according to a statement Ioannidis submitted on the group’s behalf. Their goal, the statement said, was “to both save more lives and avoid serious damage to the US economy using the most reliable data.”
Although the meeting did not happen, Ioannidis believed their message had reached the right people. Within a day of him sending it to the White House, Trump announced that he wanted the country reopened by Easter. “I think our ideas have inflitrated [sic] the White House regardless,” Ioannidis told his collaborators on March 28.
However, that White House meeting did happen in August 2020, the month after Ms. Lee published her article, when We Want Them Infected doctors Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Joseph Ladapo met with Trump there. Listen as they reminisce about meeting the world’s most powerful politician to push their favored pandemic policies. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Ioannidis ended up being right about their ideas infiltrating the White House, however. The next month, September 2020, Trump echoed their talking points. Trump said:
With time it goes away. You’ll develop a herd mentality, it’s going to be herd developed. That will all happen… I really believe we are rounding the corner… A lot of people do agree with me. You look at Scott Atlas, you look at some of the other doctors from highly, from Stanford… They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning.
This was not legitimate, serious science.
Several months later, pro-infection doctor Scott Atlas revealed how these scientists influenced COVID policy at the White House. “This is the science,” Dr. Atlas said. It wasn’t science, however.
Unfortunately, Dr. Ioannidis was hardly the only doctor who demanded to be treated like a humble, apolitical scientist, while simultaneously pushing political positions favored by “right-wing firebrands” on Fox News and to MAGA politicians. The discussions below are a minuscule sample of these doctors’ overt political content, which vastly exceeded their scientific discoveries.
Dr. Vinay Prasad: Former Head of CBER
In 2023, Dr. Vinay Prasad published an article on Bari Weiss’s The Free Press titled Why Was My Talk at a Medical Conference Canceled? The subtitle was “My job is to terrify cancer cells. But apparently it’s not just malignant cells that get uneasy around me.” He wrote about himself:
As a physician and medical scholar who has published over 450 academic articles and two books, my research team and I base our opinions on a sober assessment of available evidence.
However. while Dr. Prasad portrayed himself as a medical scholar who based his opinions on a sober assessment of available evidence, he didn’t behave that way. He was immature, unprofessional, vulgar, and accusatory, and it’s no surprise that during his dismal year at the FDA, STAT News published articles titled Under Vinay Prasad, Employees At A Key FDA Center Fear Speaking Out, Look For The Exits.
Dr. Prasad was also an overtly political actor who weighed in on pandemic policy daily for years. He shared his political opinions in Reason Magazine and fluffed Kennedy on podcasts hosted by far-right firebrands like Megyn Kelly. “RFK Jr. has an important point” about vaccines not being properly studied, he said in the middle video below. Dr. Prasad had every right to share his political opinions, but no one has to pretend it’s legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Prasad openly endorsed Trump and Kennedy. It’s not subtle. It’s also not legitimate, serious science.
Again, you don’t have to take my word for it regarding Dr. Prasad’s political activism on behalf of Trump. Listen below as Dr. Marty Makary perfectly described Dr. Prasad’s “love” for Trump. “If you listen to his podcasts for the past 4 years, you’ll see that he has been an ardent supporter of everything President Trump has done and is trying to do.” That’s 100% true, and it wasn’t legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: NIH and CDC
In a talk from 2024 titled Free Speech is the End of Science, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told the audience he was going to discuss “science that I did during the pandemic.” “Science during the pandemic was distorted,” he said. He spoke about the tragic fate of his social media content and the suffering of “scientists who didn’t hold the orthodox views.”
However, Dr. Bhattacharya rose to fame not via his groundbreaking COVID research, but rather via his failed plan for herd immunity via mass infection and his association with Jeffrey Tucker, a proud pro-tobacco, child labor advocate. Watch Tucker’s video with the “School sucks project.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Despite not being a scientist, Tucker organized and contributed to the composition of Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Bhattacharya’s signature achievement. “I was there while it was being drafted“, Tucker said. “I made a couple of suggestions here and there.” These are the fringe political figures with whom Dr. Bhattacharya associated, and today child labor laws are being rolled back across the country, and the FDA is approving vaping products at Trump’s urging.
