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On the latest episode of GoodFellows, senior fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson are joined by their former Hoover colleague Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, currently serving as Director of the National Institutes of Health.
Bhattacharya is a former professor at Stanford University Medical School and passionate advocate for high-quality scientific research. The GoodFellows speak with him about Americans’ loss of trust in scientific institutions; the legacy of the COVID pandemic and Dr. Anthony Fauci; the reforms Bhattacharya has instituted at the NIH to improve academic freedom in medical science; and how the incentives in scientific research can be changed to encourage more replicable discoveries, not just more publications.
Later in the episode, Niall, John, and H.R. break down the state of the Iran war; calls for AI regulation; and what The Odyssey has to say about modern warrior culture. Read on for the highlights from this episode.
Quote of the Day
Niall Ferguson asks Bhattacharya to explain the “crisis of replicability” in scientific research:
Niall, it’s absolutely shocking when I talk to people who don’t know about this. But it is a fact that a large chunk of the biomedical sciences, and it’s unfortunately not just the biomedical sciences published literature: When independent people look at the same question, or even just narrowly reanalyze the data that’s there or, ask for new data or new approaches to the same question, they often find [a] different answer. In cancer biology, basically 70% of papers are not replicable, or the methods aren’t described enough in a way so that a replication could happen. And it has real consequences, not just cancer biology. Neurobiology and psychology and field after field. Just recently, economics came under the same sort of focus.
The reason is common to all of these fields. The reason is that the way that we judge productivity in every single scientific field, it seems, is very narrow and not tied to actually finding truth. We measure productivity based on how many papers you’ve published and how influential you are as measured by citations.
The Central Issue: America’s COVID Response
Bhattacharya argues that the way Dr. Anthony Fauci approached his leadership role in public health communications and decision-making was “heartbreaking.”
The way that he approached public health and the way that he approached science left no room for debate or discussion. He “was the science.” It actually wasn’t scientific in one sense. It was an argument from authority on things where he really didn’t have the sort of institutional role or expertise really to make judgements. And as a result, there [were] all kinds of instances where it seemed to me from reading the extracts [of Fauci’s COVID journal] that were sent [to me] that he was saying things publicly that he didn’t believe. Like the very definition of hypocrisy, right? . . . It’s heartbreaking to think about what might have been if someone with a little less sense of hubris had been in that position, had been a little more circumspect in how he communicated the really conflicting data.
John Cochrane responds by pointing out that the failures of COVID leadership went far beyond one individual, implicating institutions both public and private.
It wasn’t just one guy. . . the entire science community was in on it. You and Scott Atlas were canceled by your colleagues at Stanford, by all the large medical and public health institutions that were all in on this. And, and it clearly was some politics. It was kind of funny when, you know, before the election, Republicans were for vaccines and Democrats were against it, and then the election [happened], and all of a sudden, whoops, we changed sides on vaccines. So it’s not just the arrogance of one man. It’s a whole set of institutions jumping in and doing it. . . It’s also the censorship, which you experienced. The censorship from the government, the Twitter files, the cancellations, the universities. . .
Cochrane stresses the importance of sorting out these institutional failures before another pandemic or health crisis strains the system:
What worries me most is the next pandemic: The catastrophic failure of trust, not just in the science, but certainly in the institutions of science. . . in the institution of the CDC. The next pandemic [may] come before we’re ready. . . and the [memory of the] utter incompetence of these institutions [may well] lead people to just ignore all advice.
Key Takeaways
What are some ways we can improve the structure of American scientific research?
Bhattacharya describes several of the policy shifts he’s initiated, including:
One of the first things I did is, I issued an academic freedom policy at the NIH. . . What actually used to happen is that . . . for politically consequential or controversial results, scientists would have to get clearance from my office sometimes in order to be allowed to send it out for publication at all. Under my new academic freedom policy, if a scientist has a result, the only clearance they have to get is based on handicap accessibility and all that other [legal compliance] stuff that normally is nothing substantive. [Under the new policy] they’re allowed to send it out, even if I disagree with it. I don’t want to police scientific results.
What’s Going on in Iran?
Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster shares his view as to why the US seems to be vacillating back and forth between military escalation and recommitment to diplomacy:
I think really what’s happening is, the president has this dissonance about him, you know, about “peace through strength Trump“ or “retrenchment and disengagement Trump.” He always prefers a big deal rather than military action, and so people are in his ear telling him he’s going to get the deal. So he, he listens to them and says, “Okay, well, you know, maybe I’ll wait. Maybe I’ll extend the ceasefire. Maybe I’ll, you know, we won’t engage in a sustained air campaign again or try to force the straight open.”
And so I think what you’re likely to see is this continuous, you know, one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back. And then the unavoidable conclusion that we cannot in any way accommodate the Islamic Republic of Iran. We can’t give them the infusion of cash they so desperately want. We can’t give them control over the Strait of Hormuz. And we can’t give them continued access to this ability to project power outside of their borders such that they hold a portion of the global economy at risk, and the Gulf State economic model at risk. So that’s where I think we’re headed.
Recommended Reading
During their discussion of the cultural phenomenon that has been Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, the GoodFellows offer a few reading recommendations on the theme of warriors and warfare:
The Odyssey by Homer (specifically the Robert Fagels translation)
Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay
The Warrior Ethos by Christopher Coker
Parting Wisdom
Niall Ferguson reflects on what the course of the Iran war so far has revealed about the real-world limitations of America’s high-tech military capabilities:
I think part of the problem is that we somewhat overstated the achievements of the first phase of the war, particularly with respect to missile and drone capabilities. [Which then] made it seem as if Iran had bounced back. I tell you one thing I’ve learned from the last few months: AI may be very powerful, but it certainly wasn’t powerful enough to defeat the Islamic Republic. It was supposed to be the first “AI-enabled war.” Remember that, chaps? Well, AI doesn’t seem to be good enough to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or get President Trump out of the slightly Lyndon Johnson situation he finds himself in.
That wraps up this GoodFellows conversation guide. If you like this companion to the show, or have any recommendations for future conversation guides, please let us know in the comments below.
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. An economist specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics, he is the author of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. He also authors a popular Substack called The Grumpy Economist.
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Ascent of Money, Civilization, and Doom; columnist with the Free Press; founder of Greenmantle; and co-founder of the University of Austin.
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and distinguished visiting fellow at Arizona State University. He is author of the bestselling books Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, and At War With Ourselves.