Michael Ejercito
2024-10-06 16:11:09 UTC
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1fweoqu/some_of_our_top_schools_are_embarrassing/
Some of Our Top Schools Are Embarrassing Themselves Over Covid
Why are places like Stanford and Johns Hopkins hosting gatherings of
well-known coronavirus cranks?
Gregg Gonsalves
Share
Stanford University President Jonathan Levin.
Stanford University president Jonathan Levin
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Today, Stanford University is holding an all-day gathering on the Covid
pandemic, with its new president making opening remarks. It’s the second
such meeting at a prestigious university in recent months, after Johns
Hopkins hosted a “symposium on health policy” in September. They may
seem fine on the surface, but both events should be a source of
embarrassment for the institutions involved. (I have a personal stake in
the former gathering: I’m spending my time this fall at Stanford with a
group of wonderful, truly talented researchers, who I hope do not get
sprayed with the stink of this misbegotten affair.)
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While the organization and funding for these two meetings isn’t
explicitly linked, the cast of characters at both are eerily similar.
They each feature a collection of well-known Covid contrarians: those
who, in the early days of the pandemic thought we should “let ’er rip”
and get as many people infected as possible, with a performative nod to
protecting the vulnerable; suggested that vaccine and mask mandates were
somehow akin to Nazi totalitarianism; told us not to worry about
variants (“variants, schmariants,” as one of them remarked months before
Delta and Omicron blasted their way through the US); and said we’d have
herd immunity by April 2021.
If you want just one piece of evidence about the kind of cranks we’re
talking about, consider this: A late addition to the Stanford meeting is
a senior editor of the Epoch Times, a far-right publication that not
only dabbles in Covid conspiracies but is a frequent purveyor of climate
change denialism.
While the organizers have tried to add a few reasonable voices to the
meeting, it doesn’t change the overall thrust of these gatherings. As
former Texas governor Ann Richards said, “You can put lipstick and
earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it’s still a pig.”
Health reporters like Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times blew the
whistle on the Stanford conference in mid-September, and others who have
focused on debunking the pseudoscience of this crew have written about
the meetings on both coasts. The faculty at both institutions who are
pushed for and are behind these convocations have defended them on the
grounds of academic freedom—a defense that, in our current era of
freakouts over “cancel culture,” neither Stanford or Hopkins would have
had an easy time overcoming. Chalk one up to the contrarians for putting
these schools in an impossible situation—though that still does not
explain why Stanford’s president feels the need to personally show up today.
The architects of these meetings come with bags and bags of right-wing
funding, some of it laundered through think tanks and other
institutions. They have met with Trump officials in the White House and
guided Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Covid-19 policy. Some of them
even got a shout-out from Bret Stephens at The New York Times last week.
They whine on and on about how terribly they’ve been treated, but, far
from being persecuted, they are celebrated on the right, even if the
mainstream members of their professions have, time and time again,
considered their ideas and roundly rejected them on their merits.
My question is: Why host these meetings now and in these venues?
Some have suggested this is about “auditioning” for the next Trump
administration as much as it is trying to rewrite the history of the
pandemic. Both are in part probably true. But if you zoom out and think
about these meetings in the context of the right’s war on higher
education, I believe the purpose becomes clearer.
These Covid contrarians—who have found little support for their views
among their peers—have decided that the science has been turned into “a
dogmatic tool of oppression” for rejecting them. In their minds they are
Galileos against the church, and now they are tilting their fury against
the institutions themselves. This tack is of course reminiscent of the
right’s attacks on the universities as bastions of woke, left-wing
ideology, which either need to be reformed (by hiring more conservative
faculty) or gutted and rebuilt to their liking (e.g., New College of
Florida).
In this light, these two meetings are about establishing a
beachhead—building credibility in what many of the organizers would
consider the liberal bastions of academia. If you cannot convince your
colleagues of the worth of your arguments, then you can cry out that
you’re being discriminated against for simply having “differing views.”
But things don’t work like that in science: we don’t teach intelligent
design alongside evolution, or alternative theories of the cause of
AIDS. Supporters of those discredited ideas would say we need to “teach
the controversy” and not be dogmatic, but there is no controversy to be
had: the preponderance of the evidence supports evolution and HIV as the
cause of AIDS. Similarly, many of the Covid contrarians’ favorite claims
have withered in the sunlight of scientific scrutiny.
Current Issue
Cover of October 2024 Issue
October 2024 Issue
But just as the Federalist Society has established influence over law
schools and the judiciary, the Covid contrarians and their supporters
would like to do the same for medicine and public health, by
mainstreaming their views—both in academic settings and then in public
policy—by sheer brute force. They won’t give up, and they have the money
and resources to continue their campaigns. Should former president Trump
regain the White House, their fortunes will rise and these threats to
academic integrity, and to the public health itself (through adoption of
their views in practice) will go into overdrive.
And for anyone who thinks this is all academic, in mid-September, the
surgeon general of Florida recommended against the use of mRNA Covid
vaccines, just as we’re heading into respiratory virus season,
endangering the lives of the residents of the state with quackery and
pseudoscience. Of course, it’s the same Covid contrarians who have
organized these meetings, who have been advising the DeSantis
administration for several years now on pandemic policy. Shame on them.
