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April 27th, 2024 (Permalink)

Mashed or Matched?

Former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump is now on trial in New York City for alleged election interference. The first testimony has been that of David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer tabloid newspaper1.

According to Pecker, Trump and The Enquirer came to an agreement in 2015 that the tabloid would publish only favorable stories about Trump and unfavorable ones about Trump's primary opponents, including Senator Ted Cruz2. One such smear story claimed that Cruz' father was somehow implicated in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; see the cover shown.

I first read about Pecker's testimony in an article from NBC News which reported it as follows:

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump's trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination. The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy. … Pecker said that then-National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard and the tabloid's research department got involved, and Pecker indicated that they faked the photo that was the foundation for the story. "We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that's how that story was prepared―created I would say," Pecker said on the witness stand.3

When I first read this article, I assumed that by "mashed" Pecker meant that a single photograph was put together from two separate photos. This used to be a common practice of tabloid newspapers such as The Enquirer, so it sounded credible. It caught my attention since it suggested the creation of a fake photograph, something I've written about in the last few months4. So, I initially thought that this entry would concern composite photography, but I haven't been able to find any such photo of Oswald and Cruz from The Enquirer or anywhere else.

So, what did Pecker mean? The quote of Pecker was presumably transcribed by the reporter who wrote this article. In comparison, here is how the exchange was recorded in the trial transcript by the court reporter:

Q. I am going to show you one more from this exhibit, … top headline, "Donald Trump Blasts Ted Cruz's Dad for Photo with JFK Assassin." Do you remember anything about the history behind this article?

A. Yes. Dylan Howard had the Research Department take a look at Ted Cruz's father's photos, and we matched the photos in every different picture with that of Lee Harvey Oswald, and we matched the two together. That's how that story was prepared and created, I should say.5

Were the photos "mashed" or "matched"6? These two words are not quite homophones, but they sound similar, which explains the fact that the news reporter and the court reporter heard different words. Though they may sound similar, they would seem to mean quite different things in this context. "Mashed" makes it sound as though two different photographs were combined into a single one, whereas "matched" would involve a comparison of different photos. As I mentioned above, when I read "mashed" I assumed that it referred to a composite photo of a type that at least used to be typical of tabloid newspapers.

As a matter of fact, the photo supposedly showing Oswald and Cruz together is a single, non-composite one that shows Oswald standing on a street corner, handing out leaflets to passersby, with the help of a couple of other men. Oswald apparently hired the two from an unemployment line to help him pass out the leaflets, which we know because one of the two was subsequently identified and interviewed. However, the other man has never been identified, and that one is supposedly Ted Cruz' father, though the photo is black-and-white, grainy, and too unclear to identify the other man as Cruz or anybody else for that matter7.

By "matching" photos Pecker meant that photographic experts had identified the man in the photo as Rafael Cruz, based on comparing photos of Cruz to the image of the unidentified man. Here's how the article claims the identification was made:

Experts compared these images: The one at right is from the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination and shows Lee Harvey Oswald distributing pro-Castro flyers in New Orleans in 1963. The other man circled is suspected to be Rafael Cruz. Another image, taken four years earlier, shows the young Cruz…at a pro-Castro rally. Chillingly, several experts determined it is the same man!8

The notion that the unidentified man is actually Rafael Cruz was debunked at the time the article appeared by various fact-checkers9, so I won't repeat their findings―you can check them out for yourself. I'll just comment that the original charge, even if true, was utterly silly. So what if Ted Cruz' father was the man in the photo with Oswald? Apparently, he was hired from an unemployment line to help Oswald hand out the leaflets. Even if Rafael Cruz was in some mysterious way connected to the assassination, how does that implicate his son who was born seven years afterward10? Are the sins of the father visited on the son?

By the way, I got a laugh out of the following exchange between Pecker and the prosecutor about the 2015 meeting in which the deal between Trump and The Enquirer was worked out:

Q. Did you discuss this meeting with anyone afterwards?

A. Yes. … [A]s a matter of fact, I went immediately back to my office and I met with Dylan Howard. … He was…the Editor-in-Chief of the National Enquirer. I described to him the meeting I just had with Mr. Trump and Michael Cohen, and I described to him that this concept and agreement that I made has to be highly, highly confidential. …

Q. Did you tell him why you asked him to keep this arrangement secret?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. What did you tell him?

