{"id":2370205,"date":"2024-11-18T08:50:57","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T13:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/francis-collins-latest-book-doubles-down-on-abuses-of-power\/"},"modified":"2024-11-18T08:54:55","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T13:54:55","slug":"francis-collins-latest-book-doubles-down-on-abuses-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/francis-collins-latest-book-doubles-down-on-abuses-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Francis Collins&#8217; Latest Book Doubles Down On Abuses Of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffrancis-collins-latest-book-doubles-down-on-abuses-of-power%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2370205&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Former NIH Director Francis Collins has released \u2063a \u2063new book titled\u200c *The \u200dRoad\u200d to Wisdom: On\u2063 Truth, \u200dScience, Faith, and Trust*, \u200daimed \u200cat restoring his \u200dreputation after controversies during the COVID\u2063 pandemic. Although the book is\u200b written \u2063in an engaging \u200dmanner and includes personal reflections, such \u2063as his struggles after \u2064a failed research\u200d project, it \u200dlacks significant accountability for his decisions while at \u2062NIH, including funding ethically controversial research.<\/p>\n<p>Collins does not apologize for his \u2064past actions, such as funding \u200bthe harvesting of body \u200bparts from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/watch-live-leftwing-pro-life-activists-protest-outside-d-c-mayors-office-demand-investigation-into-aborted-babies-discovered-in-dc\/\" title=\"Watch Live: Leftwing, Pro-Life Activists Protest Outside D.C. Mayor\u2019s Office, Demand Investigation into Aborted Babies Discovered in DC\">late-term aborted babies<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">promoting research involving \u200cpuberty blockers<\/a> for youths. He also \u2064does \u200cnot\u200b take ownership of his misleading statements regarding\u2062 COVID-19 vaccines and \u200cgovernment mandates.\u2064 While he addresses\u200c issues with government messaging during the pandemic, he downplays \u200cthe impact of policies on the \u200dgeneral public.<\/p>\n<p>The central flaw \u2062of \u2063Collins\u2019 book is \u2063his conflation of\u200d science with his personal political views. He expresses concern over \u2062the \u200dpoliticization of science and the erosion of public trust \u2063but dismisses\u200b dissenting opinions as\u200d anti-science. \u200bHis suggestion of &#8220;pre-bunking&#8221; opposing views highlights \u2064a bias, as he advocates preemptively dismissing skeptical arguments without\u200c engaging with them thoughtfully.<\/p>\n<p>Collins does provide some positive insights, \u200bstressing the need for diverse information sources, but he promotes reliance on mainstream outlets like \u2063*The \u2063New York Times* and *The Washington Post*,\u200c undermining his call for \u200dcritical inquiry. his approach reflects a commitment to\u200b shutting down dissent rather than\u200d fostering genuine scientific\u200b discussion.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director and Biden administration science adviser Francis Collins is back in the limelight with a new book, <em>The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Presumably an effort to repair Collins&rsquo; 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.<\/p>\n<p>But don&rsquo;t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH.&nbsp;He offers no apology for funding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.judicialwatch.org\/hhs-documents-organ-harvesting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies<\/a> for medical research. Or for financing research that used <a href=\"https:\/\/reporter.nih.gov\/search\/OPTb_4f5-kOe2wU2YYzolA\/project-details\/8965408#details\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people<\/a>. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/a\/16911\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">past promotion<\/a> of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with <a href=\"https:\/\/evolutionnews.org\/2024\/05\/heres-a-far-from-exhaustive-yet-still-exhausting-list-of-papers-discovering-function-for-junk-dna\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&ldquo;junk DNA.&rdquo;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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&rsquo;t stay in the body <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/25\/if-he-wasnt-a-swamp-creature-francis-collins-would-be-banned-from-youtube-for-covid-misinformation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&ldquo;beyond probably a few hours.&rdquo;<\/a>&nbsp; A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person&rsquo;s lymph system <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell\/fulltext\/S0092-8674(22)00076-9?_returnURL=https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S0092867422000769?showall=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">some two months after vaccination<\/a>. Collins&rsquo; promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JGWestDI\/status\/1501085997634707457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">emphatic promise<\/a> in April 2021 that &ldquo;There&rsquo;s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.