Francis Collins’ Latest Book Doubles Down On Abuses Of Power

Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director and Biden administration science adviser Francis Collins is back in the limelight with a new book, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.

Presumably an effort to repair Collins’ tattered reputation post-Covid, the book is written in a winsome style, and those who admire Collins will likely love it. Parts of the book are undeniably moving, such as the account of his struggles as a post-doc after his initial research project failed.

But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”

Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.”  A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.

Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”

For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late.

Yet Collins’ failure to take responsibility for his record isn’t the most serious flaw of his new book.

The most serious flaw is Collins’ core message. He frets about the politicization of science and the growing distrust of claims made in the name of science. He wants to restore public trust in “science” and the experts.

The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him “science” has become a convenient club to bludgeon people who disagree with him. If you disagree with him on climate change, or Covid policy, or Darwinian evolution, or think the 2020 presidential election was unfair, you are part of the anti-science bogeyman. Collins tends to highlight the most conspiratorial claims of those he disagrees with, attacking strawmen rather than interacting with serious concerns raised by peers with the same level of expertise.

The propagandistic nature of Collins’ approach can be seen in his proposal for people to engage in “pre-bunking” claims so they “can avoid being taken in.” His call for skepticism sounds good — until he applies it. Fixating on climate change, Collins urges readers to immunize themselves against arguments skeptical of human-caused global warming. How? By imagining the selfish reasons that might motivate people to downplay global warming. For example, perhaps they “have a special interest in seeing continued use of fossil fuels,” or maybe they “wish to create as much disharmony within our population as possible,” or perhaps they are “politicians who see climate change denial as good for votes and campaign donations.”

According to Collins, you don’t have to consider the arguments being made if you have “pre-bunked” the motives of the people making them. Tellingly, Collins doesn’t suggest questioning the motives of those he agrees with on global warming. His “pre-bunking” is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it.

Collins does offer some good suggestions. He rightly says that “In order to distinguish facts from fakes, it is essential for all of us to tap into multiple sources of information.” But he then urges people to rely on “respected long-standing sources of reliable information” such as “the New York Times… or the Washington Post,” claiming that “their… news reporting will generally be reliable and will have been fact-checked.” He seems oblivious to the partisanship of the establishment media and to the fact that these “multiple sources of information” offer pretty much the same skewed view of reality

Collins also suggests listening to people with whom you disagree. Unfortunately, he has spent much of his career doing the opposite. Collins notes his recent participation in forums where he has talked to ordinary Americans who disagree with him over Covid. Fine — but it would have been far better had he been willing to listen to other scientists who disagreed with him when he had government power.

In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond?  Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he derided them in private as “fringe” figures and told subordinates: “There needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his “intemperate” language, but says he has “no regrets for the point I made.”

In other words, he really hasn’t learned anything.

It’s precisely because Collins has insulated himself from fellow experts who disagree with him that he finds it so easy to caricature the viewpoints he opposes. 

That is not the road to wisdom. It’s a road to folly. 

John G. West, Ph.D., is vice president of the Discovery Institute.