A. I told him that we were going to try to help the campaign, and to do that, I want to keep this as quiet as possible. …

Q. Why was it important to you that the arrangement be kept secret? …

A. We have several hundred people that work within the company…and I did not want anyone else to know about this agreement I had and what I wanted to do, so that's why I wanted it very confidential.11

So, he wanted the agreement kept confidential so that it would be secret because he wanted it kept as quiet as possible since he didn't want anyone else to know about it. After being run around in this circle, the prosecutor just dizzily moved on.

Of course, the reason why Pecker wanted the agreement kept secret was that if it became known the Enquirer's stories attacking Trump's opponents and puffing up Trump himself would lose what little credibility they might have had. Moreover, the tabloid's practice of paying sources for stories about celebrities, then taking money from the celebrities to suppress those stories, seems uncomfortably close to blackmail. Pecker subsequently entered into a deal with prosecutors to avoid prosecution for his own role in these shenanigans in exchange for testimony12. So, keep that in mind when weighing that testimony.

Notes:

  1. Sara Dorn, "Who Is David Pecker? Ex-National Enquirer Publisher Admits 'Catch And Kill' Scheme On Trump's Behalf At Hush Money Trial", Forbes, 4/25/2024.
  2. "People Vs. Donald Trump Transcript", New York Courts, pp. 1023ff.
  3. Rebecca Shabad, "National Enquirer made up the story about Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald, former publisher says", NBC News, 4/23/2024. Paragraphing suppressed.
  4. See:
  5. "People Vs. Donald Trump Transcript", New York Courts, p. 1031. Paragraphing suppressed.
  6. Rolling Stone, in its coverage of the trial, also transcribed Pecker's words as "mashed"; see: Nikki McCann Ramirez & Catherina Gioino, "Tabloid Exec Lifts Curtain on 'Catch and Kill' Scheme to Boost Trump in 2016", Rolling Stone, 4/23/2024.
  7. Philip Bump, "The 50-year-old mystery behind that photo of Lee Harvey Oswald", The Washington Post, 7/22/2016.
  8. Andrew Beaujon, "What Does the National Enquirer Have Planned for the General Election? It's Not Saying!", The Washingtonian, 5/5/2016.
  9. See:
  10. "When was Ted Cruz born?", Wolfram Alpha, accessed: 4/26/2024.
  11. "People Vs. Donald Trump Transcript", New York Courts, pp. 1020f.
  12. Jim Rutenberg, Rebecca R. Ruiz & Ben Protess, "David Pecker, Chief of National Enquirer's Publisher, Is Said to Get Immunity in Trump Inquiry", The New York Times, 8/23/2018.
April 21st, 2024 (Permalink)

Goebbels' Final Big Lie

Writing about the dubious statistics put out by Hamas during its ongoing war with Israel1 reminded me that this is not the first time that death tolls have been used for propaganda. In fact, there is a long history of such disinformation, which is one reason why I was immediately skeptical of the current claims. In this entry, we're going to examine one historical example in some detail.

In the waning days of World War II, on February, 13th-14th, 1945, Dresden, Germany was subjected to an aerial firebombing by the Royal Air Force Bomber Command2. Much of the central, historic part of the city was incinerated, with many civilians killed. But how many?

In the aftermath of the attack, city officials attempted to actually count the dead, rather than just making an estimate. However, some unknown number of bodies were still buried in the rubble, so the number they produced was necessarily an undercount. According to the official report, the number of dead was 20,204, of which 6,865 bodies had been mass cremated3. These were obviously actual counts rather than estimates, but the report also estimated that the count might end up as high as 25K. None of this was propaganda as the numbers were not intended for public consumption but for internal use by the government itself.

At this point, propaganda began, though what exactly happened is unclear. Some unknown bureaucrat, perhaps within Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry4, added a zero to the end of each of the numbers supplied in the report, thus increasing them by an order of magnitude (OOM). Thus, the number of dead was inflated to 202,040, the number cremated to 68,650, and the estimated total to 250K.

The propaganda ministry then began to play a two-faced game of doublespeak, saying one thing to its own people and another to foreigners. Since the ministry didn't want to hurt the already low morale of Germany's beleaguered population, it released the inflated numbers only to neutral countries, such as Sweden and Switzerland5, where they might generate sympathy for Germany and anger at the Allies. Despite the disinformation put out by his ministry, Goebbels himself knew better: "According to…the chief of the Propaganda Ministry's press division, … Goebbels had already made his own private estimate of about forty thousand dead at Dresden"6, which is on the high side but at least the right OOM. In contrast, a Swedish newspaper published an article with the headline: "Rather 200,000 than 100,000 Victims"7.

