The subversion of scientific expertise to replace it with podcasters and political sycophants is one of the biggest disasters of the current years.
The very concept of merit has been destroyed and replaced with judgement calls on celebrity (necessary for leadership role) and subservience to the political whims of the last 15 minutes (and you had better switch in the next 15 minutes or you're out).
It is not a disaster. It is a part of carefully orchestrated attack on Western democracies by enemy states.
This stupidity is home-grown. Blaming "enemy states" is deflection - the quicker we understand that the quicker we can get to fixing this mess.
I don’t know. Seems like the Orban government was funneling an awful lot of money to CPAC. You know, one of Putin’s closest allies. Not sure it’s genuinely home grown.
Certainly both are happening, to one degree or another. Hostile influence campaigns are having some effect but I would give homegrown the most credit. Given the general bumbling of the Putin/Orban governments of the world I doubt they are overly competent in this one area. Most of the physical sabotage operations that have been uncovered in Europe weren't very sophisticated; even if they are still dangerous.
Americans are incredibly pissed about all sorts of things, both valid and absurd, and have a long track record of picking bad options as a fix.
it's not enemy states, it's a reactionary attack from within.
One thing that's particularly frustrating about all this is that any conversation with the growing contingency of distrustful people has been made very difficult by what I would call poor, avoidable, and illiberal decisions made by the federal government during COVID. (TBF, decisions during a crisis are always hard.)
Lab leak theory was dismissed and actively suppressed. Inflated claims were made a priori about absolute vaccine efficacy that any responsible researcher who have not made.
Moreover, the trouble with trying to shut down real disinformation, eg claims that vaccines were more dangerous than the virus, is that many people will view any sort of paternalistic behavior by the government, especially around speech, with suspicion. ("Why do they care so much about what I say? They must be hiding something")
In the age of social media, I think the study of public health needs to consider more seriously the effects of viral psychology. The irrationality and stubbornness of people needs to be expected when planning public policy.
Having lived through it myself, I found the government’s actions extremely mild when compared to something like what ICE has been up to. Zero people were directly killed by authorities because of Covid noncompliance.
From my perspective, it’s hysteria borne out of the difference in requirements for urban health policy vs. rural health policy, and the fact that rural people quite often travel through urban areas (e.g. airports).
Talk to anyone from Wyoming and ask what Covid was like during the worst days, and then talk to an ER doctor who worked in New York City.
Cynically, I want to blame it on the absurd lack of empathy of rural Americans and a complete lack of ability to imagine day-to-day lifestyles that do not match their own.
Were there a few scandals? For sure, I will not deny that. But I have the distinct urge to invent time travel for the hemmers, hawers, and devil’s advocates and transport them to New York Presbyterian in April of 2020.
Edit: I also have to credit rightwing media, of course, for capitalizing on the opportunity to manufacture a wedge issue that every American had an armchair opinion of. Chicken and egg, of course, but media ghouls will be media ghouls.
> Cynically, I want to blame it on the absurd lack of empathy of rural Americans and a complete lack of ability to imagine day-to-day lifestyles that do not match their own.
Doesn't that cut both ways, though? Controls needed to keep densely populated areas safe aren't always necessary in low density areas like Wyoming. Yet some of those controls affected the livelihood of many people in areas of the country that are often poorer than those in dense urban areas.
And, yes, if a rural person is traveling to an urban area, they would have to abide by the same rules. Same as an urban person traveling to a rural area should be able to relax some of the restrictions they had to deal with. But it was mostly all or nothing, helping the divide grow even larger.
> And, yes, if a rural person is traveling to an urban area, they would have to abide by the same rules. Same as an urban person traveling to a rural area should be able to relax some of the restrictions they had to deal with.
Isn’t this precisely what organically happened? Again, there were no federal agents armed with guns and pepper spray roaming the nation, enforcing Covid compliance. Rural bars, restaurants, stores pretty much all remained open the whole pandemic minus the couple of weeks where we weren’t sure if it was thousands or millions of people who would die.
People were “forced” to wear masks, which again, in practice, meant that once you got a certain number of miles away from an urban center there was no enforcement.
Plenty of Americans never got vaccinated. Their travel was restricted. Fair trade off all things considered. Urban people shouldn’t be forced to eat (i.e. live) where rural people shit (i.e. gallivant around as a disease vector).
> Yet some of those controls affected the livelihood of many people in areas of the country that are often poorer than those in dense urban areas.