Some of Our Top Schools Are Embarrassing Themselves Over Covid
Why are places like Stanford and Johns Hopkins hosting gatherings of
well-known coronavirus cranks?
Gregg Gonsalves
Share
Stanford University President Jonathan Levin.
Stanford University president Jonathan Levin
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Today, Stanford University is holding an all-day gathering on the Covid
pandemic, with its new president making opening remarks. It’s the second
such meeting at a prestigious university in recent months, after Johns
Hopkins hosted a “symposium on health policy” in September. They may
seem fine on the surface, but both events should be a source of
embarrassment for the institutions involved. (I have a personal stake in
the former gathering: I’m spending my time this fall at Stanford with a
group of wonderful, truly talented researchers, who I hope do not get
sprayed with the stink of this misbegotten affair.)
The video player is currently playing an ad.
While the organization and funding for these two meetings isn’t
explicitly linked, the cast of characters at both are eerily similar.
They each feature a collection of well-known Covid contrarians: those
who, in the early days of the pandemic thought we should “let ’er rip”
and get as many people infected as possible, with a performative nod to
protecting the vulnerable; suggested that vaccine and mask mandates were
somehow akin to Nazi totalitarianism; told us not to worry about
variants (“variants, schmariants,” as one of them remarked months before
Delta and Omicron blasted their way through the US); and said we’d have
herd immunity by April 2021.
If you want just one piece of evidence about the kind of cranks we’re
talking about, consider this: A late addition to the Stanford meeting is
a senior editor of the Epoch Times, a far-right publication that not
only dabbles in Covid conspiracies but is a frequent purveyor of climate
change denialism.
While the organizers have tried to add a few reasonable voices to the
meeting, it doesn’t change the overall thrust of these gatherings. As
former Texas governor Ann Richards said, “You can put lipstick and
earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it’s still a pig.”
Health reporters like Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times blew the
whistle on the Stanford conference in mid-September, and others who have
focused on debunking the pseudoscience of this crew have written about
the meetings on both coasts. The faculty at both institutions who are
pushed for and are behind these convocations have defended them on the
grounds of academic freedom—a defense that, in our current era of
freakouts over “cancel culture,” neither Stanford or Hopkins would have
had an easy time overcoming. Chalk one up to the contrarians for putting
these schools in an impossible situation—though that still does not
explain why Stanford’s president feels the need to personally show up today.
The architects of these meetings come with bags and bags of right-wing
funding, some of it laundered through think tanks and other
institutions. They have met with Trump officials in the White House and
guided Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Covid-19 policy. Some of them
even got a shout-out from Bret Stephens at The New York Times last week.
They whine on and on about how terribly they’ve been treated, but, far
from being persecuted, they are celebrated on the right, even if the
mainstream members of their professions have, time and time again,
considered their ideas and roundly rejected them on their merits.
My question is: Why host these meetings now and in these venues?
Some have suggested this is about “auditioning” for the next Trump
administration as much as it is trying to rewrite the history of the
pandemic. Both are in part probably true. But if you zoom out and think
about these meetings in the context of the right’s war on higher
education, I believe the purpose becomes clearer.
These Covid contrarians—who have found little support for their views
among their peers—have decided that the science has been turned into “a
dogmatic tool of oppression” for rejecting them. In their minds they are
Galileos against the church, and now they are tilting their fury against
the institutions themselves. This tack is of course reminiscent of the
right’s attacks on the universities as bastions of woke, left-wing
ideology, which either need to be reformed (by hiring more conservative
faculty) or gutted and rebuilt to their liking (e.g., New College of
Florida).
In this light, these two meetings are about establishing a
beachhead—building credibility in what many of the organizers would
consider the liberal bastions of academia. If you cannot convince your
colleagues of the worth of your arguments, then you can cry out that
you’re being discriminated against for simply having “differing views.”
But things don’t work like that in science: we don’t teach intelligent
design alongside evolution, or alternative theories of the cause of
AIDS. Supporters of those discredited ideas would say we need to “teach
the controversy” and not be dogmatic, but there is no controversy to be
had: the preponderance of the evidence supports evolution and HIV as the
cause of AIDS. Similarly, many of the Covid contrarians’ favorite claims
have withered in the sunlight of scientific scrutiny.
Current Issue
Cover of October 2024 Issue
October 2024 Issue
But just as the Federalist Society has established influence over law
schools and the judiciary, the Covid contrarians and their supporters
would like to do the same for medicine and public health, by
mainstreaming their views—both in academic settings and then in public
policy—by sheer brute force. They won’t give up, and they have the money
and resources to continue their campaigns. Should former president Trump
regain the White House, their fortunes will rise and these threats to
academic integrity, and to the public health itself (through adoption of
their views in practice) will go into overdrive.
And for anyone who thinks this is all academic, in mid-September, the
surgeon general of Florida recommended against the use of mRNA Covid
vaccines, just as we’re heading into respiratory virus season,
endangering the lives of the residents of the state with quackery and
pseudoscience. Of course, it’s the same Covid contrarians who have
organized these meetings, who have been advising the DeSantis
administration for several years now on pandemic policy. Shame on them.