Only a few months later, as Nazi Germany collapsed around them, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide after murdering their six children8. With the end of the propagandist, one might expect the end of the propaganda, but Dresden is located in the part of Germany that was captured by the Soviet Union and subsequently became the communist state of East Germany. According to a report on the bombings by the United States Air Force after the war:

[T]he Communists have with increasing frequency and by means of distortion and falsification used the February 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden as a basis for disseminating anti-Western and anti-American propaganda. From time to time there appears in letters of inquiry to the United States Air Force evidence that American nationals are themselves being taken in by the Communist propaganda line concerning [the bombings]. …

The most distorted account of the Dresden bombings―one that may have become the basis of Communist propaganda against the Allies, particularly against the Americans, in recent years―was prepared by two former German general officers for the Historical Division, European Command (U.S.A.) in 1948. In this account, the number of dead from the Dresden bombings was declared to be 250,000.9

Whoever these former German officers were, they seem to have simply parroted the Nazi propaganda line. Given that the Communists took possession of Dresden at the end of the war, they were in the best position to produce an accurate estimate of the death toll, and they were also in a position to prevent those from outside the Iron Curtain from doing so themselves until the two Germanies were reunited in 199010.

The next phase of this history began in 1963, when a British amateur historian named David Irving wrote a book about the bombing of Dresden11. In the first edition of his book, Irving gave the Dresden death toll as 135K12, that is, four times the count given in the local government's report, but quite a bit less than that put out by Goebbels. A few years later, however, Irving was given a copy of the report, but one with the extra zeroes, and he increased the death count to 250K in an updated edition of his book in 196613. Finally, and to his credit, when a copy of the original report without the added zeroes was discovered, he grudgingly accepted that 250K was propaganda and revised the number back down to 135K14.

Meanwhile, the popular American science fiction writer, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who had survived the Dresden bombing as a prisoner of war, used his wartime experiences as the basis for his best-known novel, Slaughterhouse-Five15(S-5). Though its war scenes were set during WW2, it was published in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. In the novel, Vonnegut cited the exaggerated figure of 135K dead from Irving's book16.

What Vonnegut didn't know at the time was that Irving was an admirer of Adolf Hitler; given that the Dresden book was Irving's first, few did. In a later book17, Irving claimed that Hitler had neither approved nor known about the "Final Solution". When the professional historian Deborah Lipstadt pointed out that Irving had "become a Holocaust denier"18, Irving sued her for defamation but lost19.

S-5 was a best-seller that must have been read by far more people than ever read Irving, and then it was made into a successful movie20. I was myself a part of this readership, and believed the six-figure number for many years thereafter. It is perhaps partly due to this unpleasant experience that I'm particularly suspicious of wartime death tolls.

The point of this convoluted history is that, once created, a false statistic has a life of its own. Goebbels, or one of his minions, added zeroes to the Dresden death count as propaganda against the Allies; then the Communists who took over Dresden also took over Goebbels' propaganda in order to attack their cold war opponents; later, Irving adopted Goebbels' big lie to defend his hero, Hitler, by playing down the horrors of the Holocaust and playing up those of Allied bombing; finally, even Vonnegut was likely motivated by his anti-Vietnam War position to embrace Irving's exaggerations21. Each of these actors used the same or similar exaggerations for their own propagandistic purposes.

One reason why this history is important is that Goebbels' big lie and Irving's smaller one are not completely dead. For instance, as recently as four years ago, the History Channel's "Day in History" for February 13th, 2010, the anniversary of the Dresden bombing raid, read:

On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the "Florence of the Elbe" to rubble and flames, and killing as many as 135,000 people. It was the single most destructive bombing of the war―including Hiroshima and Nagasaki―and all the more horrendous because little, if anything, was accomplished strategically, since the Germans were already on the verge of surrender.22

Where did the History Channel get the statistic of 135K if not directly from Irving, or perhaps indirectly via Vonnegut? Also, the actual number (25K-35K) is smaller than the number of those who died in Hiroshima (>70K) and Nagasaki (>40K)23. Thankfully, the page was subsequently corrected to: "On the evening of February 13, 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the 'Florence of the Elbe' to rubble and flames, and killing roughly 25,000 people.24"

Another example comes from National Public Radio (NPR), the government-supported radio network currently under siege by critics for its left-leaning bias25. An article on its website about four of Vonnegut's novels being republished claims:

Slaughterhouse-Five depicts the firebombing of Dresden by Allied warplanes in 1945. The city was destroyed. More than 100,000 civilians were killed.26

Presumably, the article's author took the number from the book itself, yet he understood that the book was a novel, that is, a work of fiction. Is that how NPR does fact-checking? The article was published thirteen years ago and still hasn't been corrected.

