“Our inability to remain open and engage in rational discussions about controversial subjects may be eroding public trust in science.”
Dr. Akiko Iwasaki is the Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Dermatology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and of Epidemiology at Yale University. She is an infinitely more accomplished researcher than I will ever be, and to the extent that I can divine such things, not someone who acts in bad faith or with nefarious motives.
However, she recently penned a problematic essay, one that reminded me of my prior article Debating How to Debate Instead of Actually Debating. That article discussed doctors who spent all their time and energy debating the process of debating, while refusing to simply debate. For such doctors, some of whom were vulgar and threatening themselves, serious issues of science and medicine were subsumed to comparatively trivial concerns of manners and decorum. “Every moment spent debating who can say what to whom and how and where they should say it, is time not spent talking about doctors who repeatedly underestimated the virus and successfully campaigned to ensure tens of millions of children and young adults contracted it before they were vaccinated,” I wrote.
Dr. Iwasaki’s entry into this sad genre was titled Freedom of Scientific Inquiry: Reclaiming Space For Controversy. It was published in Nature Immunology and it began by saying:
No matter how small the possibility, or how inconvenient the topic, scientists must maintain the humility to acknowledge that we could be wrong. Our inability to remain open and engage in rational discussions about controversial subjects may be eroding public trust in science.
At first blush, this is banal, unobjectionable pablum, like saying “We need more RCTs.” After all, who could oppose “open and rational discussions”? Not me. All of my articles, including this one, are written in that spirit. However, as with doctors who glorified RCTs not to honestly advance research but rather to spread doubt and rage about COVID mitigations, Dr. Iwasaki’s seemingly reasonable call for “open and rational discussions” also sought to advance a particular narrative.
Indeed, Dr. Iwasaki curiously singled out two classes of scientists for whom we should have special sympathy at this fraught moment- those who spoke about potential vaccine harms and those who claimed SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab. She wrote:
Here, I discuss the need to reclaim protected space for rigorous inquiry into controversial questions — including the possible adverse effects of vaccines and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
How did these poor scientists suffer? According to Dr. Iwasaki, for the most part, they had their feelings hurt on social media and weren’t treated with sufficient deference in newspapers. She wrote:
To prevent creating unnecessary fear of vaccines, most immunologists prefer not to discuss rare adverse events after vaccination. Even before the pandemic, discussing and publishing any negative effects of vaccines was viewed as ‘anti-vax’, somehow betraying the field of immunology…
In the wake of the pandemic, polarization and public mistrust of science are at their highest levels in decades. The pandemic did not create this mistrust but rather exposed and intensified existing fractures, fuelled by rapid amplification on social media.
Although many external factors contributed to this, we scientists are not blameless. I have witnessed and even succumbed myself to the temptation to be certain. Often, scientists are ‘100% sure’ of something, and anyone questioning that position is treated as an idiot. “Leave the discussion to the experts”, “stay in your lane” and “don’t listen to armchair immunologists” are phrases used to dismiss and ridicule anyone who questions mainstream views. Granted, social media platforms are not designed for rational and respectful discourse. Yet the “don’t question scientists” approach is a sure way to alienate people and cause them to lose faith in science, and it is also antithetical to the scientific process. Science is an iterative process in which con-cepts and hypotheses are tested by several groups, building consensus that is essential to understand how things work and to make progress. However, consensus, when combined with ideological or political biases, can become a constraint, evolving into an orthodoxy that suppresses alternative viewpoints…
However, discussions about the origin of the virus have been highly contentious, with those who suggested that it might have originated from a possible accidental lab leak often labelled as conspiracy theorists or racists and ostracized from the scientific sphere. Scientists who were investigating and communicating about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 encountered harassment and dismissal. Reporting in the mainstream media did not help either, with statements such as “Most scientists believe …” being based on interviews with a few, possibly the most vocal, advocates of a particular view. However, allowing for an open inquiry into inconvenient questions surrounding SARS-CoV-2 is important — not to assign blame but to refine biosafety and preparedness frameworks.
It is possible that some scientists were subject to harassment and dismissal only because they promoted the lab leak, which would be unacceptable, however I couldn’t find any instance of anyone losing their job for this reason. I will update this article if I learn of any such cases, but Dr. Iwasaki did not provide the names of scientists she felt were so mistreated. I honestly have no idea who exactly she is talking about, and with one exception, she provided no references to back up any of her claims.
“Scientists are unable to freely inquire about the risk of post-vaccination syndrome without being labelled as ‘anti-vaxxers’.”
Indeed, Dr. Iwasaki provided just a single reference, to a preprint she posted in February 2025 titled Immunological and Antigenic Signatures Associated with Chronic Illnesses after COVID-19 Vaccination. It is worth reviewing this study as it was the impetus behind Dr. Iwasaki’s recent editorial.
The preprint used a machine learning model to describe a condition she termed “post-vaccination syndrome (PVS)”. In her Nature editorial Dr. Iwasaki described PVS and the reaction to it thusly:
PVS is a poorly characterized constellation of heterogeneous, non-specific symptoms that lacks an agreed-upon clinical definition, diagnostic criteria or standardized measurement. Owing to the stigma and judgement that surrounds this condition, scientists are unable to freely inquire about the risk of PVS without being labelled as ‘anti-vaxxers’.
