Leaked Interview with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya Raises Serious Concerns: Can Science Magazine Do a Journalism?

Contentious, confusing exchange leads to questionable reporting.

9 minute read

“Jocelyn, you know, I just, I'm really uncomfortable with this conversation because you're like actually spreading rumors that you don't know anything about.”

The charge from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya came during an uncomfortable and confusing interview with Science Magazine reporter Jocelyn Kaiser last week. The DisInformation Chronicle is releasing a recording of the interview and a transcript.

During almost 20 minutes of back and forth, Kaiser pressed Bhattacharya several times to account for canceled grants as well as news accounts of turmoil inside the agency, while Bhattacharya asked Kaiser to clarify and explain exactly what she was asking. Kaiser’s interview then ended up in two Science Magazine articles that falsely implied Bhattacharya misled Kaiser about a new policy on NIH grants.

Confusing, contentious exchange

Skipping about in a rambling, meandering path, much of the Kaiser interview concerned reports of problems that Bhattacharya claimed he had fixed in his first month as director. However, a proposed policy to ensure that subawards to foreign universities were better managed seemed to take center stage.

KAISER: Okay, so since you brought it up, kind of skipping around here, but so as you know, as you may not have seen the story. But we had heard it too, that there's going to be a policy canceling collaborations, foreign collaborations.

BHATTACHARYA: No, that's false.

KAISER: Is there going to be some sort of policy that...

BHATTACHARYA: There was a policy, there's going to be policy on tracking subawards.

KAISER: What does it mean?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, if you're going to give a subaward, we should be able—the NIH and the government should be able see where the money's going.

Later in the interview, Kaiser noted that Nature Magazine ran an article on a proposed NIH policy that reported all foreign grants might end.

“I mean, Nature also is spreading rumors, right?” Bhattacharya responded. “There's no announced policy about, what did you say, like ‘halt foreign collaborations.’ Not true.”

Based upon unnamed sources but headlined as an “exclusive,” Nature Magazine reported that the NIH was threatening thousands of global health projects by ceasing foreign awards to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States. Further down in the piece, Nature reported that it was unclear from sources whether the policy “would apply to all research funds to non-US institutions or only ‘subawards’, which are NIH funds that a US researcher can give to an international collaborator to help complete a project.”

Confusion over whether the upcoming NIH policy would cover all research funds or just subawards continued throughout Science Magazine’s interview, with Bhattacharya telling Kaiser she would have to wait until the policy is announced. “There's no intent to cancel the foreign collaborations, it's just not true,” Bhattacharya said. “That's just a rumor being spread falsely by Nature. And now apparently, I hope you don't spread it.”

Shortly after the interview, the NIH published their new policy which only covers subawards. “NIH continues to support direct foreign awards,” the policy reads.

“’This is insane:’ New NIH policy on funding foreign scientists stirs outrage,” reported Science Magazine’ headline. Hinting to readers that Bhattacharya lied to Kaiser in his interview, Science Magazine falsely implied that Nature Magazine had reported the upcoming policy would only concern subawards.

Concerns about subaward changes grew earlier this week, with Nature reporting on an apparent draft of the policy on Wednesday, before it was finalized. NIH’s new director, Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, dismissed the report as “rumors” in an interview with Science on Thursday morning, hours before he announced the new policy.

In a post on Bluesky, Science reporter Jon Cohen also implied that Bhattacharya had lied during the interview.

During Kaiser’s interview, Bhattacharya can be heard explaining that changes in subawards were partly spurred by problems encountered with EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit run by Peter Daszak which gave an NIH subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the last week of the Biden Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) debarred EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak from receiving federal funds, in part because EcoHealth Alliance had been unable to provide records from the Wuhan Institute of Virology “in response to NIH’s multiple safety-related requests.”

“You wrote about the EcoHealth Alliance,” Bhattacharya told Kaiser, in the interview.

“I did, yeah. Straight, I mean,” Kaiser responded.

“It wasn't all that straight,” Bhattacharya replied.

Unfortunately, Science Magazine lived up to Bhattacharya’s characterization with reporting that wasn’t all that straight about EcoHealth Alliance.

