Science magazine may have misrepresented statements Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), made in a recent interview, according to a leaked recording and transcript published today by The Disinformation Chronicle.
During Bhattacharya’s “contentious” and “confusing” 20-minute interview last week with Science reporter Jocelyn Kaiser, Kaiser “pressed Bhattacharya several times to account for canceled grants as well as news accounts of turmoil inside the agency,” The Disinformation Chronicle reported.
The questions led Bhattacharya to ask Kaiser, on several occasions, “to clarify and explain exactly what she was asking” about the NIH’s new subaward grant policy.
“Subawards typically involve a contract between the U.S. investigator’s institution and the entity in a foreign country that is conducting the research,” Science reported. Subawards “support everything from investigator-initiated research projects to large clinical trial networks that test new medicines.”
The new NIH policy, issued May 1, prohibits NIH grantees from outsourcing parts of their research to foreign entities through subawards. According to the NIH, the purpose behind the new policy is to “ensure it can transparently and reliably report on each dollar spent.”
However, the new policy does not prohibit direct NIH awards to foreign applicants.
In one exchange, Kaiser asked Bhattacharya about “a policy cancelling collaborations, foreign collaborations.”
“No, that’s false,” Bhattacharya replied. “There’s going to be [a] policy on tracking subawards. … I mean, if you’re going to give a subaward, we should be able — the NIH and the government should be able [to] see where the money’s going.”
Yet, Science’s May 5 story reported that “NIH and HHS were finalizing a new policy on foreign research funding.” Bhattacharya’s remarks about cancelling subawards did not appear until the story’s final section.
In a post on Bluesky linking to a May 2 story in Science about the new subaward policy, Science reporter Jon Cohen suggested that Bhattacharya lied about the policy during the interview.
Bhattacharya “dismissed the report as ‘rumors’ in an interview with Science on Thursday morning, hours before he announced the new policy,” Cohen wrote.
Paul D. Thacker, publisher of The Disinformation Chronicle, criticized the writers at Science. He said:
“They see their job as cheerleading for researchers, and Science magazine has been running a propaganda campaign for virologists. They have published questionable studies that dismiss the possibility of a lab accident and recklessly platform infectious disease researchers without disclosing their conflicts of interest.”
Nature, other outlets claimed people will ‘lose their lives’ due to NIH cuts
During the same interview, Kaiser referred to an April 30 story in Nature, suggesting that all funding for foreign research would end, threatening “thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.”
The Nature story quoted former NIH Director Francis Collins, who said, “These decisions will have tragic consequences.” He said halting foreign research would mean that “more children and adults in low-income countries will now lose their lives because of research that didn’t get done.”
Nature also warned that the policy could “be wide-reaching.” Citing an unnamed NIH employee, Nature reported that in 2023, about 15% of NIH grants had at least one “foreign component.”
In response to Kaiser’s question, Bhattacharya told Kaiser, “Nature also is spreading rumors.”
The Science and Nature stories are among several such reports in recent months claiming that cuts to certain NIH research grants will pose a risk to public health.
Earlier this week, Science News reported that “$1.8 billion in NIH grant cuts hit minority health research the hardest” and that the cuts also target mental health and training programs.
Last week, CBS News reported that “Scientists fear Trump administration cuts to NIH could impact the health of Americans for generations.”
And in March, The Conversation reported that “NIH funding cuts will hit red states, rural areas and underserved communities the hardest.”
Bhattacharya: past ‘Science’ reporting ‘wasn’t all that straight’
Bhattacharya’s interview with Kaiser also focused on past controversies with foreign subawards. Bhattacharya referred to NIH funding that the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance received and a subsequent subgrant the organization issued to China’s Wuhan Institute of Technology — the alleged source of the COVID-19 lab leak.
In the final week of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) barred EcoHealth Alliance and its former president, virologist Peter Daszak, Ph.D., from receiving federal funds, in part because EcoHealth Alliance had been unable to provide records from the Wuhan Institute.