Unsurprisingly, this poorly characterized constellation of heterogeneous, non-specific symptoms attracted a lot of attention. While anti-vaxxers naturally celebrated and misrepresented the preprint, leading to justified and valuable pushback from Dr. Iwasaki, many legitimate scientists identified numerous potential problems with its methods and study population. They did so in a civil, professional manner, exactly the sort of open and rational discussion Dr. Iwasaki claims to value. Some examples are below:
- No, Covid-19 Vaccines Don’t Suppress Your Immune System—Here’s The Science
- Yale Covid Vaccine Syndrome Study
- Fact Check: Us Study Does Not Suggest Long Covid Is A Vaccine Injury
- No, A New “Study” Doesn’t Prove Covid Vaccines Are Unsafe
- How A Yale Study Got Twisted Into An Anti-Vaccine Talking Point
- Winner of mRNA Nobel Prize Says ACIP member’s Claim That Covid Vaccines Persist is ‘Absolutely Impossible’
- ‘Post-Vaccination Syndrome’: A Dubious Diagnosis That Could Do Harm
None of these critics labelled Dr. Iwasaki an “anti-vaxxer”, though that description seems to fit several of her co-authors. While I encourage you to read all of these critiques of her preprint, according to the last one, by Dr. Adam Gaffney:
Two of the co-authors, described as “independent researchers,” are part of the organization React19, a vaccine injury advocacy organization engaged in Covid vaccine injury litigation. One of these individuals is personally a vocal and high-profile litigant who supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as Health and Human Services secretary and who published a vaccine-injury testimonial blurbed by Kennedy. A third co-author has made dubious claims about chronic Lyme disease and has endorsed supplement use without evidence as a treatment for long Covid. A fourth has speculated online that another potential co-infection culprit in PVS might be “dormant Bartonella infection,” a real but rare pathogen that for unclear reasons has emerged in fringe medical circles as a commonly invoked tick-borne “Lyme coinfection,” as described by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These are red flags, to say the least.
Apparently, these significant conflicts of interests were not declared in the initial version of the preprint, and Dr. Iwasaki also promoted the study on social media by linking to a press release from Invivyd, a pharmaceutical company that makes monoclonal antibodies. These are just some of the many concerns with her study, which remains unpublished and unreplicated to this day.
“We need to leave room for people to have good faith disagreements and questions without inappropriately smearing them as ‘anti-vaxxers’.”
Obviously, Dr. Iwasaki is not wrong about how scientists should be treated when they discuss controversial topics. Anyone with potential evidence of vaccine harms or a lab leak should be given a respectful hearing to make their case.
Unfortunately, I know from experience that anyone who waded into pandemic controversies received a deluge of vitriol from all directions. There was nothing unique about Dr. Iwasaki’s experience, which is not to excuse or minimize any spiteful comments towards her. Anyone who simply insulted her should absolutely apologize.
However, while the doctors who hurled an endless stream of juvenile insults at me never engaged with my content, as the thoughtful essays above show, that was not the case for Dr. Iwasaki. And so, the problem with her Nature editorial isn’t that she advocated for open scientific debate, the problem is that she implied it didn’t happen- “scientists are unable to freely inquire about the risk of PVS” “allowing for an open inquiry into inconvenient questions surrounding SARS-CoV-2 is important.”
In reality, Dr. Iwasaki got funding for her study on PVS, she conducted the study, and posted her preprint. She then discussed PVS on social media, Yale publications, the New York Times, as well as popular podcasts and YouTube channels. Pharma companies even invited Dr. Iwasaki to join their study groups. Today, she is writing about PVS in Nature. Not bad for a preprint that has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
All of this shows that scientists who discussed vaccine harms and COVID’s origins weren’t systematically suppressed. While some scientists, bad faith actors who also claim to have been “silenced and censored,” exploited these controversies to advance their political agenda, the truth is that countless scientists discussed them freely for years. There was no shortage of scientists and doctors willing to talk about vaccine side effects and the origins of SAR-CoV-2.
I speak from experience here as well. I also discussed vaccine flaws extensively in my books, blogs, and podcasts. “Care should be taken to not minimize these cases,” I said in my first essay about vaccine-myocarditis nearly 5 years ago. “The COVID vaccine is far from perfect,” I wrote in my most recent essay here. It’s entirely possible that my privileged demographics shielded me from nasty insults for writing such things, but no one ever told me to stop or called me an anti-vaxxer. I also don’t recall anger at the scientists who linked the J&J vaccine with fatal blood clots, even though this led to the vaccine being taken off the market.
