Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article advocating that universities speak up — as institutions — against professors who stray too far from the herd:

It is worth noting that we are physicians, researchers, and educators — not primarily experts in academic freedom. We do not speak for our institutions. We do, however, believe our institutions should have a voice. Public discourse and the common good benefit from a broad range of viewpoints, and especially from those exemplifying the AAUP’s 1940 principles of accuracy, restraint, and respect. Although they are not infallible, universities are well positioned to speak with such qualities. We believe they should enjoy the same rights to academic freedom as the professors who work for them.

Mullen, E., Topol, E. J., & Verghese, A. (2024). Academic Freedom in America – In Support of Institutional Voices. The New England journal of medicine, 391(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2314430

Of course, no one other than a trial lawyer who specializes in the area is likely to be an “expert in academic freedom.” Unless… it’s a prof who becomes the subject of a Cancel campaign waged by more Correct colleagues. The prof usually brushes up fast.

Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith offer some background:

The NEJM authors write in the context of Stanford University refusing to institutionally condemn the arguments made by one of its scholars, Dr. Scott Atlas, when he advised the Trump administration on COVID policies in the early days of the pandemic. The authors, one of whom is a physician trainee (Mullen) and another the former vice chair of education (Verghese) at Stanford, are university colleagues of Atlas, as is one of the authors of this essay (Bhattacharya). They claim that Atlas’ publicly expressed skepticism of masking as an effective prophylactic against infection and his belief that lockdowns and school closures would cause more harm than good were so potentially harmful that Stanford itself – as an institution – should have condemned Atlas’ opinions.

Jay Bhattacharya, Wesley J. Smith, “Universities Should Promote Rigorous Discourse, Not Stifle It,” Real Clear Politics, July 7, 2024

Basically, in the view of Mullen et al., the university should have acted like a church, declaring Atlas’s opinion a heresy.

Often proven right

Of course, no one who has been keeping score will be surprised to learn that Atlas’s non-panic-button assessments — hardly tolerated at the time — were later vindicated:

Controversy between professors is the norm at the frontiers of science. It is utterly unsurprising that there would be discord over the proper policy to follow in the wake of a pandemic featuring a new virus, with great uncertainty about its epidemiological and biological aspects. In the intervening years, Dr. Atlas’ positions in 2020 on school closures and mask mandates have been proven legitimate, demonstrating the wisdom of Stanford not taking a position as an institution.

Bhattacharya, Smith, “Not Stifle It”

But that’s just the problem, of course. If the prof who thinks outside the box turns out to be right — which often happens in periods of significant science advances — that’s a blow to the idea that the rest of us should learn to always quell reasonable doubt and, you know, Trust the Science^TM.

Mere courtiers now?

Perhaps universities, like legacy media, are slowly becoming mere courtiers in the corridors of power. Their job will be to produce evidence that supports the policies approved by the political administration, thus justifying their elite status and funding.

Readers may recognize Bhattacharya as one of the other doctors who were hounded and censored during the COVID years. His research and that of colleagues he helped organize did not support the humanly costly government policies.

Twitter’s blacklist

In an interview last year with Peter Robinson at Uncommon Knowledge, Bhattacharya recalls the Twitter censorship:

I saw with my own eyes. It literally said, “Blacklist.” They have a database called Jira, and they put me on this blacklist. I saw prominent media people asking for tweets of mine to be brought down, for me to be censored. It was a striking thing to know that there were actors in the media environment, to know from the Missouri-versus-Biden case, and in the government who wanted to silence me.

“The man who talked back, May 18, 2023

He knows why the authorities were demanding the censorship too. As he told Robinson, “You’ve already harmed the lives of so many people. It’s just inconvenient to have Stanford, Harvard, Oxford professors around saying it wasn’t necessary, that there were other strategies that might’ve worked better, that might’ve protected people better without the collateral harm. That’s the lie.”

Facts can be inconvenient to politicians but they can’t be inconvenient to scientists

Politicians and bureaucrats make decisions based on all sorts of factors. Truthful statements are a low priority for them at best. Facts are often a major inconvenience.

The medical faculty’s problem — all science faculties’ problem, really — is that they can’t work productively in the highly censored environment envisioned by Mullen et al. Nature doesn’t know, care, or co-operate with approved opinion or political programs, however fervently university administrations support them.

Given that nature won’t change, interpretation of facts consistent with truthfulness is the only approach that works for any type of scientist. That doesn’t mean all scientists will agree; just that they should all be trying to interpret their findings honestly, without an eye to politics.

It would be interesting to know how much good science would have seen the light in the last 600 years if “Institutional Voices” had been heard from even more often than they were.