This is very bad faith. The rural poor were completely unaffected by Covid measures. I traveled to Kentucky throughout Covid for hiking and pretty much never saw a mask. The rural poor also were unaffected by travel restrictions because the rural poor do not travel.
I swear the only acceptable policy for some people would have been no policy at all. Any active policy would have eroded “trust in institutions”.
Dead people don’t buy products either.
I lived in Manhattan in April 2020 and specifically know doctors who worked in the ER at Mt. Sinai. I think the vaccine mandates, to the limited extent there were any, were not paternalistic in a way that was unreasonable.
I would not say shutting down all discussion about a topic (lab origin) that ends up getting vindicated is a minor scandal. It's something everyone observed that erodes trust at a national level.
> I would not say shutting down all discussion about a topic (lab origin) that ends up getting vindicated is a minor scandal.
“Shutting down all discussion” - lol. I mean this is grossly hyperbolic. Were social media companies coordinating with the government to slow disinformation? Yes. Was it applied too broadly? Maybe. But describing it as “shutting down all discussion” is a disservice to people who don’t know as much as you and I do.
And yes, in the grand scheme of things, it is a minor scandal. Have you watched the news recently? Save your energy for issues that matter.
Harris lost by a couple percentage points in few key states. Perhaps the news you are talking about wouldn't be happening if trust in institutions hadn't fallen so low.
I don't think whataboutism is helpful here. I think the FDA was broadly well-intentioned, and this administration is not. But this article isn't about ICE.
You're right, this article is about the Trump administration going out of their way to pick political appointees who go out of their way to make us sicker in such a despicable way that even they cannot justify it.
It's wild to me that we keep talking about Biden/Kamala as if they are the ones responsible for the lost in trust in institutions when we have a Republican party and Fox news that blast that the government can do nothing right for the last 3 decades of my life.
Sure, the Democrats can do a LOT better for the common folk, but it's so misplacing the blame as to be mind boggling.
All models are wrong but some are useful. Blame is rarely a useful model because solutions require internal locus of control not external
What I often hear is that it's not useful to blame conservatives, but conservatives can live 90% of their political lives by blaming others, shifting the blame even for things they actively choose to do on their own.
People reject science because of misinformation spread by conservatives?! Oh that's the scientists fault for not doing a better job of countering the conservatives!
You see it all over this thread too.
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Lab origin theory was never vindicated. Even if it was should we not study viruses that can affect humans to be able to create vaccines?
I was more middle of the road. I live in a rural red red state. Then during COVID people would yell at my dying of cancer mother on chemo for wearing a mask while grocery shopping. Eventually the stores had to set special hours so people like her could shop without harassment. My politics have been greatly impacted. I was shown there is no compassionate conservative, that is just cover for 'fuck everyone who is not me and my in group'. Or if there are compassionate conservatives, they don't care to step in an impose compassion, so they might as well not exist. My mom died afraid to go shopping in her own community because she would be verbally abused. My politics are never going back.
> they don't care to step in and impose compassion, so they might as well not exist.
Is this not what the store owners did?
Zero patrons inside the stores cared/did anything. A business structuring things to prevent a scene is not compassion in my mind, just like pride awareness by businesses wasn't actual pride awareness.
Deciding whether someone's helpful actions or lack thereof is good or bad based on your perception of their internal mental state seems pretty fraught. How do you know why the business implemented this? How do you know what the other patrons felt about it? Do you regularly pick fights with psychopaths in public?
But, by your definition, the liberal take of government-mandated compassion would also not be compassion.
I am so sorry that happened to you and your mom. We've become so tribal there's very little space for compassion for the vulnerable as we are positioned to fight tooth and nail.
"Lab leak" may or may not be true, but it's (a) going to be extremely hard to find evidence for given time and China, and (b) .. ultimately irrelevant? Are there people who think "COVID was a bioweapon and therefore we shouldn't mask up and get vaccinated"?
There are many people who say they view any sort of paternalistic behavior with suspicion. But one obvious example of paternalistic behavior would be banning vaccines that people want to receive based on vague concerns of unproven harm. An even better example might be creating a site called realfood.gov, instructing the American people that only some kinds of food are "real" and you should ideally only eat "real" food.
So if someone says they oppose paternalism in public health and yet supports the Trump administration's public health efforts, I'm not sure how to avoid the conclusion that they're lying.
