As grad students, we would occasionally take turns imagining an alternative career path for our science degrees, since there were very few open academic positions for new PhDs (and hundreds of doctoral and postdoctoral students pursuing each of them). “Kathy” had the funniest one: she would be the first scientist and centerfold model in “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.” MMWR’s huge readership would gain her a lot of exposure. And it certainly wouldn’t sully that journal’s stellar reputation any more than the current administration has.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched its flagship MMWR journal nearly 100 years ago. Since its inception, MMWR (initially the “Weekly Health Index”) was THE authoritative and independent information source for emerging diseases and the effects of medical interventions, including the first reports of AIDS and early coverage of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The initial COVID-19 years also saw unprecedented attempts by political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services to control what was and wasn’t published in MMWR. They accused the journal and its editors of playing politics with what they would print, especially information that disagreed with the bio-lunacy emanating daily from the White House Press Room. One notable example: an MMWR paper demonstrating the uselessness of hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID caused these HHS overseers to demand that the authors state their political affiliations and threatened them with termination or worse.
Fortunately, the then somewhat-functional House of Representatives stopped these contemptible attacks before too much damage was done. With the election of a new U.S. president at the end of 2020, the CDC (and other science institutions) breathed a sigh of relief. But as it turns out, the depredation of science by the ousted administration was only a foreshock of a much larger quake to come.
This past week brought news that acting head of the CDC (also full-time head of the National Institutes of Health) Jay Bhattacharya went beyond simply questioning an MMWR article: He ignored the traditional independence and scientific rigor of the MMWR editors to prevent publication of a paper that did not align with the beliefs of his boss, HHS director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This rejected article — a fairly standard type of paper regularly published in MMWR — used tried-and-true scientific methods to demonstrate the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing hospitalizations and/or death in vaccinated people over the past year.
But according to an HHS spokesperson, Bhattacharya found the paper’s analytical method “deeply flawed,” so he nixed publication despite several rounds of scientific review and by MMWR editors far more qualified than him to evaluate it. Unsurprisingly, no information about his preferred alternate method of analysis was given, nor was an explanation of his perceived flaws in the proven methodologies. When pushed further, he changed his rationale for rejection to disparaging the MMWR’s peer-review process itself. A laughable excuse that only further beggars belief that Bhattacharya’s action is anything more than an attempt to keep his roadkill-fixated boss (and his boss’s boss) happy.
The science fantasy world being woven together by RFK, Jr., and his MAHA cadre of quackery would be funny if it weren’t so deadly — primarily to the very people who support them most. It is appalling to see how successfully they misuse the language of science — but ignore its rigorous adherence to reality — to take advantage of most Americans’ poor knowledge of science discoveries and methods. Decades of the far-right chipping away at educational efforts to teach “how to think” rather than “what to think” are having the effect they hoped for: A recent article in Nature describes the “staggering number” of people (roughly a third of the population) who strongly believe claims about vaccines, raw milk, etc., that completely lack or even outright oppose scientific evidence.
Some pundits point out that the MAHAcks haven’t outright banished vaccines and other treatments, at least. To which I respond: “Yet.” If they are willing to risk harm to their supporters by telling them to avoid these “fake” treatments, they are certainly willing to prevent the rest of us from accessing such therapies. Their fatuous dismissal of real-world scientific evidence and methodologies will make that effort much easier for them to do, especially if they go unchallenged.
Fintan Steele is an ex-Benedictine monk and priest with a Ph.D. in biology/genetics. He spent most of his life in science communications, including scientific publishing and, most recently, for biopharma and academic centers. He and his husband live in Boulder County. Email: fsteele1@me.com.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.