It should go without saying that the loss of life and suffering inflicted on innocent people in Dresden 79 years ago was a tragedy, even if it was "only" 25K-35K instead of 135K-250K. There should be no need to exaggerate such numbers to shock our consciences. But those exaggerations were created and spread by Nazis, Communists, and Holocaust deniers for their own perverse purposes. It should also shock our consciences to repeat their lies.

Notes:

  1. Who's Counting?, 3/25/2024.
  2. "Bombing of Dresden", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3/28/2024.
  3. "Allied Air Raid on Dresden: Dresden Death Toll", Holocaust Denial on Trial (2018).
  4. "Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment", Holocaust Encyclopedia, accessed: 4/19/2024.
  5. Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (2005), p. 368.
  6. Ibid., p. 372.
  7. Ibid., p. 369.
  8. Helmut Heiber, "Joseph Goebbels", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3/6/2024.
  9. "Historical Analysis of the 14-15 February 1945 Bombings of Dresden", United States Air Force, (1945), pp. 1 & 21.
  10. "German Reunification", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed: 4/21/2024.
  11. David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (1963).
  12. Ibid., "Author's Note", p. 14.
  13. I don't have access to later editions of Irving's book, but see: Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (2001), p. 152.
  14. Ibid., pp. 169-171.
  15. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade (2005); first published in 1969.
  16. Ibid., pp. 239-240.
  17. David Irving, Hitler's War (1977). I haven't read the book, but see: Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., "Review: The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's 'Hitler's War'", Central European History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (June, 1979), pp. 169-199.
  18. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993), p. 111.
  19. For an account of the litigation, see: Deborah Lipstadt, History on Trial (2005). Also see Evans' book, cited above. Lipstadt's book was also made into a mediocre movie, see: "Denial", Bleecker Street Media, accessed: 4/19/2024.
  20. "Slaughterhouse-Five", Turner Classic Movies, accessed: 4/20/2024. Cinematic adaptations of Vonnegut's other novels―such as Slapstick and Breakfast of Champions―are best forgotten.
  21. To his discredit, when Vonnegut had a chance to add a correction to a later edition of the novel, he did not do so; see: Raphael Mostel, "Repeating Nazi Propaganda, From Kurt Vonnegut to NPR", Forward, 8/10/2011.
  22. "This Day In History", History, 2/3/2020. This is the archived page from the Internet Archive; as mentioned in the entry, it has since been corrected.
  23. "Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 4/5/2024.
  24. "Firebombing of Dresden", History Channel, accessed: 4/20/2024.
  25. Uri Berliner, "I've Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust.", The Free Press, 4/9/2024. Unsurprisingly, Berliner has resigned from NPR since this piece was published; see: Emily DeLetter, "NPR editor Uri Berliner resigns after essay accusing outlet of liberal bias", USA Today, 4/18/2024.
  26. Tom Vitale, "Kurt Vonnegut: Still Speaking To The War Weary", NPR, 5/31/2011.
Recommended Reading, Listening & Viewing
April 3rd, 2024 (Permalink)

The Penalty for Humility & Magna Est Veritas

For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.1

Recommended Reading

  • John Wood Jr., "This doctor admitted COVID pandemic mistakes. Then his critics attacked him again.", USA Today, 1/30/2024
    For all of the rending of our social fabric over the past eight years in the United States, nothing has been more bitterly polarizing than our public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with a fast-spreading virus and the potential of millions of American deaths, public health officials and politicians accelerated the development of vaccines and implemented lockdowns on businesses, schools and communities in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease and to save lives.

    Now, Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, has been publicly reflecting on the mistakes made by the public health establishment during the pandemic. In doing so, he has unintentionally highlighted a challenge for those who seek to rebuild trust among the American people and between the American people and their leaders: the penalty we pay for humility. …

    Here are some of Collins' now viral comments: "As a guy living inside the Beltway, feeling the sense of crisis, trying to decide what to do in some situation room in the White House…. We weren't really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City or some other big city. If you're a public health person and you're trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn't matter what else happens. …2 You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people's lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from."

    Some of Collins' critics took that admission as an opportunity to pile on. A new wave of criticism crested on social media…. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote: "This was precisely the argument we made on March 20, 2020…2 for politicians not to accept the lockdown advice of public-health officials as gospel. They think too narrowly, and political leaders have to consider the larger consequences of policies for the public good."