What’s the problem with realfood.gov? I just read the entire landing page and it seems reasonable to me
They’re pushing back against the parent comment’s suggestion that it’s a reaction to government “paternalism” in general and much closer to just “paternalism I don’t agree with”.
It seems reasonable to me too. It's good and proper for the government to tell people that certain foods are better than others, even when the bad foods are popular. Eating a pile of candy every day isn't a personal lifestyle choice we're required to respect and encourage; it's bad for people who do it and bad for society to have lots of people doing it.
What I don't see is how anyone could argue this isn't paternalism.
Really reminds me of the Russia leadership portrayals in Chernobyl.
It's basically Lysenkoism
And, following the similar pattern of “accusation in a mirror”, is the exact same thing they accused scientists of doing during the previous administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror?wprov=s...
Which (conveniently) both justifies aggressively “fighting back” against the fictitious conspiracy and waters down any criticism as a “both sides” partisanship thing that can be cynically dismissed as business as usual in DC instead of a seismic shift in federal scientific policy to conform to arbitrary political mandates.
That’s exactly what it is.
> The subversion of scientific expertise to replace it with podcasters and political sycophants
> The very concept of merit has been destroyed ...
It's the subversion of truth. I think that way of saying it is more accurate, addresses the consequences, and is less occluded by jargon: People care about truth; 'scientific expertise' may seem esoteric to most people.
I think HN is frequently part of that process: Merit - expertise, actual trials and evidence - is replaced both by sensational too-clever hot takes / takedowns, and by political/social advocacy.
Most threads begin with a takedown, a 2 minute drive-by from an amatuer, often of years of research by someone spending their life studying the matter. For some issues, we all know what side many will take before you know any facts or evidence.
These comments are normalized and given greater credibility than the OP and than valuable comments. How is that any different than the things we criticize (other than the FDA's subversion of truth [EDIT:] is far more consequential [sorry, I didn't finish that sentence!])
There are valuable comments to be found; maybe that's one difference, but I'm wonder how the signal-to-noise compares with other forums.
How is discussion on HN different from the leadership levels at FDA?
Very different. Decisions with enormous health implications, enormous financial implications, are made at FDA.
At HN, most people are here to learn, here to understand more.
Vinay Prasad is a fraud, completely unfit for the leadership role he was placed into, making baffling and arbitrary decisions on his own, overturning those with far more experience, knowledge and expertise.
If a HN comment gets things wrong, a few people might be misinformed, if they are credulous enough to not double check things.
When the FDA makes decisions like they have been making, thousands to millions of peoples' lives are worse off, and billions in capital is wasted.
Discussion forums of all sorts are incredibly valuable, even when they get things wrong. I have lots of complaints about the overhyping of, say, CRISPR, especially on HN, but whatever, it's a far far higher signal-to-noise than a random person I meet around town. Mention you work on drug development for big pharma to the random person and they think you're evil, at least HN is less likely to have that basic misconception.
> Vinay Prasad is a fraud
What’s with him being allowed to continue to practice at the University of California [1]?
[1] https://vinayakkprasad.com/
That is a good question, and I'm sure many of the people at UCSF are asking similar questions. However, his sort of misconduct is not the type that would usually violate tenure protections. Beyond the minor CV fibbing, without some evidence that he actually, say, solicited a bribe from Moderna, it's unlikely that he can face any sort of official sanction.
The fraud is in his supposed thrust towards better scientific rigor when he is so sloppy with major decisions of life and death.
Just as the comment up there says that HN comments that are critical and misinformed get a lot of attention and upvotes, Prasad has been highly critical and misinformed about scientific research, and his stint at the FDA has exposed that his critiques are much like that top-level HN comment that doesn't get things quite right.
> not the type that would usually violate tenure
How can one tell whether he has tenure?
For normal research universities, like UCSF, the titles of Professor and Associate Professors have tenure. Assistant Professors are tenure-track, meaning that they have the chance to get tenure. Prasad has the title of Professor.
One can make the argument that Prasad has his title of Professor due to the stature he gained with his ill-founded contrarianism and subsequent notoriety. He was promoted in 2022 at the somewhat astonishing age of 39, at a time when his actual scientific output was not particularly high
The whole thing is kind of fascinating. Some of his "skeptic" fellow travelers like Cifu and Mandrola still carry water for him. Presumably he has a champion in Bob Wachter who also likes to fly the "contrarian" flag.
