The NIH’s “Second Scientific Revolution”: Good Ideas Lost in Pandemic Politics
Jay Bhattacharya’s vision for improving scientific reproducibility has merit—but his motivations and political alliances may doom the effort
The head of the National Institutes of Health recently announced his intention to launch a “second scientific revolution.” Speaking at a MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Institute event—an organization advocating for some of the most unscientific ideas of our era—Jay Bhattacharya laid out a vision centered on reproducibility, risk-taking, and reform.
Some of his ideas are genuinely good. The problem is everything surrounding them.
The Core Insight
Bhattacharya’s central thesis is that the first scientific revolution took “truth-making power” out of high ecclesiastical authority and put it into the hands of people with telescopes. His second scientific revolution, he argues, should do the same for scientific institutions corrupted during COVID—replacing publication metrics with reproducibility metrics.
Here’s the problem: his proposed solution addresses almost nothing about what actually made him angry.
COVID restrictions were fundamentally policy decisions made before relevant studies could be completed, let alone replicated. No amount of reproducibility reform would change the fact that pandemic response required action under uncertainty. The intellectual disconnect is glaring: Bhattacharya is angry about value-driven policy decisions but proposing reforms to scientific methodology.
Why This Matters
The Good Ideas (Buried Under Politics):
Valuing reproducibility over publication count: Bhattacharya correctly recognizes that replication rarely means simply repeating experiments. It happens by approaching problems from multiple directions—different populations, different methods. When approaches give different answers, the differences can be informative.
Supporting negative results and failed hypotheses: Science journals don’t publish negative results, which biases the literature and wastes resources on paths others have already found unproductive.
Making grants less risk-averse: The NIH’s current approach prioritizes grants likely to produce results, leaving little room for exploratory science. Bhattacharya proposes a two-plus-three structure: two years of exploratory work that must prove successful to unlock three more years of funding.
Supporting young researchers: A longstanding problem in academic science that both parties agree needs addressing.
These are legitimate issues that scientists themselves have discussed for years. They’re not revolutionary—but they’re worthwhile.
The Problems:
The MAHA Alliance: Bhattacharya’s political power comes from the MAHA movement and the Trump administration. The MAHA event featured questions about whether COVID vaccines cause cancer, promotion of lab leak theories, and a novelist seeking funding for a satirical film portraying Anthony Fauci as a villain and Bhattacharya as a hero. Reporters from Nature and Science were denied entry.
The COVID Revisionism: Bhattacharya’s principal deputy director proudly stated: “I knew I wasn’t getting vaccinated, and my wife wasn’t, kids weren’t. Knowing what I do about RNA viruses, this is never going to work.” Yet the benefits of COVID vaccination have been demonstrated in study after study—science that has been reproduced.
The Intellectual Incoherence: Bhattacharya complains about scientists making policy recommendations that intrude on “spiritual truth and personal liberty.” But improving reproducibility metrics has nothing to do with how science informs policy. The revolution wouldn’t prevent the decisions he’s angry about.
Key Takeaways
Reproducibility reform is a good idea with the wrong spokesperson: Scientists have pushed for similar reforms for decades. But having it championed by someone who seems to reject well-reproduced vaccine research undermines the message.
Policy decisions under uncertainty will always exist: No scientific methodology reform will eliminate the need to act before perfect information is available. Pandemics, by definition, require decisions faster than scientific consensus can form.
Political constituencies shape what’s possible: The MAHA movement may be the only constituency supporting Bhattacharya’s reforms. That alliance constrains what he can advocate for and how his message will be received.
The irony is self-defeating: A second scientific revolution led by people who appear to struggle with accepting reproduced findings about vaccine efficacy faces fundamental credibility problems.
Looking Ahead
The next few years at the NIH will likely be characterized by exactly what we saw at this event: good ideas mixed with pandemic revisionism, genuine reform attempts embedded in political theater, and scientific messaging shaped by the need to resonate with unscientific constituencies.
For researchers, the practical impact remains uncertain. Reproducibility initiatives could improve science. But if they’re implemented as cover for defunding research deemed politically unpalatable, or if the reform effort is so intertwined with COVID grievances that it loses credibility, the opportunity will be wasted.
The tragedy is that scientific reproducibility genuinely needs attention. Bhattacharya isn’t wrong about the problems. But his motivations, alliances, and the intellectual incoherence of his position may doom even the good ideas to political irrelevance.
A second scientific revolution led by people who can’t accept the results of the first one’s methods seems unlikely to improve science.
Based on analysis of NIH head, still angry about COVID, wants a second scientific revolution – Ars Technica