Straight out of Science

Science Magazine’s lead reporter on the new NIH subaward policy is Jon Cohen, a science writer with a rather tattered history of ethics. In 2023, Tablet reported that an anonymous whistleblower emailed Cohen “a grenade of an allegation” claiming that the virologist authors of a prominent paper were not the true authors. Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident and was later promoted promoted by Francis Collins in his March 2020 NIH Director's Blog and by Anthony Fauci during a televised White House briefing the following month.

Here's Tablet’s report:

Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of—a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source—and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story.

Instead, Tablet reported, Cohen forwarded the email to the paper’s lead author, who then forwarded it on to Anthony Fauci.

The purple headline for Science Magazine’s piece “This is insane” is a quote ripped from the mouth of Gerald Keusch, a virologist and an emeritus professor at Boston University, with close ties to EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak.

Due to Daszak’s undisclosed ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs disbanded a Lancet task force investigating the origins of Covid virus in 2021. Specifically, Daszak had not disclosed that several hundred thousand dollars of an EcoHealth Allliance NIH grant had been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a subaward. Sachs also discovered that emails showed Daszak had orchestrated a February 2020 statement in the Lancet alleging that it was a “conspiracy theory” to argue that the pandemic could have started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

Keusch had signed onto Daszak’s “conspiracy theory” Lancet letter and was a co-investigator on an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance when Sachs shut the task force down. HHS suspended the EcoHealth grant with Keusch as co-investigator in March 2024, some months before debarring Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance.

Despite this history, Science Magazine quoted Keusch as an unbiased source, who claimed that “no compelling evidence supports the allegation that the virus leaked from WIV.”

A few minutes on Google finds several reports undermining Keusch’s claim.

In the final months of the Biden administration, the CIA assessed that the COVID virus is "more likely" to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals. The current CIA director released the report in January. Both British and German intelligence were reported in March to have concluded back in 2020 that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the French National Academy of Medicine released a report last month that found “a body of facts and arguments” support the conclusion that he SARS-CoV-2 pandemic originated from a leak at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

Keusch was also caught in a House report released last year coordinating with the NIH’s David Morens to keep EcoHealth Alliance funded and to hide government records of this collusion. NIH scientists are required produce emails and other records under the Freedom of Information Act.

For example, the New York Times reported:

“I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Fauci, wrote in February 2021. That email chain included Dr. Gerald Keusch, a scientist and former N.I.H. official, and Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers.

“Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail,” Dr. Morens added, referring to his personal Gmail account.

In emails released by House investigators, Keusch and Morens also shared ideas to pressure NIH leadership to fund EcoHealth Alliance. This included writing essays and placing stories with writers Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman at Science Magazine.

“I did try to get Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman moving on a new article,” Keusch wrote in an April 2021 email to Morens, “but as you know they both declined at this point because it was not news.”

Some months after attempting to place a story in Science with Cohen and Wadman, Keusch emailed Morens that the Washington Post had rejected an essay he had submitted to defend EcoHealth Alliance. However, Keusch wrote, Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen had helped him find a possible home for the essay at Science and suggested that he also try a columnist at the LA Times.

A few days ago, Kaiser published excerpts of her confusing interview with Bhattacharya. In the article, Kaiser again falsely stated that Bhattacharya had dismissed as rumors “Nature news article reporting that NIH planned to suspend subawards for foreign collaborations.” In fact, Nature had speculated the new policy might end all foreign awards.

“Again, the policy is in process,” Bhattacharya said during the interview with Kaiser. “But the aim of the policy ultimately is so that we can track subawards.”

To listen to the Kaiser interview with Bhattacharya, see here. Below is a full transcript.

---

Jocelyn Kaiser Interview with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya

KAISER: He's talking about what's happening with cuts to the—

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, you know, like which… you want to be specific, right?

KAISER: Okay, Jeremy Berg, do you know him? Have you talked to him yet?

BHATTACHARYA: No, no.

KAISER: But you know who he is.

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah.

KAISER: Well, for this story, I talked to quite a few people here on the NIH campus. So maybe we could start with that. I mean, they are very demoralized.

BHATTACHARYA: Okay, again, please be specific.

KAISER: To tell you who I talked to?