During the interview, Bhattacharya referred to Kaiser’s and Science’s past reporting on the EcoHealth Alliance. “It wasn’t all that straight.”
In the Bluesky post on Wednesday that linked to a May 5 story in Science, Daszak attacked Bhattacharya, calling his interview with Kaiser an “absolute disaster. Daszak said Bhattacharya “comes across as having a huge chip on his shoulder, holding grudges, a bit of a persecution complex, & lack of grasp of NIH/political realities.”
Science’s May 2 story quoted Dr. Gerald Keusch, a former director of NIH’s Fogarty International Center, which funded “thousands” of foreign scientists and “supported collaborations between hundreds of U.S. researchers and institutions in resource-strapped countries.” Keusch worked closely with the EcoHealth Alliance.
Keusch, now an emeritus professor at Boston University, called the NIH subaward policy “insane” and suggested that there was no compelling evidence that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, a U.S. House of Representatives report released last year found that Keusch coordinated with the NIH’s Dr. David Morens to keep EcoHealth Alliance funded and to hide government records of this collusion.
In 2023, the House launched an investigation against Morens — a longtime aide of Dr. Anthony Fauci — after an investigation revealed he used his personal email address to evade Freedom of Information Act requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19.
“NIH scientists are required to produce emails and other records under the Freedom of Information Act,” The Disinformation Chronicle said. Keusch had co-authored a February 2020 letter published in The Lancet, also co-authored by Daszak and others, calling Wuhan lab-leak allegations a “conspiracy theory.”
Last month, the Trump administration launched a new version of the government’s official COVID-19 website, presenting evidence that COVID-19 emerged following a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and other intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.
The Disinformation Chronicle reported that emails released by House investigators showed that “Keusch and Morens also shared ideas to pressure NIH leadership to fund EcoHealth Alliance,” including “writing essays and placing stories with writers Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman at Science Magazine.”
“Despite this history, Science Magazine quoted Keusch as an unbiased source, who claimed that ‘no compelling evidence supports the allegation that the virus leaked from WIV,’” The Disinformation Chronicle stated, noting that Cohen has “a rather tattered history of ethics.”
According to The Disinformation Chronicle, an anonymous whistleblower emailed Cohen “‘a grenade of an allegation” in 2023, suggesting that the authors of a key 2020 paper that helped perpetuate the zoonotic, or animal, origin of COVID-19 were not its true authors.
The “Proximal Origin” paper, as it is widely known, dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak and was subsequently promoted by Biden administration officials, including Fauci and Collins — and by the media — to characterize proponents of the “lab-leak theory” as conspiracy theorists.
Yet, according to The Disinformation Chronicle, Cohen did not publish the whistleblower’s allegations.
Bhattacharya is no stranger to public criticism and censorship. In October 2020, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a document that criticized COVID-19 lockdowns for the physical and mental health harms they would cause, especially for children.
During 2023 House testimony, journalist Michael Shellenberger, who helped release the “Twitter Files,” testified that Twitter — now known as X — helped censor Bhattacharya by blacklisting him due to his tweets that lockdowns harm kids. By blacklisting Bhattacharya, Twitter prevented his tweets from trending.
These incidents led Bhattacharya to become a plaintiff in Missouri v. Biden (formerly known as Murthy v. Missouri), a federal anti-censorship lawsuit. Last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to uphold an injunction barring the federal government from interacting with social media companies regarding user content, the case is currently before a federal district court.
Related articles in The Defender
- New White House Website Declares COVID Escaped From Wuhan Lab
- Watch: Fauci Is ‘A Pathological Liar,’ Journalist Says
- ‘For Safety of Citizens Worldwide’: HHS Suspends Government Funding for EcoHealth Alliance
- Top Fauci Aide Under Investigation for Evading FOIA Requests for Emails on COVID Origins
- Officials With Ties to Wuhan Institute Still Conspiring to Discredit Theory That COVID May Have Leaked From Lab
