At The Free Press, Maya Sulkin interviewed Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya — recently appointed director of the National Institutes of Health. That’s quite a turnaround for Bhattacharya, who was ridiculed during the Covid years. As Sulkin recounts,

In 2020, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was condemned as a quack and considered a pariah by the medical field for co-authoring a public declaration questioning the efficacy of Covid lockdowns. One of the most influential people leading the charge against him was Francis Collins, who was then the director of the National Institutes of Health.

In an October 2020 email to Dr. Anthony Fauci that was later leaked online, Collins called Bhattacharya a “fringe epidemiologist,” and urged a “quick and devastating published takedown” of his declaration. In an interview with The Washington Post, Collins went on to call Bhattacharya “dangerous” and his work “not mainstream science.” Around this time, Bhattacharya received death threats from members of the public and was shadow banned on Twitter for his views. 

“Jay Bhattacharya: ‘Fauci’s Pardon Is a ‘Good Thing,’” April 1, 2025

Bhattacharya seems to want to put it all behind him:

Collins “apologized privately about the fringe epidemiology comment” during a meeting in the summer of 2024, Bhattacharya told Bari Weiss during an interview on The Free Press’s flagship podcast, Honestly.

In a conciliatory tone surprising for a person whose career was almost destroyed by the controversy, Bhattacharya said: “It was a really nice moment. I’ve admired the man for my entire career.”

He added of Collins: “As a Christian and a scientist, he was very outspoken about his faith in ways that I found a lot of encouragement in when I was a young scientist. And to me, the fact that he was on the other side of this debate is fine. . . but that he would abuse his position to try to destroy people who disagreed with him, that really hurt.” 

“Good Thing”

Less Conciliatory

Bhattacharya did not always speak this way. At Newsweek, Khaleda Rahman reminds us that last year he was less conciliatory:

Fauci and Collins “created an illusion of scientific consensus around their ideas and marginalized anyone that disagreed with them even though there wasn’t a scientific consensus,” Bhattacharya said on Fox News last year. “It’s a pattern of behavior that reflects an abuse of power by American scientific bureaucrats at the very top of our scientific bureaucracies.” 

“What Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s NIH Pick, Has Said About Anthony Fauci,” November 27, 2024

Also:

Bhattacharya has also accused Fauci and other leaders of suppressing scientific research and debate during the pandemic.

“The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see,” he wrote in an opinion piece published on UnHerd, a British news and opinion site, earlier in November. “The National Institutes of Health, whose annual budget is $45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci a massive suppression of scientific debate and research.” 

“Has Said About”

The New Broom

There’s no real conflict here. Despite outspoken opposition, Bhattacharya doesn’t want to get back at Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. He is a new broom who wants to sweep clean.

Starting, perhaps, with the overall attitude to science. Fauci, after all, has said of himself, “I represent science.” That sort of attitude may have driven the authoritarianism that swept government during those years. And, no surprise, the aftermath felled both Fauci and Collins as heroes. Now that it is becoming safe to openly admit the facts, it turns out that the authorities were — like AI chatbots — often mistaken but never in doubt. That isn’t the best attitude with which to do science.

Last July, Bhattacharya and Wesley J. Smith offered a response at Real Clear Politics to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine advocating that universities “speak out publicly” against faculty members with whom the administration disagrees. One of the targets was health policy analyst Scott Atlas:

Controversy between professors is the norm at the frontiers of science. It is utterly unsurprising that there would be discord over the proper policy to follow in the wake of a pandemic featuring a new virus, with great uncertainty about its epidemiological and biological aspects. In the intervening years, Dr. Atlas’ positions in 2020 on school closures and mask mandates have been proven legitimate, demonstrating the wisdom of Stanford not taking a position as an institution.

Meanwhile, in another attack on academic freedom, Harvard’s Dean of Social Science issued a call in the Daily Crimson to punish professors who criticize the university, “A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors,” wrote Lawrence D. Bobo, “be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.” In other words, what happens at Harvard should stay at Harvard.

We believe these efforts to stifle heterodox thinking are not only wrong from an academic freedom perspective but harmful to the open and even raucous discourse required for the healthy functioning of a democratic society. 

“Universities Should Promote Rigorous Discourse, Not Stifle It,” July 7, 2024

Restoring open discussion is certainly worth a try. Science advances more from doubt than from certainty.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.