BHATTACHARYA: No, I just want to understand what you're talking about. I don't know which.

KAISER: Senior scientists here, tenured investigators who run labs, on campus here.

BHATTACHARYA: When did you talk to them?

KAISER: I've been talking to them for weeks, but yeah. So, I mean, most recently, just last week. Was it two weeks ago? Anyway, so, but do you think that maybe what I've—

BHATTACHARYA: I just want to understand what you're asking. You're setting something up, right? So I want to understand what the set up actually … What you are actually asking.

KAISER: Um, okay, I probably talked to at least 15, 20 people in, you know, various positions at NIH. Well.

BHATTACHARYA: Like when?

KAISER: Over the past three months.

BHATTACHARYA: Okay.

KAISER: And they are, as you know, there have been the RIF, the probationary firings. People say they cannot run their labs because they can't get reagents, even though you lifted the purchasing freeze.

BHATTACHARYA: Yes, this is why I'm asking about when, right? So the purchasing freeze is up. That's not true that they can't get reagents anymore.

KAISER: But they said there's no one to process the orders.

BHATTACHARYA: Again, when did you ask them?

KAISER: Two weeks ago.

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, so it's very different now.

KAISER: In just the last two weeks, it's changed.

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, but the purchasing card limit has been lifted, people are not having trouble getting reagents.

KAISER: But apparently only a few people have the purchasing cards.

BHATTACHARYA: No, I mean the standard purchasing card power that they had before is restored. They can get their reagents.

KAISER: And there are plenty of purchasing cards to go around?

BHATTACHARYA: There’s enough purchasing cards for the labs to order their— I mean, all the beakers and reagents and all that other stuff, yeah.

KAISER: Okay, I've talked to Steve Rosenberg, who you know, he says he has had delays…

BHATTACHARYA: Again, when did you talk with him?

KAISER: About three days ago. And he said it's now two months away and how long he has to wait before he can treat patients with metastatic cancer.

BHATTACHARYA: I don't know what, I need more context because he hasn't told me that. I talked with him, you know, relatively recently. So he didn't tell me that. He expressed the purchasing card problem, which I fixed.

KAISER: Alright. Well, there's also, I told them, at least 25 physician researchers at the clinical center are leaving.

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, we have turnover all the time. There was a RIF.

KAISER: Right, right. So how would you describe the state of morale on this campus?

BHATTACHARYA: I'd say it's mixed. I think people are … Of course, people are still feeling the after effect of the RIF, so that's always gonna cause a lot of disruption and consternation. But then there's also a sense that we've turned a corner, that things are getting better.

So for instance, one of the things we did almost the very first week was, removing, lifting the requirement to do the five point emails. We've turned on the purchase card orders. We allowed—lifted the travel restrictions. We have the external—as far as the external research community—we've got the scientific review panels going, which will be up to speed by, I think, the middle of May. In a couple weeks, we all caught up, roughly. I think so, you know, this is on pace. Yeah, I sense that a lot of the things you're reflecting on are old news.

KAISER: I wanted to just quickly ask you about, I also heard that the Title 42 renewals, that the last batch, a portion of them are not being renewed. And that you wanted them to be renewed, but that it was...

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, we're working on a lot of the renewals. Those are still happening. They're going to happen, so it's just a matter of time. So I think there's been a lot of miscommunication and distrust caused by, frankly, by reporting—panic reporting, that causes this distrust in the scientific community.

And I mean I've worked very hard to make sure that we turn on the lights switches. We turned on this post-bac program. I have no idea why that was turned off.

I think there was a lot of panicked overreaction to directions from above. For instance, the scientific review panels shouldn't have been closed. Some of them were stopped in mid— while they were going on. Those are not external communications, those are private. Those should not have been closed. And so a lot is a lot of the problems have been caused by—frankly, panic reporting.

KAISER: But the reporters didn’t close those meetings.

BHATTACHARYA: No, but the panic, right. So those were malicious compliance by some of the people who were here early. Panic over compliance in order to create panic and then you're reflecting the panic, it's just a cycle of panic.

I think you should be reflecting the fact that the light switches are turned on now. A lot of the normal functions that we have, they're going back online. It's been a tough period, absolutely. Especially for me, I arrived the day the RIF happened. I didn't choose to do the RIF it wasn't my... We had nothing to do with it.

