NIH Employees Protest Dr. Bhattacharya Telling Them the Truth

Every institution gets corrupted to some degree over time. As with the Fed, managers and executives of even the best institutions have a dual mandate: ensure that the ostensible purpose of the organization is pursued, AND ensure that the institution thrives. On top of that, everybody in the institution wants to further their own interests, which often diverge from the two explicit mandates. 

Corruption is inevitable because these three imperatives clash, and the latter two always win out in the long run, even in businesses where the profit motive, which supposedly aligns all three of them, falls prey to this same problem. That’s why big businesses so often need to be restructured–bureaucratic inertia and competing divisions pursuing their own interests undermine efficiency. That’s how you get DEI, ESG, and plain old inefficiency. 

Government and NGOs almost never get restructured. The result is that their original mission fades into the background in favor of self-dealing. There is no way to enforce accountability, and so everybody looks out for himself. 

That’s how you get scenes like this:

Only an ignoramus–a shit-for-brains-level ignoramus–or a fraud would protest the NIH Director’s acknowledgement of the fact that NIH-sponsored research most likely caused COVID.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) May 20, 2025

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was hired to reform a badly broken National Institutes of Health. That the institution is badly broken is denied by almost nobody. It has departed so far from its mission that it likely funded the creation of the COVID vaccine–even if you doubt that its funding of gain-of-function research, you must admit that it is at least plausible that it did–and participated in a self-conscious coverup to hide that fact. 

Bhattacharya, speaking to his employees, told them the truth. He didn’t assert the unprovable–he merely stated the obvious: gain-of-function research is dangerous, and the American people want it stopped. And his employees freaked out, stormed out, and their colleagues applauded them for doing so. 

Dr. Francis Collins, when he was NIH Director, commissioned a “devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, and he later admitted that the argument put forth by Dr. Bhattacharya and others was reasonable, but politically inconvenient. He did this because the recommendations were ones he and Fauci rejected, not because they were obviously wrong or outside public health norms. 

In other words, the very institution charged with promoting public health suppressed scientific discussion for its own institutional reasons, not the public good. This isn’t even in dispute these days. 

Yet NIH employees don’t want to hear the truth, so they walked out on their boss. 

Scientists and science administrators–like those staging the walkout–have shown themselves to be unwilling to address facts and unable to admit culpability.

They have forfeited the right to a “scientific forum.”

The case needs to be made in civil and criminal courtrooms.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) May 20, 2025

This attitude is a betrayal of the NIH’s mission and the ultimate cause for the collapse of public faith in the medical profession. That collapse of public faith will cost thousands, or perhaps millions of lives, because nobody in the public can tell whether recommendations coming from “experts” are genuinely good for them, or good for the public health community. 

I’ve seen this same phenomenon in the nonprofit sector more times than I can count. Organizations that began with the best intentions transform over time into something completely unrecognizable. Environmental organizations that sabotage compromises that they should applaud because fundraising is better when they are adversarial. Conservative organizations that spend more time and effort fundraising than advancing the cause. 

The USAID scandal is the ultimate example: the majority of the money going to “good works” winds up feathering the nests of grifters rather than doing anything remotely useful. 

In government and the nonprofit world, with few exceptions, failure is not just tolerated but rewarded. Whenever a program or policy fails, more money flows in that direction. That’s why, in Blue states and cities, the flood of money to address homelessness always leads to more homelessness and hence even more money. The crisis pays well. 

What do you do with institutions like the NIH, which has become so badly broken that its scientists will protest any attempt to face reality, no less fix it?

I don’t know. It’s clear we need an NIH or something like it. But it’s just as clear that reforming it will require stripping it down to the studs and completely remodeling it. 

Jay has a tough task ahead of him, as does every official charged with reforming fundamentally broken institutions.