    Infectious disease specialists, such as Collins, should not be expected to take economic, educational, or other social issues into consideration in their recommendations: they're not experts in those things. In addition to consulting medical specialists, decision-makers should consult economists, experts in education, social scientists, and even moral philosophers before settling on a policy. The failure to do so was not Collins' fault, but the fault of those higher up in the government. This does not absolve Collins for those things he did do wrong3.

    I have no problem with such criticism, and in fact, agree with it. I was among the many Americans who, as the lockdowns continued for months, became frustrated at the inattention paid to the secondary effects of such policies. Put aside concerns for civil liberties. What would it mean for public health itself for millions of Americans to find themselves unemployed, socially isolated, fearful and stuck at home for extended periods of time?

    But if Collins and his peers can be criticized for having thought too narrowly about the consequences of our public response to the pandemic, the doctor's critics also can be criticized for thinking too narrowly about the consequences of brushing aside his act of contrition. Humility from leading public officials is the rarest of commodities, but it is needed more than ever in our current political culture.

    De rigueur dig at ex-president Trump omitted.

    Our culture tells leaders to never admit they were wrong[.] Neither, for that matter, do many activists and pundits. Certainty is the currency of the realm, it seems. To admit fault is to betray weakness that people in public life feel they can't afford.

    Yet, if we can't admit mistakes, then there can be no culture of reflection in our politics. And without a culture of reflection, it means we won't learn from our mistakes. Nor can we trust one another (or our leaders) to do so.

    That approach locks us into the pattern we find ourselves in now. When politicians and public figures from each end of our political duopoly do and say things that are destructive, they feel compelled to double down on the same course out of fear of the consequences of admitting they were wrong. …

    Francis Collins took a meaningful step with public reflection on the consequences of his leadership during one of the most difficult periods of recent American history. His willingness to do so should not exempt him from criticism or accountability. But critics must at least be willing to applaud the precedent that Collins set in offering such statements if we are to hope that more public figures will not only acknowledge their mistakes, but also help us all learn how we can do better in the future.

    As a nation, we need humility and graciousness to replace arrogance and stubbornness so that that we can begin to make progress together again.

  • Martin Kulldorff, "Harvard Tramples the Truth", City Journal, 3/11/2024
    I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story―a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.

    On March 10, 2020, before any government prompting, Harvard declared that it would "suspend in-person classes and shift to online learning." Across the country, universities, schools, and state governments followed Harvard's lead.

    Yet it was clear, from early 2020, that the virus would eventually spread across the globe, and that it would be futile to try to suppress it with lockdowns. It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage, not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world―all will suffer.

    Schools closed in many other countries, too, but under heavy international criticism, Sweden kept its schools and daycares open for its 1.8 million children, ages one to 15. Why? While anyone can get infected, we have known since early 2020 that more than a thousandfold difference in Covid mortality risk holds between the young and the old. Children faced minuscule risk from Covid, and interrupting their education would disadvantage them for life, especially those whose families could not afford private schools, pod schools, or tutors, or to homeschool.

    What were the results during the spring of 2020? With schools open, Sweden had zero Covid deaths in the one-to-15 age group, while teachers had the same mortality as the average of other professions. Based on those facts, summarized in a July 7, 2020, report by the Swedish Public Health Agency, all U.S. schools should have quickly reopened. Not doing so led to "startling evidence on learning loss"4 in the United States, especially among lower- and middle-class children, an effect not seen in Sweden.

    Sweden was the only major Western country that rejected school closures and other lockdowns in favor of concentrating on the elderly, and the final verdict is now in. …Sweden had the lowest excess mortality among major European countries during the pandemic, and less than half that of the United States. Sweden's Covid deaths were below average, and it avoided collateral mortality caused by lockdowns. …

    That spring, I supported the Swedish approach in op-eds published in my native Sweden, but despite being a Harvard professor, I was unable to publish my thoughts in American media. My attempts to disseminate the Swedish school report on Twitter…put me on the platform's Trends Blacklist. In August 2020, my op-ed on school closures and Sweden was finally published by CNN―but not the one you're thinking of. I wrote it in Spanish, and CNN-Español ran it. CNN-English was not interested. …

    I had no inclination to back down. Together with [Sunetra] Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya at Stanford, I wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for age-based focused protection instead of universal lockdowns, with specific suggestions for how better to protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives.

