Remember the bloated horse at Golden Diamonds? Well, animal protection may have forced them to stop adding anti-flatulence additives to their hay, but their attitudes do not seem to have changed. When Bob came across some of their staff in town, he asked “how their fart mitigation programme was going?” The two girls reacted with disdain and said in a biting tone “at least we are tryyyiiing to save the climate,” before staving off. Afterwards, at home, Bob recounted the story several times. He needed to digest it. “What struck me above any thing else,” he said, “is that they seem to think that they are morally superior.”
Many attitudes and even outright claims of moral superiority can be heard and found online these days. Let us dissect a few examples. Most will be familiar with vaccine-conscience-incarnate masquerading as Dr. Peter Hotez. Among other assignments, Dr. Hotez is the Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. His academic track record is considerable. However, in recent years, it seems to stand out for reasons other than academic excellence. Namely, Dr. Hotez has set off on a personal mission to discredit “antiscience.” Given his background on vaccinology, the latter inherently overlaps with scepticism against mass vaccination campaigns.
Many interviews with him can be found in which he claims, or at least displays the attitude, to have the moral high ground. Dr. Hotez seems to have divided the world up into two classes of people: on the one hand, those who stand with “science,” of which he portrays himself as one of the high priests. On the other side of the aisle are the moral deplorables who believe in “antiscience.” Dr. Hotez has written quite a few entries in academic journals to this tone, some of which are listed below. En passant, we note that most of those pieces have appeared in editorial or opinion sections of academic journals and are not peer-reviewed.
Since Dr. Hotez does not spare his words on the evils of “antiscience,” we would like to know what he means by that. Well, in fact, he is very straightforward. In his 2021 publication On Antiscience and Antisemitism, he writes:
The term antiscience can have several meanings, but in 2021, I defined it as a “rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods […]”
Peter J. Hotez, “On antiscience and antisemitism”
His definition is longer, but the quote above reflects what there is to know about it. Apparently, in his world view, science is not a process in which hypotheses are put forward, verified and believed true only until an alternative or more refined hypothesis replaces it. Instead, “science” is defined by a mainstream narrative that one needs to have religious belief in. Those who do not hold those beliefs and actually partake in the scientific method by questioning “mainstream scientific views,” adhere to “antiscience.” It is therefore not wrong to say that his world view, which he has notably also written an editorial about, amounts to pretty much the opposite of living by the principles of the scientific method.
However, dividing the public up into believers and disbelievers of the purportedly scientific mainstream narrative, is only the first step. Dr. Hotez goes much further than that, by likening the truly scientifically curious to societal ailments great and small. In his meanwhile extensive writings on antiscience, he both accuses disbelievers of tendencies akin to the Soviet dictatorship, as well as acting on behalf of present-day Russia, without any evidence for the latter. Yet he does not stop at drawing parallels to historical events, nor are these two the most extreme examples. In one paper, he analyzes the relationship between “antiscience” and … aggression. He perceives the former to be produced by an interplay between “conservative intellectuals,” “conservative news outlets” and “far right” representatives in the United States Congress. Thusly, Dr. Hotez does not only paint links between “antiscience” and undesirable passages from history, but also considers it to be actually violent.
At this point, one might think that we have explored the best of Dr. Hotez’ imagination, but we are not yet at the end of the list. In fact, in more than one paper, he points to similarities between “antiscientific” attitudes and … antisemitism. Recall that such attitudes are the ones that fail to adhere to the mainstream narrative, and in particular those who question the necessity of vaccine initiatives. He reserves quite a few words to describe how criticism of mass vaccination campaigns is supposed to amount to antisemitism, which he, as a Jewish doctor, “has been the victim of.”
Antisemitism by itself is a very vile sentiment, so those who liken other attitudes to it better make sure that they end up on the right side of history. Given the historical context of the publication of these papers by Dr. Hotez, let’s look at what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is true that Israel was the first country to roll out a mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19, which started on December 19, 2020. It also rolled out coercive measures like a “green pass” which only permitted the vaccinated to enter certain venues. Not surprisingly, roughly two thirds of all adults were vaccinated by mid-2021. However, were no more COVID-19 cases recorded after mid-2021? A chart from Our World in Data does not lie: in fact, by far the biggest peak of infections followed approximately a year after vaccination began. If the pandemic was really “ended by vaccine” as some claim, should we not have observed a clearly noticeable decrease in cases throughout 2021?