But in the month I've been here, I think things have turned around pretty significantly.

KAISER: Okay, I'm just … On the Title 42s, I was told by several different sources that the latest sort of batch, because they come up each week,

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, I shouldn't talk about personnel decisions specifically, but I'll tell you, as a general matter we're renewing all things that normally get renewed.

KAISER: Including the Title 42s coming up?

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, we're working on that. Yeah, it's just working on it.

KAISER: Okay, and I also heard that the...

BHATTACHARYA: You shouldn't spread rumors, Jocelyn.

KAISER: Well, I don't want to spread rumors. I want to have accurate information, but I mean, this is good news. But, um, and that the NINDS, you know, there were the 10 or 11 PIs.

BHATTACHARYA: That was an error.

KAISER: They said they still have not been officially reinstated.

BHATTACHARYA: When did you ask them?

KAISER: Two weeks ago.

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, so you should ask them again. As far as I know, they've been completely reinstated.

KAISER: Alright, well I don't, I mean, I know we don't have to, how much do we have, like 45 minutes or an hour? It was going to be an hour, so...

FEMALE VOICE: I think we've had to cut it because of scheduling issues.

KAISER: Okay, so let's move on. I did wonder, you know who Kevin Hall is, the nutrition researcher who left?

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah. I met with them.

KAISER: Yeah, after he announced his retirement.

BHATTACHARYA: He's unretired.

KAISER: He's staying or?

BHATTACHARYA: As far as I know. I mean, again, I shouldn't talk about personnel issues, but yeah, he's staying, as far as I know.

KAISER: That's amazing, okay. I mean, he said he'd try to reach out to you before that.

BHATTACHARYA: I looked at my email. I mean I didn't get my official email until like the 2nd of April. Apparently, he sent some email on March 28th.

KAISER: But as far as you know, he is staying now. That's amazing. And yeah, and the policy you sent out about academic dissent, I think, I mean, do you think it would have prevented the things that happened to him?

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it was very odd. What I found was that there was a sense that the internal researchers felt like their research was being policed. And this is during the Biden administration, that they had to get permission for some— I mean, I come from Stanford, right, as an academic institution, where at least once upon a time there was academic freedom. The idea that you have to seek permission as a researcher to get your paper published is abhorrent to me.

KAISER: I think that's federal policy, isn't it?

BHATTACHARYA: No, it’s not federal policy. I mean, there's some legal compliance about disability accommodations and all that. What's the right term for it? You have to make sure that there's accessibility of the paper. There's some like those kinds of things. But for content, no.

So I put a policy in so that there is academic freedom for intramural researchers in their scientific work. They can publish their work without my looking at it to see if I agree with it. I mean, it's just, that's just normal for researchers, I think. You can't do science without it.

I was really surprised to find that that wasn't the case before.

KAISER: Okay, and yeah, let's kind of move on to some other things. So as you know, since, in the last three months, mainly started in March, NIH has canceled something like 800 grants on various topics, that I guess, cross into the executive orders on things like DEI and gender. And I wondered what your take is on that.

BHATTACHARYA: Well, I think the scientific priorities of the NIH ought to focus on improving the health of the American people. Politicized science just doesn't do much to help advance the health status of anybody.

KAISER: Well, so is research on HIV politicized science?

BHATTACHARYA: No, you're talking about the canceled grants, those were like, and you said executive orders. I mean, they're not canceled on the authority of executive orders. They’re canceled because they're the DEI-based science. Politicized, ideological based science, such as DEI, does not actually have anything to do with promoting health in American people.

I'm not sure why you're switching to HIV.

KAISER: Because a lot of the grants involve HIV research. So it's a big issue –adolescent network testing …

BHATTACHARYA: Why don't we just, you asked about executive orders. There's no executive orders that says anything about HIV.

KAISER: Right.

BHATTACHARYA: So I'm talking about, let's just focus on the thing you asked me. You asked me about … essentially you mean DEI, when you say executive orders. You mean like transgender ideology.

KAISER: Right, right.

BHATTACHARYA: Right? That's what you're asking me?

