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for two reasons first i ve attended endless sessions on research integrity with great speakers but most of us feel powerless to actually do anything other than call for action from funders and governments even if you don t like what your government is doing it can be helpful to know what solutions they will consider second i m a great believer in engaging with the opposition in any difference of views so you can build better arguments it was fascinating to see how bhattacharya tried to control the conversation while i don t always agree with oster i felt she came out of the encounter relatively well considering that she was dealing with someone whose main strategies were to focus on issues that most people would agree with and then to go on the attack if more challenging topics were raised i m sure the organizers will be criticized for the fact that only one audience question was asked in this session but i doubt that i could have done any better than oster who had to be pretty assertive in moving the conversation away from replication to difficult topics that the audience were interested in bhattacharya left few gaps in his stream of speech for her to chip in in his answers to difficult questions bhattacharya revealed himself as someone who gets very uncomfortable when confronted with inconsistencies in his behaviour or views i m a nerd so i have transcribed the full interview which is appended below here s my take on the themes of the chat replication bhattacharya is a big fan of john ioannidis they co authored the infamous santa clara county study of covid 19 prevalence which raised eyebrows because the methodology had exactly the kind of problems with bias that ioannidis himself had criticized ioannidis is also on the editorial board of a journal founded by bhattacharya the journal of the academy of public health another thing that has led to raised eyebrows when i checked who was behind the academy of public health i found an organisation that was founded for improving public health practice as a special purpose vehicle of the west african institute of public health waiph which is quite separate from the new journal it seems that bhattacharya invented another organization with that name for the purpose of restricting authorships in japh members of the academy i e those whose views were deemed acceptable the japh has not been a success but it s worth a read to gain insight into background to current us government policies on public health i reckon that most of what bhattacharya said on replication came from ioannidis as an aside ioannidis also spoke at the workshop arguing that though there were big problems with the replicability of much of science it would be a disaster if the response was to cut funding for science i felt that he was furiously trying damage control against weaponization of his views i wanted to ask him whether he still had confidence in the santa clara county study but my question was not selected though another of my questions was it would do wonders for his reputation if he would just reflect on those times and accept that with hindsight he did not do a good job but back to bhattacharya when talking about replicability he was preaching to the choir reflecting many of the points made by other speakers about the need for replications for open data code and materials and for well conducted meta analyses so how was this to be achieved one idea was to change the metrics by which scientists were evaluated to encourage collaboration error checking and to reward those whose work was replicable and who adopted open science practices pubmed is to be revamped to provide a button that allows readers to see related work and evidence of replicability i had nothing to disagree with there he also identified journals as a big part of the problem noting that aaas were not willing to publish replications in their journals as someone who has tried to persuade journal editors to adopt replication registered reports i agree this is a big problem but i disagree with bhattacharya s solution which is to have some kind of publication outlet for replications and his history with japh doesn t inspire confidence if nih were to have a funding stream for replications this would be a game changer but i think it would have to be in the form of registered reports where the methods and analyses were reviewed and nailed down with an in principle acceptance by the journal when the study protocol was approved and before data were collected changes at nih bhattacharya s cosy demeanour fractured when he was asked about changes at nih oster specifically asked whether the leadership review of grants would be part of the replication agenda he replied you should not be paying attention to fake news on this topic but oster didn t give up eo so there s no leadership review of grants jb there s no there s no political review of grants where like it s actually very destructive to bring that into this right now if you want to talk about that we can do this but we should talk about the replication thing first he went on to reiterate all the stuff about replication concluding by the way do you hear anything political in any of this i think i think that the problem is like there s a lot of bad faith conversations and thinking about this oster attempted to argue that the conversation was not in bad faith but bhattacharya spoke over her and then moved on to talk about the other big problem stagnation stagnation we learned that bhattacharya had co authored a paper showing that in the 1980s papers relied on newer ideas than in the period around 2017 i was a bit puzzled by the logic as this could be taken to mean that ideas studied in the 1980s did not endure as long as those studied later but i ve not dug into the details of the paper other than to note that all the data and code is openly available bhattacharya interpreted this study as showing that nih research was stagnating and so in future nih grant scores should reduce the weighting given to methods and increase the weighting for innovation he explained that arpa was founded in response to this sense that nih was not funding research at the bleeding edge now i am aware that there s a hefty literature about optimal research funding models but i have to say this change of focus seems odd because it is the opposite of what you d do if you were really concerned about replicability replicability is all about building a solid base for future research over the years i ve seen numerous over hyped fads eat up huge amounts of research funding example here and they typically take years before they run out of steam nih funding cuts at this point oster introduced the lumbering great elephant that had so far been ignored nih funding she did so in the most tactful way possible by asking has this meant approving fewer grants she got another blast from bhattacharya about fake news the reason for the recent reduction in grants he argued was the fault of the two month shutdown going on to say this is again a sort of politicised attack instead of actually trying to engage with what the reforms actually are i suspect this will be strongly disputed by those who have seen funding opportunities decline sharply it seemed particularly galling that bhattacharya argued that a focus on innovation would inevitably mean higher funding rates for early career researchers when most commentators are arguing that they have been among the worst