Trump’s revolution is coming for the health technocrats

And Trump's nomination for US surgeon general, Janette Nesheiwat, has strongly criticised the American Academy of Pediatrics for using puberty blockers to treat children with gender dysphoria.

But most remarkable is the nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. He was co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which pointed out the damage of Covid lockdowns. The medical science establishment tried to crucify him, now he will be its boss.

Of course, most areas of science are rock solid and nobody doubts it. There is no doubt that Newton's laws of motion work. Industrial science is audited by the red team called cold hard reality. But in many areas where success and failure are not obvious, better systems are needed to stop groupthink, ideology or self-interest influencing the scientific wisdom. Top among these systems is ensuring there is guaranteed debate, checking and auditing, which is largely what Kennedy is advocating.

In this regard, scientists are 180 years behind accountants and 300 years behind lawyers and politicians. Auditors are accountancy red teams. Defence lawyers are legal red teams, as is British Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch. All these innovations are examples of the wonderful development of the institutions of Western civilisation, especially the British sub-branch. They happened because there was an obvious systemic deficiency that needed correction.

Compulsory auditing of public companies started, at least theoretically, in 1844 in Britain. Arguably, it took a half-century to become effective. Similarly, defence lawyers were first allowed in criminal trials in the 1730s because it could be seen that there was a major missing part of the legal system. The accused were not good at defending themselves. Australia did not formally recognise, or even pay, the federal opposition leader until 1920. It can thus be seen that formalising official red teams has been a long process in society.

It is now science's turn. In Australia, we need red teams to scrutinise the science behind the Great Barrier Reef and how it ended up with record amounts of coral after supposedly being almost destroyed a dozen times in the past six decades. Add to that bushfire and forest management, the Australian Covid response, the closure of our fisheries, the transgender cult, and climate and energy policy. Then throw in whether our education and social science research institutions have done more harm than good to society. Is there any chance these have been affected by groupthink, ideology or pure self-interest?

Trump, Ramaswamy, Kennedy and others hopefully will begin to Make American Science Even Greater. We need to do the same in Australia.