COVID really brought out a lot of crazies from UCSF and Stanford
I really wonder what's up with that. Also remember the crazy Stanford guys.. did something flip in their brain or were they just always like that?
Would you say Prasad’s public-health misconduct rises to the level where creating a statutory change to what permits firing under tenure makes sense?
I would say that the US has had enough destruction of institutions and few enough institutional protections of individuals.
I can dislike someone’s stance while at the same time recognizing that others benefit from the same protections.
If protections are reduced, the process will be weaponized.
> If protections are reduced, the process will be weaponized
This is a valid concern. So is moral hazard from a lack of accountability. I’m trying to figure out how those balance.
One way they should balance in a functioning society is that while tenure would protect you from negative repercussions within the walls of an academic institution, a Congress with any semblance of seriousness and care toward the American people would ensure you never set foot inside a policy-making institution.
> he is so sloppy with major decisions of life and death
To be clear, the FDA regulates marketing claims. “Is the label accurate?”
Major decisions about life and death are between the doctor and the patient, not the FDA.
It sounds like you’re taking an expansive view of this government agency’s mandate. People will push back on this at the ballot box, even if they can’t put it to words themselves.
Far more significantly, the FDA regulates what is allowed to be marketed as treatment at all, an influence that extends heavily into what types of validation studies are performed, etc.
Such decisions, what treatments are available, are far more widespread and momentous than any individual decision between a doctor and a single patient, because they affect all conversations between doctors and patients.
> It sounds like you’re taking an expansive view of this government agency’s mandate
It sounds like you don't know what the FDA does in practice. It is not my supposed "view" it is the basic factual reality of the FDA for decades and decades. (And if you are asking for my view, I believe it has the appropriate level of control of the industry, having developed products directly under their regulation. My personal experience with the FDA, and the experience of all the people I know in similar situations, has been with a very astute and scientifically meritous institution, that worked hard to make sure that products see fair and rapid evaluation. At least, up until what I have seen under Vinay Prasad.)
The FDA regulates which drugs make it to market which is itself an extremely powerful force (excessively so) on conversations between you and your doctor.
In the case of vaccines, FDA's decisions can quite obviously make a difference in whether we have a rampant lethal pathogen roaring through our schools and killing our children and elderly... or not.
It's pedantic to the point of being outright false to say the FDA is not involved in major decisions of life and death. Silly take.
> Mention you work on drug development for big pharma to the random person and they think you're evil
this is how Martin Shkreli described his work of identifying drug patents to buy that he could jack up the prices on. If that's the extent of the description you gave, I think random people would be right to first think you are doing something evil
I’m curious why you claim he’s a fraud, I just learned about him from this thread.
Prasad, to the extent he had a reputation before, was for critiquing the scientific practice as inadequate, which would hope that he'd bring the idea of rigor to his stint at the FDA. Instead, we see quite the opposite:
- This baffling Moderna decision, which is so bad that many in the industry assumed it was from a failed bribe solicitation
- Linked in this article is the "truly evil" decision requiring sham brain surgery in the placebo arm for a Huntington Disease trial https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/06/truly-evil-fda-reject...
- Prasad holding a defamatory PR event about the company producing the HD candidate treatment, and only talking "on background" to hide his identity, which is sleazy and unethical "The criticism apparently struck a nerve with Prasad. The FDA held a press briefing later Thursday in which an unnamed “senior FDA official”—who identified himself as a hematology-oncologist—launched into a diatribe against UniQure, saying its “failed therapy” was supported by “distorted and manipulated” data. As for Woodcock’s comments, the official said he “expect[s] better” from her." https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/03/trumps-divisive-fda-v...
- His first ouster and reinstatement last year, over a unilateral Duchenne muscular dystrophy decision, severely lacking in scientific rigor and analysis
- Lied on his CV about being on a highly prestigious council he was not on (The Cancer Letter is not a random YouTube channel, it's high quality cancer research journalism) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCASAb7J-LE&t=41
As is often the case with such contrarians and critics, their own critiques apply most aptly to themselves.
Nah, by 2021 Prasad's reputation had gone into the shitter
I actually think he's just grifting and the notoriety he achieved went to his head. His pre-2020 takes were better reasoned and at least worth engaging with. I could see his takes shifting with popular misinformation ideas in real time as it contributed to his success
IMO this is worse than if he were just wrong. I think he knows better, but then he talked himself into a box, and doesn't have the people and political skills to survive on a bigger stage.
