Academy will battle censorship in science
SCIENTISTS who say they were “silenced, censored and slandered” for questioning the handling of Covid are setting up an academy to further “the free exchange of ideas”.
The Academy for Science and Freedom, at Washington’s Hillsdale College, US, is due to open within months. It aims to combat “the recent and widespread abuses of individual and academic freedom made in the name of science”.
Involved in the academy are Professors Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya – two of the three creators of 2020’s Great Barrington Declaration, which backed a focused protection approach to Covid rather than blanket restrictions.
Both experts faced heavy criticism for the proposal.
Harvard’s Prof Kulldorff suggested a “cartel system” had seized control of scientific debate, resulting in scientists being afraid to speak against the then-accepted narrative.
“No scientists have a monopoly on the truth,” Prof Bhattacharya, of Stanford University, commented.
He said: “The level of suppression of freedom of discussion has been a shock to me during the pandemic. Many scientists remain silent for fear of being smeared.”
Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a senior Sage member, claimed in a recent book that Government adviser Dominic Cummings “wanted to run an aggressive press campaign against those behind the Great Barrington Declaration and others opposed to blanket restrictions”.
Prof Bhattacharya said: “The goal was to create an illusion that the scientific community was united in its favour of lockdown policies and that disagreement did not exist.
“We want to create this academy of freedom of discussion in science and make sure that science keeps its proper place in society.”
Prof Kulldorff added: “Our focus is on the scientific community and our goal is to inform how science operates. At the moment, scientific debate is controlled and we want to reform how science is funded, including promotions and publications.”
It comes as Oxford University Professor Carl Heneghan called for an independent arbitrator to regulate social media to prevent the suppression of scientific debate.
During the pandemic, Prof Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, saw a “false information” warning placed by Facebook on an article on masks, which he had written with colleague Professor Tom Jefferson.
His Twitter account was also temporarily suspended under a “fake news” warning. He told podcast Sketch Notes On: “Censorship has been an issue throughout the ages when there are particular stresses…
“Covid created a stress that was a bit like a war phenomenon in social media, in the sense that it decided it had to manage the facts and had to support the Government.
“It did this without asking questions such as, ‘Hold on a minute, every government around the world seems to be doing it differently. Which one is correct?’”
Prof Heneghan added: “There must be people amplifying complaints [on social media], saying, ‘I don’t like their message so let’s target these individuals.’”
He said the problem could be minimised if an independent watchdog oversaw social media.
He added: “I’m not worried about myself, I’m worried about the basic principle that you can manipulate facts and information to suit a particular ideology, particular morals or a particular issue that you [consider to be] correct.
“That is a huge problem.”