Earlier today, a video producer -candidate on Upwork bowed out of a perfectly ordinary job, not because of scheduling or skills-- but ideology. After initially showing excitement and interest over the job, he demurred, writing:
“I don’t feel comfortable promoting anti-vax (sic) content and anti-DEI content… I don’t want to be seen representing these ideas.”
He’s a freelancer, tasked with a small ‘backstage’ role. Fortunately, he has self-identified his absence of professionalism and surfeit of ideology: a glaring mismatch in any marketplace. When I engage a car mechanic I don’t check his voting record.
Moreover, “anti-vax” is a brick thrown by the dull-witted. As I noted in my recent “Unraveling Autism’s Surge”,
I’ve given thousands of vaccines as a physician and taken many myself. But not every shot fits every person. A yellow fever vaccine makes sense in West Africa, not Nebraska. Context matters. Tailoring vaccines to individual risk isn’t “anti-vaccine” any more than refusing a ski parka at the beach is “anti-clothing.” The label is ignorant shorthand-- a way to silence doubt rather than engage with evidence.
Science Writer Rights Science?
This encounter brought me back to a strikingly similar experience with (ostensible) science writer Andrea Graves, who had helped as a sounding board for my Lessons from the Burst Zika Bubble. Subsequently and abruptly, she abruptly canceled any future work; because she didn't politically approve of the sole venue that had (bravely) agreed to run it.
The irony is that in 2019 I didn’t just keep a spreadsheet of every major newspaper, medical and science journal, and TV station in the country; I wrote to each. I'd aimed for the Wall Street Journalwhile writing it, given a slight inside connection, but ‘crickets’ there and everywhere else— despite my still-pertinent analysis that the Zika–microcephaly panic/pandemic had been wildly overblown. These venues’ shunning my piece forestalled relief for the hundreds of millions of young women throughout the tropics who continue to live under the persistent (but false) fear that a single mosquito bite in early pregnancy may permanently damage their unborn children.
But for Ms. Graves, my erstwhile editor, none of that mattered. Her virulent anti-Trump politics demanded the performance of solidarity with “the people” — yet those very people included the poorest, most vulnerable women in the tropics. Those women were left to suffer under a manufactured fear, pushed by bad science into sheltering at home during pregnancy (well before COVID), while I was one of the few voices challenging the false Zika–microcephaly connection. I can’t prove a coordinated conspiracy, but the effect was the same: a news blackout against anyone who contradicted Fauci’s line or published in an outlet deemed conservative.
In the end, only American Greatness was willing to publish my Zika piece, and only American Thinker would take my later (early covid era) article, Is Universal Testing a Universal Good?. They showed the bravery that mainstream outlets lacked. And yet, in Graves’ mind, publishing there was disqualifying: proof that I had crossed into forbidden territory. That tells you everything about how far the supposed iconoclast Left has fallen. Woodstock’s boomer generation of “question authority” has both become and spawned today’s schoolmarmish caste of pampered upper-class twits, scolding anyone who steps outside the approved narrative
Her own words:
“My strong suspicion is that whatever (next) is written will end up on a website like American Greatness or American Thinker with a twist that supports the attitudes of whoever it is that reads such sites. I am more than a little traumatized by reading them (!?). We are a bit sheltered from such attitudes in NZ.”
And again:
“I’ll always be worried and on-edge that what seems to me like an enjoyable intellectual exploration will be attached to right-wing policy. I do not want to be part of that (even if I do secretly want narrower hospital doors!*
* [i. e., to keep out the obese (!); undeserving of care (hers or society’s), foreshadowing of similar covid attitudes towards the unvaccinated]).”
So there it was: not the quality of the work, not the science, but the platform.
Medicine’s Prestigious (Tongue-) Suppressors
The highest levels of medical publishing behaved the same way. In early 2020, I had a Zoom call with JAMA’s two chief editors, Drs. Livingston and Bauchner. The former was intrigued by my investigations’ pointing out that Zika–microcephaly had vanished because the science was never really there in the first place. But then came his stonewall (paraphrased):
“This is not the right time. (Debunking Zika-microcephaly) might sow doubt amongst the public toward the public health establishment at this crucial juncture. Why don’t you try to get back to us in few weeks when this coronavirus thing will have blown over”.
Maturity means recognizing imperfection: much as growing children accept no Santa Claus; adults can grasp that institutions (like Dr. Fauci’s NIAID, involved in both Zika and Covid) sometimes err (I know, “shocking!”). Even though admitting mistakes strengthens trust; and hiding them corrodes it, JAMA chose Omertà.
Livingston and Bauchner, though disgraced, at least retained their medical licenses. Earlier, I had not been so lucky. They thought they were shoring up authority by suppression-- yet in the end that same authority devoured them too -- having yielded to its own Maoist undercurrent.”
So there you have it: the Upwork job seeker; the science writer; the editors of “prestigious” JAMA. From freelancers to elite medical thought, they all do it: substitute politics for professionalism.
Everyday Maoism
In New Hampshire, a wealthy transplant (falling within the locals’ pejorative designation, “Masshole”) needed her driveway plowed. She was ready to hire an efficient, inexpensive, well-regarded contractor until she learned he had once (Facebook-) “liked” a pro-Trump post. Suddenly he was untouchable.
It reminded me of the New York progressives who moved upstate during COVID. They arrived brimming with suspicion of their conservative neighbors-- until a snowstorm stranded them.
Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job. How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?
This is not a “both sides” problem. Conservatives don’t generally cancel service providers for ideological differences. But progressives, especially in professional and academic circles, seem incapable of bridging even the smallest divide. They prefer to cancel competence rather than risk contamination.
When Politics Overrides Reality
The irony is that the truths being suppressed are the ones that matter most. My Zika research was correct. It exposed a false global panic. It spared women needless fear. That reality towers over the fragile sensibilities of editors, the résumé anxiety of freelancers, or the social fears of wealthy neighbors.
Donald Trump was mocked for challenging “the experts,” but on Zika, the supposed experts were dead wrong. The facts bore that out. Yet Andrea Graves, a science editor, couldn’t abide them. That Upwork media professional wouldn’t touch them. JAMA’s editors refused to publish them. And a New Hampshire woman wouldn’t hire a plowman who had the wrong Facebook “like.”
This is what happens when politics overrides professionalism. Science editors refuse to follow data. Media producers refuse to produce. Neighbors refuse to neighbor. And all the while, reality keeps voting-- whether we like it or not.
Postscript on McNeil.
In 2023 I wrote “The Marvelous Mr. McNeil” for Brownstone.org; including recounting certain of our own personal exchanges. McNeil’s faith was never in data itself but in authority: in who made the statements. He claimed Zika’s link to microcephaly was “thoroughly debunked” as a mere rumor, yet his evidence boiled down to “Brazilian neonatal ICU clinicians aren’t idiots” and the fact that he had interviewed them. That, apparently, was science.
In 2021, after reading my Overturning Zika manuscript on Google Docs, McNeil responded: “I read enough to see that your Zika theories, which I consider false, have not changed… I am repulsed.” He was not referring to data, but to false, exonerated allegations about my medical practice. Conversely, a court-validated peccadillo didn’t trouble him, vis-à-vis Dr. Frieden.
Always thought the zika-microcephaly connection was suspect. Didn’t make sense that citizens from one country would experience an outcome in a disease carried by a vector that doesn’t respect invisible borders.
Always thought the zika-microcephaly connection was suspect. Didn’t make sense that citizens from one country would experience an outcome in a disease carried by a vector that doesn’t respect invisible borders.