> Lied on his CV about being on a highly prestigious council
You called this “minor CV fibbing” above. If he was lying about this when he applied for tenure, wouldn’t that be Cause?
This is usually modulated by whether the fib is about something "material".
In fact, he probably would have had the same decision with or without the claim which is the essence of "not material".
My own personal take is that the lying is crucial, however.
Totally agree. I’m an outsider—from finance, where I thought the bar was already low. I’m asking if this a material fib or commonplace in medicine.
People making decisions at the FDA should also be actively learning and understanding more all the time.
That should be their primary objective.
> Decisions with enormous health implications, enormous financial implications, are made at FDA.
Yes, I started writing that and didn't finish the sentence (see my edit near the end of the GP).
But I don't let HN off the hook: The attitude I described in the GP represents and perpetrates the same outlook that politically supports or tolerates this behavior from the FDA. HN users generally legitimize that approach rather than discrediting it.
> Mention you work on drug development for big pharma to the random person and they think you're evil
I think that's paranoid: The random person won't know what that means. Few who know will also know or care about the social implications. Of those who do, only some will be knee-jerk critical of big pharma, and fewer still of research rather than the business side. It's also a victim perspective: Big Pharma has enormous power; punching up at power by questioning, criticizing, and being skeptical (or even cynical) is not at all the same thing as punching down at the vulnerable. If someone wants the power and resources and salary of Big Pharma, benefitting from its enormous power, the pushback and reputation impact comes with it (though the latter is usually positive - great resume material and credibility).
Imagine being able to shut down discussion at the FDA because a few anonymous randos pushed a "flag" button when they saw something they disagreed with.
Apparently, the ‘fuck your feelings’ crowd DOES care about some ‘feelings’
They were actually clear about this, it's only your feelings that don't matter, not feelings in general.
In their minds there are two classes of people, and all of politics and law is about establishing the hierarchy. For the in group, the law is meant to protect and not bind, and the out group for which the law exists to bind but not protect.
It's clear in the language about "criminals" too. Actual convictions and clear corruption in the in group politicians? That's A-OK. An immigrant that is showing up for an official hearing? Time to be whisked away and treated with cruel and unusual punishment, whether or not their bureaucratic forms were filled out perfectly. (In particular I'm thinking of the immigration raid where South Korean professionals were helping to set up a battery factory and treated with chains as if they were violent criminals)
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At HN, most people are here to learn, here to understand more.
There's a substantial "learn and understand" cohort, but there are other factions. At the start of the pandemic, there were 2 posters explicitly here to proselytize Trump style conservatism. I'm reasonably certain there was an anti-vaxx voting ring 2020-22, and I suspect there's remnant Elon fanboy and MAGA coordinated voting.
I'd love to be proved wrong on these things.
Oh they are still here, last time I had a good chuckle was the group arguing that The Pope Is A Democrat. "You know your brain is pickled when..."
So you don’t agree with their point and saw fit to draw out a response that fingerpoints at the the side that’s over the intolerance of the non-scientifically bound members of society? Great high horse fam.
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That might be true for some of them, but unfortunately I know a few anti vaxxers who also happen to be atheists. They just believe all the various conspiracy theories about vaccines.
If you were able to trace some of these conspiracy theories to their source, you'd find some of these religious folks behind them. Any category of person could potentially fall for them, including atheists.
(i must preface that this block was 100% trying to extract payment, like it was documented some coubtries did even during covid, but)
even the lead researcher of mrna vaccines before covid said she would not consider mrna vaccines safes outside of the covid emergency. and this study focus on effectiveness, not side effects.
so while turning away from science for politics is as bad as pushing it irresponsible for commercialization.
“Scientific expertise” was already sold out to politics as we saw during covid. The further degradation to podcast bros is the cherry on top.
Both VRBPAC and CDC's ACIP did remarkably good work during the pandemic under enormous pressure - what specific complaints do you have? They got safe and effective vaccines out there fast, did a really reasonable job of balancing the cost benefit w.r.t. side effects of both j&j's and the somewhat elevated myo/pericarditis risk from moderna's vaccine in young men, etc.
Be specific?
(I have complaints - I thought Dr. Meissner was wrongheaded about opposing allowing EUA to extend to pediatric populations. But the committee as a whole functioned well and balanced the urgency of the situation with the need for voluminous data.)