KAISER: Well, I'm asking you about the canceled grants, which cut across a range of...

BHATTACHARYA: But first you referenced the executive order, so I thought you meant the DEI grants. Those are not actually... Grants that have that kind of political ideology at the center of it do not improve the health of American people.

KAISER: Okay, well, we'll get back to that. But I mean, the 800 grants include big HIV research networks. As you know, the South Africa grants, they include research...

BHATTACHARYA: So for South Africa clinical trial networks, I turned those back on.

KAISER: Was it turned back on?

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, The clinical trial networks, yeah.

KAISER: When?

BHATTACHARYA: I don't remember. It's been a couple of weeks, I think? The clinical trial networks … there is a problem that the NIH has had in tracking subawards. Most prominently the EcoHealth Alliance.

KAISER: Right.

BHATTACHARYA: You know, a lot of money goes out where NIH—even to people, even the entities in countries that are not particularly friendly with the U.S. And so, we have to like get track of that, which is a national security concern.

KAISER: Okay, so since you brought it up, kind of skipping around here, but so as you know, as you may not have seen the story. But we had heard it too, that there's going to be a policy canceling collaborations, foreign collaborations.

BHATTACHARYA: No, that's false.

KAISER: Is there going to be some sort of policy that...

BHATTACHARYA: There was a policy, there's going to be policy on tracking subawards.

KAISER: What does it mean?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, if you're going to give a subaward, we should be able—the NIH and the government should be able see where the money's going.

KAISER: Okay, so, so you mean more detailed accounting?

BHATTACHARYA: We don't know where the money goes. I mean, for instance, the EcoHealth Alliance gives money to the Wuhan lab, and we don't where the, where the money goes. They don't have to cooperate and give the data that the American people pay for back. I mean we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

KAISER: Okay, so it will not, this policy, when is it going to be coming out?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, I can’t talk. We'll see.

KAISER: But will it, will it temporarily halt these collaborations so that these measures can be- Just like-

BHATTACHARYA: Jocelyn, you know, I just I'm really uncomfortable with this conversation because you're like actually spreading rumors that you don't know anything about. And you’re asking me—

KAISER: Nature reported it yesterday. I'm just repeating what they had.

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, Nature also is spreading rumors, right? There's no announced policy about, what did you say, Like halt foreign collaborations. Not true.

KAISER: Well, tell me what the policy is going to do.

BHATTACHARYA: Again, the policy is in process, but the aim of the policy ultimately is so that we can track subawards.

KAISER: Okay, and how will it be?

BHATTACHARYA: Again, we're working on the policy, Jocelyn. You shouldn't be reporting rumors. I know there's leaks all over here, but the leaks don't actually reflect what's happening. You should actually just ask. And don't write about rumors either. I mean, it actually makes the things that you and I care about worse.

It spreads panic.

KAISER: In general, our reporting is based on...

BHATTACHARYA: In general, but no. Actually, that's not true, Jocelyn, I've read your reporting through the pandemic.

KAISER: I didn't really write much about the pandemic. I wasn't one of our-

BHATTACHARYA: You wrote about the EcoHealth Alliance.

KAISER: I did, yeah. Straight, I mean.

BHATTACHARYA: It wasn't all that straight.

KAISER: Okay. Anyway, so you said there's going to be a policy that will involve having better tracking of subawards to foreign collaborators, but you say foreign collaborations will continue?

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, foreign collaborations will continue, as long as we are able to track. I mean, there may be the countries of concern, there may be some restrictions. But I don't know, we're still working on the policy.

KAISER: But I guess what I'm wondering is, will there have to be some sort of pause to put the new tracking into place?

BHATTACHARYA: Maybe, I don't know, we’ll have to see.

KAISER: Okay. But, yeah, you did say...

BHATTACHARYA: We haven't announced the policy as yet. All right.

KAISER: All right. Right, you did say at the Council of Councils that you think research, NIH should fund research…

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, I'm not, I mean, there's no intent to cancel the foreign collaborations, it's just not true. That's just a rumor being spread falsely by Nature. And now apparently, I hope you don't spread it.

KAISER: I'll report what you're telling me. Okay, so but so can you just say something about why you think?

