Scientists Demand Bhattacharya Be Disinvited From NAS Panel, Revisiting Strategy That Resulted In Him Becoming NIH Director

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Dozens of scientists on Bluesky demanded that the National Academies of Sciences disinvite NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya from a workshop on scientific integrity, deploying the same strategy of professional ostracism that previously resulted in Bhattacharya becoming the director of the National Institutes of Health.

“We cannot allow him to be platformed,” posted a professor of epidemiology who also signed letters in 2021 calling for Bhattacharya to be excluded from scientific discourse, a campaign Bhattacharya subsequently cited in approximately every media appearance, podcast, and congressional testimony that comprised his ascent from marginal Stanford economist to head of a $47 billion federal research agency. “Giving him a stage legitimizes his views.” Bhattacharya’s current stage is the NIH. His current audience is the entire biomedical research enterprise. The NAS workshop is on Zoom.

The dissenters argue that Bhattacharya’s presence at a workshop on scientific integrity is “inappropriate given his record.” This includes his co-authorship of the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which was denounced by the scientific mainstream, which Bhattacharya used to build a public identity as a censored truth-teller, which he leveraged into a relationship with Republican lawmakers, which he leveraged into a relationship with the Trump campaign, which he leveraged into a nomination to lead the NIH, where he now controls the funding of almost all every scientist who signed the letter demanding he be disinvited from a Zoom call.

An HHS official, reached for comment, said “we love when they do this.”