    With the Great Barrington Declaration, the silencing was broken. While it is easy to dismiss individual scientists, it was impossible to ignore three senior infectious-disease epidemiologists from three leading universities. The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified…and even grew slanderous. [Francis] Collins, a lab scientist with limited public-health experience who controls most of the nation's medical research budget, called us "fringe epidemiologists" and asked his colleagues to orchestrate a "devastating published takedown."5 Some at Harvard obliged. …

    At this point, it was clear that I faced a choice between science or my academic career. I chose the former. What is science if we do not humbly pursue the truth? …

    In 2020, the CDC asked me to serve on its Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group. My tenure didn't last long…. Every honest person knows that new drugs and vaccines come with potential risks that are unknown when approved. This was a risk worth taking for older people at high risk of Covid mortality―but not for children, who have a minuscule risk for Covid mortality, nor for those who already had infection-acquired immunity. …

    At the behest of the U.S. government, Twitter censored [me] for contravening CDC policy. Having also been censored by LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, I could not freely communicate as a scientist. Who decided that American free-speech rights did not apply to honest scientific comments at odds with those of the CDC director? …

    For scientific, ethical, public health, and medical reasons, I objected both publicly and privately to the Covid vaccine mandates. I already had superior infection-acquired immunity; and it was risky to vaccinate me without proper efficacy and safety studies on patients with my type of immune deficiency. This stance got me fired by Mass General Brigham―and consequently fired from my Harvard faculty position. …

    Most Harvard faculty diligently pursue truth in a wide variety of fields, but Veritas has not been the guiding principle of Harvard leaders. Nor have academic freedom, intellectual curiosity, independence from external forces, or concern for ordinary people guided their decisions.

    Harvard and the wider scientific community have much work to do to deserve and regain public trust. The first steps are the restoration of academic freedom and the cancelling of cancel culture. When scientists have different takes on topics of public importance, universities should organize open and civilized debates to pursue the truth. Harvard could have done that―and it still can, if it chooses.

    Almost everyone now realizes that school closures and other lockdowns, were a colossal mistake. Francis Collins has acknowledged his error of singularly focusing on Covid without considering collateral damage to education and non-Covid health outcomes5. That's the honest thing to do, and I hope this honesty will reach Harvard. The public deserves it, and academia needs it to restore its credibility.

    Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it. The scientific community will gradually lose public support and slowly disintegrate in such a culture. The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse, with zero tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation. My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.

    I share that hope, but I'm not going to invest any money in it.

Recommended Listening

Martin Kulldorff & John Tierney, "Harvard's Unscientific Consensus", City Journal, 3/13/2024

Recommended Viewing

"Martin Kulldorff: Fired by Harvard for getting Covid right", UnHerd, 3/15/2024

Notes:

  1. Coventry Patmore, "Magna Est Veritas", The Reader, 8/28/2018.
  2. Ellipsis in the original.
  3. See, for instance: Vinay Prasad, "At a time when the U.S. needed Covid-19 dialogue between scientists, Francis Collins moved to shut it down", Stat News, 12/23/2021. I don't know whether Collins has apologized for this.
  4. The Editorial Board, "The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In", The New York Times, 11/18/2023.
  5. See the previous selection.

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with everything in these articles, but I think they're worth reading as a whole. In abridging them, I have sometimes changed the paragraphing and rearranged the order of the excerpts in order to emphasize points.

Puzzle
April 1st, 2024 (Permalink)

Flaubert's Befuddler

French novelist Gustave Flaubert posed the following problem to his sister in a letter:

Puisque tu fais de la géométrie et de la trigonométrie, je vais te donner un probème: Un navire est en mer, il est parti de Boston chargé de coton, il jauge 200 tonneaux. Il fait voile vers le Havre, le grand mât est cassé, il y a un mousse sur le gaillard d'avant, les passagers sont au nombre de douze, le vent souffle N.-E.-E., l'horloge marque 3 heures un quart d'après-midi, on est au mois de mai…. On demande l'âge du capitaine?*

Here's my translation: "Since you are doing geometry and trigonometry, I'll give you a problem: A ship is at sea, having left Boston full of cotton, weighing 200 tons. It sets sail to Le Havre, its mainmast broken, a cabin boy on the forward deck, with a dozen passengers, the wind E.N.E., at a quarter past three in the afternoon, in the month of May…. How old is the captain?"

Can you determine the captain's age?

* Gustave Flaubert, "Lettre à Caroline, 16 mai 1841". Ellipsis in the original.

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