BHATTACHARYA: I just told you, I think we don't have a hold on where NIH, American tax dollars go for subawards. That's just not okay.

KAISER: But I'm just trying to ask, do you think it is important for NIH to continue to fund research in foreign countries and collaborations?

BHATTACHARYA: And yeah, part of the NIH mission is to—and it's appropriate—is to learn from the experience of other countries so that we can make American health better, right? That's absolutely part of our NIH mission.

KAISER: But you could argue that those – that doesn't directly benefit the American people, right? You could argue –

BHATTACHARYA: No… biology is human biology. If you can learn from the experience of other countries, I think that's really important.

KAISER: Okay. Okay. Well, so back to the canceled grants, the 800 grants or so. So, I mean, have you gone through? You said that DEI, you don't agree with funding things that involve DEI. But I mean have you, are you, those are continuing, those cancelations. Are you reviewing them as they come along and deciding, “Yeah, I think this should be canceled?”

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, I mean there's a process, it's not me personally. But I mean, the best I could tell, most of those were canceled before I even got in.

KAISER: Right, but it has continued. I mean, are there any that you think should be?

BHATTACHARYA: Like what do you mean like continued? What do you mean continued? Can you give me something specific?

KAISER: Well, if you look at the list of canceled grants, they continued to revolve.

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, I think there's been some cancelations, pauses, not cancelations on … You know, Harvard and some other places that are violating civil rights laws.

KAISER: Right and what, how do you?

BHATTACHARYA: Those are pausing. They're pausing that. Is that what you're talking about?

KAISER: I was talking about …. There's the 800 grants that are about DEI or something else, like transgender research. That's one set. And then there's the freeze on grants to Harvard, Columbia, and so on, right? And there's some overlap. But I am talking about the 800 grants. I mean, some of those grants or a lot of them involve health equity studies, which you yourself, it's been part of your research, right?

BHATTACHARYA: So I want to distinguish studies that make appropriate distinctions between people based on their age, race, sex, all that—that have biological consequences that are important. That's absolutely …. Of course, scientists should be able to look at that.

KAISER: Yea.

BHATTACHARYA: And we’re not canceling any grants about that, as far as I know.

If it's … versus politicized, DEI kind of ideology, that says essentially race essentialism. That has nothing to do with science, as far as I'm concerned, and nothing to do … that had no capacity to improve the health of the American people.

KAISER: And so the health equity grants on the list all involve what you just described?

BHATTACHARYA: Again, I don't know. Again, most of the grants you're talking about I think were cancelled, let go before I got into power. So I don't know exactly what you mean.

KAISER: And it sounds like you have not reviewed them.

BHATTACHARYA: I don't personally review grant lines and say, “Cancel this grant, don't cancel that grant.” That's not what I do.

KAISER: Okay, who actually makes those decisions about what to cancel?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, again, I don't know. You're going to have to be very specific about which ones, because I don t know what you're talking about.

KAISER: All right, so yeah, so how, what what are your thoughts about the this freeze on grants that at Harvard Columbia and others.

BHATTACHARYA: I think these institutions should obey civil rights laws.

KAISER: Okay, well

BHATTACHARYA: And I expect that they eventually will. I mean, I don't want them to—

KAISER: But is that the right way to compel them to do that?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean those decisions aren't up to me. But I do know these institutions ought to obey the civil rights laws, and I think eventually they will. I think there's many excellent scientists at all these institutions and I would love to be able to have these institutions be supported by the NIH. And as soon as they obey civil rights laws, that’s exactly what we'll do.

KAISER: Okay, I mean, do you know about, I'm sure you do, like there's the grant at Harvard where it's a big tuberculosis vaccine study.

BHATTACHARYA: Again, I think there's a lot of excellent science that goes on in these places. It's very difficult to do excellent science in a place that doesn't obey civil rights laws.

KAISER: Okay. You think that, that there is a connection there between

BHATTACHARYA: Yeah, I mean, I feel free speech, for instance, is really important. During the pandemic, many of the academic institutions in this country, including some of the places you've mentioned, they were difficult for free speech, for scientists to dissent.

KAISER: Right.

MALE VOICE: Jay, I need you right now. I got a call from downtown.