&rdquo; A few months later, Collins was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/transcripts\/transcript-all-chris-hayes-9-9-21-n1278904\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">praising the imposition of mandates<\/a> as a &ldquo;forceful, muscular approach&rdquo; and demonizing those who didn&rsquo;t want to take the vaccines as <a href=\"https:\/\/stream.org\/francis-collins-rhetoric-about-the-unvaccinated-is-anything-but-christian\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">killers on the wrong side of history<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the &ldquo;collateral damage&rdquo; inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies.&nbsp;But he calls the collateral damage &ldquo;inevitable.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Collins&rsquo; failure to take responsibility for his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wake-up-with-the-washington-examiner-the-future-of-dei-democrats-delight-and-money-problems-for-harris-washington-examiner\/\" title=\"Wake up with the Washington Examiner: The future of DEI, Democrats\u2019 delight, and money problems for Harris - Washington Examiner\">record isn&#038;rsquo<\/a>;t the most serious flaw of his new book.<\/p>\n<p>The most serious flaw is Collins&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;science&rdquo; and the experts.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him &ldquo;science&rdquo; 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.<\/p>\n<p>The propagandistic nature of Collins&rsquo; approach can be seen in his proposal for people to engage in &ldquo;pre-bunking&rdquo; claims so they &ldquo;can avoid being taken in.&rdquo; His call for skepticism sounds good &mdash; until he applies it. Fixating on climate change, Collins urges readers to immunize themselves against arguments skeptical of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/kurt-schlichter-cross-examining-the-climate-change-cultists\/\" title=\"Kurt Schlichter: Cross-Examining the Climate Change Cultists\">human-caused global warming<\/a>. How? By imagining the selfish reasons that might motivate people to downplay global warming. For example, perhaps they &ldquo;have a special interest in seeing continued use of fossil fuels,&rdquo; or maybe they &ldquo;wish to create as much disharmony within our population as possible,&rdquo; or perhaps they are &ldquo;politicians who see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cnn-newsmax-one-america-news-are-noxious-garbage\/\" title=\"CNN: Newsmax, One America News Are \u2018Noxious Garbage\u2019\">climate change denial<\/a> as good for votes and campaign donations.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>According to Collins, you don&rsquo;t have to consider the arguments being made if you have &ldquo;pre-bunked&rdquo; the motives of the people making them. Tellingly, Collins doesn&rsquo;t suggest questioning the motives of those he agrees with on global warming. His &ldquo;pre-bunking&rdquo; is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it.<\/p>\n<p>Collins does offer some good suggestions. He rightly says that &ldquo;In order to distinguish facts from fakes, it is essential for all of us to tap into multiple sources of information.&rdquo; But he then urges people to rely on &ldquo;respected long-standing sources of reliable information&rdquo; such as &ldquo;the New York Times&hellip; or the Washington Post,&rdquo; claiming that &ldquo;their&hellip; news reporting will generally be reliable and will have been fact-checked.&rdquo;&nbsp;He seems oblivious to the partisanship of the establishment media and to the fact that these &ldquo;multiple sources of information&rdquo; offer pretty much the same skewed view of reality<\/p>\n<p>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 &mdash; but it would have been far better had he been willing to listen to other <em>scientists<\/em> who disagreed with him when he had government power.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the <a href=\"https:\/\/gbdeclaration.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Great Barrington Declaration<\/a>, which criticized the government&rsquo;s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond?&nbsp; Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2021\/12\/23\/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-needed-covid-19-dialogue-between-scientists-francis-collins-moved-to-shut-it-down\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">derided them<\/a> in private as &ldquo;fringe&rdquo; figures and told subordinates: &ldquo;There needs to be a quick and devastating take down&rdquo; of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his &ldquo;intemperate&rdquo; language, but says he has &ldquo;no regrets for the point I made.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, he really hasn&rsquo;t learned anything.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That is not the road to wisdom. It&rsquo;s a road to folly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      John G. West, Ph.D., is vice president of the Discovery Institute.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Francis Collins, ex-NIH Director, releases a new book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3536,"featured_media":2370206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/collins.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[32557,45212,45210,45213,45211],"class_list":["post-2370205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-book-review","tag-ethics-in-science","tag-francis-collins","tag-leadership-accountability","tag-power-abuse"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/collins.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370209,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370205\/revisions\/2370209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2370206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}