Scientists who provide solid evidence of vaccine harms are generally treated respectfully and professionally, as they should be, and many years before Dr. Iwasaki wrote her editorial, I too opposed the use of “anti-vaxxer” to discredit people who raise valid concerns about them. I wrote an entire article titled I Won’t Call Dr. Paul Offit an Anti-Vaxxer, and in a separate article I wrote:
Though most vaccines are overwhelming safe and effective, their imperfections cannot be ignored or wished away… We need to leave room for people to have good faith disagreements and questions without inappropriately smearing them as ‘anti-vaxxers’.
Similarly, those who claim SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab have had ample opportunity to state their case, including at academic conferences, though in contrast to scientists who support a zoonotic origin, none of them have ever presented affirmative evidence of a lab leak in the scientific literature. However, Dr. Iwasaki implies that while this evidence exists, it wasn’t “allowed” to be heard or it wasn’t taken seriously only because journalists had the audacity to write “most scientists believe” the virus had a zoonotic origin in their articles on the topic.
So sure, we can all endeavor to be nicer to people who discuss potential vaccine harms and promote the lab leak. Our goal should always be to engage with their arguments and never to deliberately hurt their feelings. Conversely, scientists should engage with good faith criticisms of their work, not reflexively brush them aside by falsely labeling them as personal “attacks” and “hit pieces”. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Not everyone who criticized Dr. Iwasaki’s preprint simply smeared her as an anti-vaxxer. Many scientists raised valid concerns about the robustness of her methods and thus the credibility of her results. Instead of questioning their manners and motives, hopefully Dr. Iwasaki will soon respond to the substance of their critiques.
“Vaccines are the ONLY drug you’re not allowed to question.”
The “we are not allowed to question this” gambit, as I will call it, isn’t new. Disingenuous anti-vaxxers have long pretended that questioning vaccines was “forbidden”. In their minds, only they were brave enough to ask the tough questions, and they were unjustly persecuted for doing so. Listen below to a compilation of disinformation luminaries, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Robert Kennedy, and Cheryl Hines, question vaccines, while at the same time saying vaccines are the ONLY drug you’re not allowed to question.
When employed by respected scientists, however, the “we are not allowed to question this” gambit validates anti-vaxxers’ delusions that scientists are afraid to level with them about the risks of vaccines. By erasing years of discussions and debate on vaccines and COVID’s origin, the gambit also becomes another example of the COVID Amnesia Project, which feeds the absurd victim narrative and hero complex of the pandemic’s worst disinformation superspreaders, the people now in charge.
“He opened it to find a half-dozen federal agents carrying guns and wearing tactical gear, including bulletproof vests.”
To be clear, these are dangerous times for scientists, and social media insults are the least of their concerns. However, the threat is not directed against scientists who spoke of vaccine harms and promoted the lab leak. Rather it comes from such forces, and it is directed against pro-vaccine scientists and those who reject the lab leak.
Drs. Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya, for example, routinely treated rare, temporary vaccine side effects as a fate worse than death and promoted the lab leak in propaganda videos. Dr. Bhattacharya even smeared Fauci as “the number one anti-vaxxer” 5 years-ago because Fauci wisely urged caution after vaccination. Today, Drs. Makary and Bhattacharya are not oppressed and silenced. Their embrace of anti-vaxx disinformation and the lab leak is precisely what catapulted them to the pinnacle of the medical establishment. In that role, they are not just still spreading anti-vaxx disinformation, they are using their vast power to censor and purge scientists who don’t share their anti-vaxx agenda.
Other scientists are paying an even bigger price for not endorsing the lab leak. According to one horrific article, Guns and Bulletproof Vests: How Federal Agents Arrested Fauci Aide:
When federal agents came to the home of David Morens on Monday with an arrest warrant for allegedly concealing federal records related to the debate about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, they behaved as if the 78-year-old retired scientist was a violent criminal.
Science has learned that Morens, an influenza researcher who worked at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until 2022 and was an aide to its former director, Anthony Fauci, was having his morning coffee at his Chester, Maryland, home when he heard loud pounding on the door. He opened it to find a half-dozen federal agents carrying guns and wearing tactical gear, including bulletproof vests, according to two sources who spoke with him but asked not to be identified. Another team of officers stood in the distance and observed, as did neighbors.
The agents did not harm Morens, but took off his pants and shirt, handcuffed him, and drove him 65 kilometers to the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was fingerprinted, photographed, and jailed.
Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Hotez routinely received death threats and was stalked at home by anti-vaxxers. Fauci’s children needed bodyguards, MAGA doctors consistently call for his arrest, and he still receives vile threats, including from top government officials who blame him for the lab leak. I mention these outrages not to imply that Dr. Iwasaki supports them in any way- I am certain she does not- but rather to contrast their experiences with scientists who were merely called names on social media.
Because with all that’s happening in the world of science and medicine with MAGA/MAHA in power, we don’t have to give credence to anyone’s fantasy that scientists who discussed vaccine harms and promoted the lab leak are a persecuted minority, under serious threat right now. To validate this absurdity gives ammunition to powerful, dangerous, vengeful people, the people with power, the people who are currently censoring, purging, and aggressively arresting elderly scientists today.
Anyone who truly values open and rational discussions about controversial subjects need to be cleared-eyed about where the threat to such dialogue is coming from.