While Dr. Bhattacharya portrayed himself as a serious scientist, he didn’t spend his time in hospitals or labs. Rather he spent his time making slick, political propaganda videos like this. Oh no! We might get a “biomedical security state.” This was not legitimate, serious science, and it’s no surprise that he is mocked today as “Podcast Jay”.
Dr. Bhattacharya was a star of Reason Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, where he wrote articles such as Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say? He was #7 on the list The Dishonest Doctors Who Were Fox News’ Most Frequent Medical Guests In 2021. He had 33 appearances that year where he openly expressed his political views and made unprofessional accusations about people who disagreed with his policy choices. “Maybe they like having children being developmentally held back,” he said in an interview with Pete Hesgeth. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Bhattacharya advised powerful right-wing politicians and joined multiple presidential campaigns, both Ron DeSantis and Kennedy, where he shared his political opinions while simultaneously portraying himself as an apolitical scientist. “I work in public health,” he said. “I am deeply uncomfortable. Public health should be equally suitable for Democrats. Republicans, independents, and everyone alike,” he said at a political rally. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Today, as the NIH director, Dr. Bhattacharya is still claiming to be apolitical while speaking at political events, like TPUSA and CPAC. “Science has no politics,” he said at these right-wing political rallies. This was not legitimate, serious science.
As NIH director, Dr. Bhattacharya continues to go on Fox News and NewsMax to push his political views. Just listen as he says that Kennedy is “devoted to the scientific method,” that he “loves” Trump, and that accusations that Trump is against science are “ridiculous slander.” Today, it’s his job to advance their political agenda at the NIH and CDC. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Marty Makary: Former FDA Comissioner
During his opening testimony as FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary spoke about his research. He said:
I’m grateful to Johns Hopkins for allowing me to have a dual career as both a surgical oncologist, and a health care researcher. In addition to using FDA approved devices and medications, my research has focused on patient safety, the Orphan Drug Act, how the FDA evaluates devices, opioids, and how health care has become too fragmented, too cold, and too corporate. My research on price gouging and predatory billing turned into advocacy to call for price transparency in health care.
Although Dr. Makary marketed himself as a “health care researcher” to one audience, he too was a star of the right-wing media echo chamber. He wrote gems such as We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April for the Wall Street Journal and was the #2 doctor in the article The Dishonest Doctors Who Were Fox News’ Most Frequent Medical Guests In 2021, with 142 appearances. In the video below, from May 2021, Dr. Makary said public health leaders who disagreed herd immunity had arrived were “dishonest” and trying to “manipulate the public.” Dr. Makary made volumes of such content for years. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Makary was also an overtly political actor. Here he is endorsing Kennedy’s vile lies about the COVID vaccine killing children on Fox News. “One thing RFK Jr. did is he would post true stories of children immediately after the vaccine,” Dr. Makary said. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Makary dunked on federal health agencies and glorified SARS-CoV-2 with MAGA figures like Jim Jordan. “Natural immunity adjusted for age and comorbidity is 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity,” he said. This was not legitimate, serious science.
Dr. Makary pushed right-wing talking points before Congress with Drs. Bhattacharya and Kulldorff. “Public health officials were intellectually dishonest,” he said. “They lied to the American people.” This was not legitimate, serious science.
In 2026 as FDA commissioner, Dr. Makary gushed over Trump and expressed his gratitude to him. Trump is an “amazing guy, he’s a phenom,” Makary said. Trump has “more energy than anybody and instincts better than some of the academic elites in America,” he added. Dr. Makary also did his best to enact Kennedy’s and Trump’s agenda at the FDA. This was not legitimate, serious science, and it’s no surprise that after his dismal year at the FDA, STAT News published an editorial titled Why Marty Makary Was The Worst FDA Commissioner In 25 Years.
We at SBM didn’t do any of this. Not even close.
Yet, Dr. Ioannidis scolded us and portrayed us as the ones with some nefarious agenda. He said we were a total embarrassment for science because we obsessively criticized legitimate and serious scientists.
We don’t have to participate in his absurd fantasy, however. Although MAHA/MAGA doctors wrapped themselves in the protective cloak of science to stave off criticism, we are under no obligation to treat doctors who spread COVID disinformation and right-wing talking points on TV as legitimate and serious scientists.
The obvious truth is that MAHA/MAGA doctors were primarily pandemic content creators and political actors out to advance their own careers and the Trump/Kennedy agenda.
They didn’t hide it, and we won’t deny it.