On Tuesday, word spread that the National Institutes of Health was launching a series of what it’s calling “Scientific Freedom Lectures,” with the first scheduled for March 20. The “freedom” theme echoes one of the major concerns of the director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, who feels he suffered outrageous censorship of his ideas during the pandemic and is using his anger about it to fuel his efforts to bring change to the NIH. Given that scientific freedom is a major interest of the director, you might think that the first lecture would be delivered by a distinguished scientist. Guess again.
The speaker at the first lecture will be a former journalist best known for his fringe ideas on COVID and the climate. The topic will be the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a lab, an idea for which there is no scientific evidence.
Freedom for me
Bhattacharya was one of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that we should try to protect the elderly and vulnerable but otherwise enable COVID to spread through the rest of the population. By and large, public health officials were aghast at the likely consequences—overwhelmed hospital systems, a still-substantial rate of mortality among healthy adults, the consequences of more cases of long COVID, etc.—and argued strongly against it.
Bhattacharya suffered no professional consequences, but felt his ideas were being suppressed. He took part in a lawsuit that accused the government of censoring him, but the Supreme Court rejected it on the grounds that he was unable to tie any alleged incident of censorship to the government agencies he sued. Since then, he’s been animated by the idea that the scientific community needs major reform, going so far as to call for a second scientific revolution.
So “scientific freedom” is an idea that likely originated from the director himself. If one wanted the theme to resonate with the scientific community, however, it might be a good idea to launch the series with a respected scientist whose work was actually suppressed in some way. Bhattacharya hasn’t gone that route.
Instead, he’s chosen Matthew Ridley, a British hereditary peer and science journalist. While some of his early books on biology were highly praised, Ridley has mostly been known for his fringe ideas about climate change. While Ridley accepts that the greenhouse effect is real and we are warming the planet, he appears to be convinced that warming will be at the low extreme of the range expected by mainstream science (if he has detailed his reasons for believing this, we have been unable to find it). Instead, he argues that a boost in plant growth and lower cold-related deaths will make climate change a net win for humanity.
That, plus an interest in a coal mine on his property, has led to him being listed as a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Institute, a UK-based think tank extreme enough that labelling it a “climate change denial lobby group” is considered consistent with Wikipedia’s view neutrality rules.
On the fringes
Ridley’s fringe ideas aren’t limited to climate change. He apparently shares Bhattacharya’s belief that society would have been best served by letting COVID spread uninhibited through younger populations. He has also latched onto the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in a lab leak, going so far as to coauthor a book promoting the idea.
It’s an idea largely based on societal factors: the proximity of a viral research lab, the general secrecy of the Chinese government, and so on. Some features of the virus that initially seemed unusual—and were cited by lab-leak backers as evidence—have since turned up in related viruses. And over the years, actual scientific evidence has consistently pointed to the likelihood that COVID originated from a spillover event at a market in Wuhan.
This evidence continues to grow; just this week, a new study shows that, like other viruses that emerged from spillover events, SARS-CoV-2 lacks a genetic signature typically found in viruses propagated in a lab.
Obviously, Ridley is free to continue advocating for an idea that has become increasingly disfavored by the scientific community—he even wrote a book about it. But what he’s doing hardly seems scientific, given that he has largely avoided engaging with the scientific evidence that has emerged about the virus’ origins.
Given that, it’s not clear what message Bhattacharya thinks he’s sending by inviting Ridley to launch the lecture series. It’s consistent with his willingness to entertain the fringe ideas of the MAHA movement that helped him get his current position. But it’s not at all clear where he thinks this is will all end up.