hit by changes in policies cdc and vaccination oster again tried a controversial question about how bhattacharya who is acting head of cdc could increase routine vaccination rates his initial answer was tell them to get their kids vaccinated before noting that this wasn t about replication but was rather a separate topic oster came back rather magnificently with yes it s a separate topic but i m asking about it he argued there were two ways of handing vaccination policy coercion versus having a conversation and not cancelling or trying to destroy people who have questions about whatever vaccines you re talking about oster agreed with him that a coercive approach destroyed trust but she did not challenge his false binary or his examples of scandinavian countries with high vaccination rates but voluntary vaccination policies which occur in the context of universal healthcare quite unlike the us system i m no expert but i could readily find a wealth of data on this topic see e g here and here and one would expect two distinguished health economists to recognise that cherrypicking selected examples and not adjusting for contextual factors is unhelpful the final uncomfortable question by oster concerned his blocking of a cdc report on covid vaccination efficacy he gave this short shrift the method in the covid study was ridiculous and you agree to this and any econometrician you show this method to will go are you freaking kidding me oster agreed with the criticism of the method but noted that cdc had recently published a report on flu that used the same method here again he fulminated on fake news and bad faith reaction arguing that he had not personally approved that report and then the time was up conclusions overall i wondered if bhattacharya might have set preconditions for his fireside chat he was happy to talk endlessly about replication and innovation two topics where he felt relatively safe he became ruffled when oster put other topics on the agenda blustering through them in a trumpian fashion with accusations of fake news and bad faith arguments it might help if he were to pause to consider why people don t accept his arguments are in good faith his track record as author of the great barrington declaration and the santa clara county study already raises questions about bias i accept that his and oster s positions about lockdowns and covid vaccines may be sincere when covid 19 first became a big problem i was amazed at how polarized views were between respected medical experts all of whom seemed to have genuine concerns it was a horrible dilemma deciding how to act in the best interests of the whole population but bhattacharya s setting up of the journal of the academy of public health was a huge misstep creating a walled garden where only those who endorsed views like his were welcome i m glad we were able to see him explain and defend his position but i think he s done nothing to reassure rank and file scientists who are worried that the replication crisis could be weaponized to dismiss science that was judged to use ridiculous methods and the unified funding strategy could ensure that scarce research funds went to innovative but flaky ideas for the sake of my colleagues across the pond i hope not p s follow up 6th may 2026 here s some more background reading for those interested in further details david sanders has a great piece in the times higher reflecting on a talk that bhattacharya recently gave at purdue university andrew gelman also wrote a blogpost about the nasem meeting like me he s attracted criticism for not attacking bhattacharya more strongly and the cdc report that bhattacharya blocked has now been leaked see here my post led to some discussion on social media several commenters thought readers should be made aware of other venues where bhattacharya had been interviewed and pointed me to these sources can faith guide public health dad saves america i haven t watched the first one yet it s long the second one on risks benefits of vaccines in different groups seen as cost benefit analysis was pretty much in line with uk policy as explained here by david spiegelhalter this is not to say i approve of jb as i noted above he has badly damaged his reputation as an impartial interpreter of science by setting up a journal as a vanity project for those who share his views on controversial topics and by co authoring a covid study with shoddy methods santa clara study but from the tone of some of the comments i d assumed he d be on record as an anti vaxxer and i haven t seen convincing evidence of that i think there is a fundamental divide between those who think that engaging with someone like bhattacharya just gives him publicity to air his disingenuous views so should be avoided and those like me and i think andrew who want to have him on the record in this case making his best case arguments when confronted with an academic audience we can scrutinise them and be ready to rebut those that are inconsistent or incoherent for instance using fake news to just shut down anything he disagrees with is not going to enhance bhattacharya s reputation as a serious person in academic circles i d welcome details of any other articles or talks where bhattacharya states his position on public health interventions please add these to the comments p p s 8th may 2026 andrew tan andrewtanyongyi bsky social sent me a couple of links to tweets by jay bhattacharya dating from 2024 i e before he became director of nih may 2025 the first endorses the film thank you dr fauci which puts the case for there being a cover up of gain of function research that led to covid 19 the second gives positive comments on the hope accord which calls for suspension of mrna covid 19 vaccine comments comments are moderated so there may be a delay of a day or two before they appear on topic comments are welcomed but i seldom accept comments that are anonymous or rude draft transcript of the conversation source vimeo for 24 april 2026 on https shorturl at jvlis n b i m not sure if this is accessible if you did not register for the meeting transcript from discussion on 24 april 2026 emily oster and jay bhattacharya starts around 6 28 00 e thank you katie thanks for having us and jay it s great it s great to see you i m delighted to be doing this so thank you thanks for being here j likewise emily i saw your name that you d interview me and that just sealed it e amazing all right so let s start i actually wanted to start by asking probably a couple of big picture questions about goals so you have said i think pretty publicly that your goal at the nih or one of them is transparency and you ve talked about the value of scientific replication and of rigour in the scientific work that you that you fund erm and i think that is an excellent goal what i m curious about is is metrics so i m curious about what are the metrics that you look to that you want us to look to for success here and how are you measuring those metrics j ok so the key thing is like what problem are we trying to solve in the context of of replication the question is like why are we in this situation we re in right so like you know everyone knows i guess john ioannidis was was interviewed earlier today he had that paper with the title that most published biomedical research findings are false 2006 and since then there s been all these like findings it was actually audit studies of various literatures starting with psychology i think but then you kno...