“Smearing officials with false allegations and then issuing a quiet correction isn’t accountability. Your readers deserve better.”
On Friday, I wrote about Dr. Vinay Prasad’s dismal performance at the FDA and his refusal to answer questions about it from credible journalists. Amongst other things, I discussed a news report, originally in the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that Dr. Prasad was under investigation for berating staff, retaliation, wasting taxpayer money, and sexual harassment.
On Monday evening, I saw on social media that the WSJ had retracted their allegations of sexual harassment, a very significant correction. Dr. Prasad was falsely accused of wrongdoing in a major newspaper, and that’s a big deal. He had every right to be upset and to want to set the record strait. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon reacted with righteous indignation saying it was wrong to smear “officials with false allegations”. It’s hard to argue with that.
“Requesting a prompt update of your piece with a correction notice, please. Also, would appreciate confirmation of receipt.”
Obviously, this single correction didn’t vindicate Dr. Prasad in any way. The FDA is still a dysfunctional soap opera. Dr. Prasad is still under investigation for creating a “toxic workplace” requiring external investigators to step in, and no one can make the affirmative case the FDA is thriving under his leadership.
Nonetheless, I knew that I had to immediately correct my article, and as I was logging on to do so, an e-mail from an HHS representative appeared. It said:
Jonathan, there is an issue in your posting on Mr. Prasad regarding “allegations of sexual harassment”… The WSJ article has been updated to remove the false accusation. Requesting a prompt update of your piece with a correction notice, please. Also, would appreciate confirmation of receipt.
This was an entirely appropriate, though unnecessary request. I fixed my article the moment I learned it contained a false allegation, and this wasn’t a hard call. Leaving up such misinformation for even one extra minute would have been incredibly dishonest. I’ve acknowledged other errors a couple times previously and will always do so in the future when appropriate. Communicating accurate information and treating people fairly is the top priority here at SBM.
“The mission of Johnathan (sic) Howard was not medical transparency, but personal profit by grifting and stealing someone else’s intellectual property.”
The reverse is true for Dr. Prasad and his minions, however. Thanks to them, I also know how unpleasant it is to face false accusations in a major publication. However, while I was guilty of sharing someone else’s inaccurate reporting, Dr. Prasad’s FDA deliberately lied to smear me in the press. When his pathetic attempt to censor my YouTube channel was revealed, a mysterious, unnamed “FDA spokesman” told The Guardian:
All of Dr Prasad’s videos, that were illegally taken and published by another party, remain available for all to watch on YouTube. Publishing someone else’s videos without modification or commentary is a clear copyright violation. The mission of Johnathan (sic) Howard was not medical transparency, but personal profit by grifting and stealing someone else’s intellectual property.
Dr. Prasad failed to make his case of copyright violation to YouTube and my channel was restored. However, these dishonest accusations weren’t just a message to me, but to anyone who might dare to criticize Dr. Prasad. He’ll say anything to discredit you. He’ll make things up if he has to, including allegations of illegality.
Unfortunately, these baseless allegations were very familiar to me. Despite his professed love for civil debate and dialogue, Dr Prasad never responded to me or any of his many serious critics in a professional way. Not once. He only responded with these sort of personal attacks and juvenile accusations. He had previously sought to discredit We Want Them Infected– the entire thing- by claiming I was “just trying to make money from selling a book😂.” According to Dr. Prasad, the mere fact that I wrote a book demonstrated both its worthlessness and my insatiable avarice. That’s the maturity and professionalism he brought to the table.
Thanks to the incompetence of Dr. Prasad and MAHA, We Want Them Infected aged very well, and I will defend every word in it. However, I didn’t write a dense tome on medical disinformation expecting riches and fortune, and my minuscule YouTube channel has 371 subscribers. Apparently, one needs 1,000 subscribers to monetize any channel, and I use the videos there to augment my articles here. Its only use is “medical transparency”, and I’ve made $0 from it. I am confident Dr. Prasad cannot say the same about his YouTube channel (196,000 subscribers), Substack, and social media output. As usual, every accusation is a confession. Dr. Prasad has even written books, though unlike him, I see nothing inherently wrong with that.
Measles is spreading and trust in the HHS is collapsing. There are much bigger problems than false allegations against myself or Dr. Prasad, though it’s nice to know that despite his responsibilities at the FDA, he carves out time to read our tiny little blog. Still, we need to be clear about what happened here, as these incidents reveals something important about the character of our current medical establishment.
An HHS representative asked me, very fairly, to correct a significant false allegation someone else initially reported. I was already in the process of doing so. I agree with Mr. Nixon that it is wrong to smear people with false allegations. In contrast, an anonymous “FDA spokesman” deliberately lied about me in a major news outlet 6-months ago, and there has been no correction or apology.
I immediately told the HHS representative that my article had been corrected. However, I also told them, via email and a stern phone call, that I expected Dr. Prasad and the FDA to publicly correct their absurd fabrications about me. I too requested a prompt update with a correction notice.
That hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt it ever will. MAHA government doctors feel entitled to falsely smear their critics in the press while demanding that they not be falsely smeared in the press. Our so-called public servants have one set of standards for themselves and another for private citizens who dare to the question their government.