jay goes to congress

I'm just a shill / sitting on capitol hill

If one knew absolutely nothing about Jay Bhattacharya prior to this hearing the main takeaway would be that the next NIH director seem’s remarkably ignorant or incurious about the highly visible, phenomenally controversial, and (as was mentioned by several senators during the hearing) illegal ongoings within the NIH over the past few weeks. When pressed by several senators to take a stance on the NIH's illegal and dramatic cut to the “indirect costs” doled out by grants to universities which has led to hiring freezes (for example, here at Stanford), and will ultimately lead to the shutting down of research programs, premature closing of clinical trials, and more layoffs for extramural NIH-funded researchers on top of those that are and will be lost in the intramural research program, Jay stuck to a few stock non-answers.

Senator Murray first raised the point of changes to indirect costs which Jay called “a tip that goes to the university” and that he “[does not] know where [it] goes”. He alluded several times to distrust in science, universities and public health originating from the COVID-19 pandemic as somehow leading us to the NIH unilaterally and illegally defunding the nation’s universities on the collective order of billions of dollars when in fact the only reason this is happening is because the Trump administration directed it (direct quote: “This is one of those issues that to me is an indicator of distrust that some have in universities and the scientific process.” This statement is only relevant if by “some" he means “the president of the United States” who has nominated him). Although asked directly several times by various senators, he did not take a stance other than assuring us he will “look into it”. This fits a theme. He refused to comment in response to senator Rochester’s question about whether or not the mass firing of 1200 individuals at NIH including scientists and refusing to renew contracts for senior scientists as well as the executive orders forcibly terminating certain areas of research was harmful or helpful, repeating once again that he was not involved in decisions at NIH up to this point.

Those of us who know Jay’s modus operandi well recognize that Jay’s inability to articulate even feigned concern for the changes at NIH that have set off a five-alarm fire in the scientific community is really a signal that he will not meaningfully oppose the Trump admin’s directives. Indeed, when senator Markey gave Jay concrete, specific examples of the many ways the actions already taken by Trump’s NIH are slowing and endangering scientific research and asked him if he would “object to decisions made by Musk, Trump or Kennedy that will slow or stop life-saving research” or “commit to reinstating funding” that was recently rescinded, Jay insisted that Trump is not opposed to advancing research. He did state that “[he does not] believe ideology should determine funding”, even though ideology is precisely what is behind grant rescindments, the shuttering of diversity programs, and the singling out of specific research projects for public ridicule and subsequent termination (e.g. as Trump did during the state of the Union when he claimed DOGE had found 8 millions of dollars being spent to make mice “transgender”; in reality no such research exists, they were most likely referring to “transgenic” mouse models, a concept completely unrelated to gender, which are a backbone biomedical research and have been for nearly a century).

When Jay claimed that he “did not have access to the information” which confirmed that research is currently, actively being obstructed (preposterous, especially for someone working at a university right now) in response to senator Baldwin’s line of questioning, Baldwin pressed him that he must be aware and is being tasked with leading the institution responsible. As senator Hassan mentioned in her line of questioning in response to Jay’s comment that he did not believe this president would ever ask him to break the law, the idea that someone as chronically online as Jay, who tweeted 12,000 times in the past year and certainly spends hours every day on social media, is somehow not aware of the highly visible, extensively documented consequences of the Trump administration’s decisions regarding the institution he is nominated to lead by the same administration “strains credulity”.

All of these observations demonstrate the hypocrisy behind one of Jay’s stated goals as NIH director, which is establishing a “culture of dissent” at the NIH — a culture where scientists with different ideas, even those that disagree with him (as he stated today) will be encouraged and supported. The people who have had grant’s previously awarded rescinded by this administration did so explicitly because their work somehow contradict’s the “President’s priorities”. Even in the face of this empirical contradiction to one of his 5 main goals for his tenure at NIH, he is himself unwilling to dissent from his political patrons. Jay, like all but the most credulous amongst us, understands that to do so would most likely lead to immediate termination, as has already been the case across the executive branch and likely even at NIH with the premature and unexpected departure of several senior leaders in the lead-up to this Congressional hearing.

The last thing I want to say on “culture of dissent” is how offensive Jay’s caricature of science as an ideologically rigid monolith that is no longer capable of real innovation is to working scientists. Scientists argue with each other, constantly. You cannot go to a scientific conference without getting into multiple respectful but impassioned arguments about nearly any open question in any field of study covered at that conference. The people who actually do science in this country live for this. We love it. The love for a field and the passion for asking questions is the glue that binds the global community for scientists. It’s why even if two people who come from different corners of the globe and have lived entirely different lives and perhaps barely speak a common language together can become fast friends and collaborators. Being a part of the global community of smart, passionate people who care about solving problems is the greatest privilege, and the most fun part, of being a scientist. By contrast, the bleak picture Jay painted this morning of a sclerotic institution whose largesse is siphoned by “tips” to universities, focused only on “incremental” work rather than “big advances” (itself a risible, bogus, ignorant claim), that doesn’t tackle “big diseases” that affect “most Americans” is completely unrecognizable to me as someone who has been embedded in the world of science since I first stepped into a research lab as an undergraduate 11 years ago. He tells on himself. He’s not one of us, and he should not lead us. Even if he gets the job, he won’t.