Owing to Israel’s early rollout of the vaccines, Israel did serve as a test bed to evaluate vaccine effects. One such effect may have been a reduction in severe COVID cases. A paper in The Lancet estimates that Israel’s vaccination campaign saved about 5500 citizens from death in that timeframe. However, Israel’s status as vaccine guinea pig not only turned it into a good candidate to estimate expected vaccine effects, but also side effects. In fact, Israel was the origin of one of the most scary early warning signals on vaccine side effects: there was a clear increase in ambulance calls for cardiovascular emergencies shortly after vaccination. The fact that the COVID-19 vaccine produces nefarious cardiovascular side effects, has since been well established. Many other pernicious side effects have meanwhile been added to the list. In fact, in spite of the highly politicized climate in academic publishing, there are now peer-reviewed publications that question if the COVID-19 vaccines should ever have been rolled out to the broader public at all, due to their side effect profile:
Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits. Given the extensive, well-documented SAEs and unacceptably high harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.
M. Nathaniel Mead et al., International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, 3 (2024), 1112-1178.
Based on the above information, it is highly questionable if Israel was well-served by becoming the global guinea pig for population-wide vaccine rollout. It is therefore equally questionable to state that lack of support for this vaccination campaign is “antisemitic.” On the contrary, accounting for the number of healthy Jews who ended up having heart attacks shortly after injection, an equally strong case can be made that supporting these campaigns was the deed of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism” is quite grave a claim to make. Doing so should be handled with caution. In fact, it is highly questionable if either support or resistance for a medical intervention campaign can ever qualify as irrational hatred against the Jewish people. One may argue that, by presenting either as antisemitic, one dilutes the meaning of term “antisemitism” into trivial spheres, which sets an undesirable precedent.
This article will refrain from drawing a conclusion on how beneficial Israel’s COVID vaccination campaign really was. One lesson learnt, though, is that there should have been an ongoing respectful debate on benefits and risks, so actual science could further develop. Instead, much of those discussions were stifled by media and other publishing venues that would adhere to rhetoric from “experts,” like Dr. Hotez, who stigmatized even reporting case studies of side effects as any “right wing” label du jour, such as “antisemitic.”
Before claiming to have the moral high ground, one should make sure to have it in the first place. Dr. Hotez is by no means the only example of a moral high priest who doesn’t seem to have too much an understanding of ethics. Another good example is James Comey. Comey was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 through 2017. It has meanwhile become clear that Comey has made quite a few missteps in his capacity as FBI director. For instance, Comey signed several applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that would enable to surveil Carter Page, an aide to Donald Trump. Said applications were based on the so-called Steele Dossier. The latter was a dossier assembled by British intelligence contractor Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign that suggested that Donald Trump had ties to the Kremlin. Comey continued to file such court applications based on the same “evidence” long after his own bureau had debunked the authenticity of the dossier. Moreover, he later testified to Congress about those same investigations as being “by the book,” even though they were based on concocted “evidence,” which was known to his own bureau and therefore, must have been known also to him, given it is a matter of such importance.†
To the the average citizen who isn’t experienced in legal proceedings, these acts surely smell of the label “crime.” As this post was being written, James Comey has been indicted on a duo of federal charges. This article does not intend to treat the indicted as guilty and draw a definitive conclusion about Comey’s actions. However, it does intend to point something else out. It is one thing to be insincere as an acting FBI director. It surely looks like that. It is a whole other ballgame, though, to illustrate morally objectionable conduct shortly before teaching an academic course on … ethical leadership at a prestigious institution.
Institutions that instruct the next generation of potential leaders have a responsibility to fulfil. A part of that should be to not expose students to divisive and morally compromised (false) teachers. A respected position in a science department should not be held by someone who vilifies academics that follow the scientific method. Nor should ethics be taught by an individual whose leadership demonstrates a lack of it. A while ago, we analyzed why graduating no longer seems to take what it used to. Now we also know why: because becoming a teacher in those institutions no longer takes what it used to either.
Moral superiority is a risky claim to make. We should all be wary of institutions that endorse divisive, self-proclaimed moral warriors like Dr. Hotez or James Comey into their ranks. One can act to substantiate that wariness by not sending one’s children there.
I raise my foals right here on the pasture. Everything they need to know to prepare them for life is right in front of them. To become successful, all they need is pony common sense and to stay far aloof from morally compromised institutions.
†Great detailed reporting on the precise course of events is presented by Racket News, among others.