NEJM posts a perspective saying Stanford should have corrected Scott Atlas: Why? To look foolish? B/c Atlas was correct & his critics were wrong

During the COVID19 pandemic, Scott Atlas made many controversial statements. Community cloth masking doesn’t slow the spread of COVID19. Kids should be in school. Lockdowns have no evidence of efficacy.

In other words, Atlas was pretty smart. Randomized data would later show conclusively cloth masking doesn’t work. School closure is now regarded as a catastrophic error, and even Anthony Fauci regrets how long they lasted. Lockdowns clearly have no evidence to support them, and a brilliant paper by Chirag Patel shows they never will.

Of course, not all university researchers read or understood the evidence like Atlas, as the NEJM piece correctly notes 98 Stanford faculty (with absolutely no political bias ;) ;) ) disagreed with Atlas, who was hired by Trump.

But, what about the thousands of other Stanford faculty? We have no idea b/c there is no survey of their views.

The case of Scott Atlas then is a great case for why universities should allow Academic Freedom— because sometimes, the sole dissenting voice turns out to be right.

Yet, that’s not the way this is portrayed in the NEJM. These authors, including one author who habitually makes errors reading medical papers, thinks Stanford should have done more to combat Scott Atlas.

According to them Stanford should have issued statements saying that Atlas was wrong.

Really? Why? To look foolish later?

The idea in the commentary is laughable. Who exactly at Stanford will decide when a faculty member is wrong and their ideas threaten public health. Will we poll the full professors or all the instructors too? Will there be an appeals process? Or will the decision be made solely by the Stanford president —— when he isn’t publishing papers with photoshopped western blots— by himself, speaking on behalf of the university? Or should we just ask the university donors?

The authors provide no practical framework for how this will be operationalized.

But I agree with them a little, perhaps it would have been good for Stanford to have issue a statement

We disagree with Dr. Atlas. Cloth masks save lives and school closure is good.

That way we would all see that Stanford is run by people who are incapable of reading data, and works hard to stifle the truth.

Remember Stanford’s dean asked Eran Bendavid to quiet down on COVID19 policy— already in violation of academic freedom. Discussed in my prior post.

The truth is Eric Topol and Abraham Verghese were on the wrong side of COVID19 policy. Instead of debating masking or school closure or lockdowns, they would rather not allow their critics to try to persuade the audience. Faculty who don’t understand academic freedom are a much greater threat to public health than a million Scott Atlases, who, if we are honest, was pretty much right.

And, I didn’t just think this in retrospect

Go check out the audio at min 58 when I discuss Scott Atlas with an ID expert in 2020