The New York Times Refuses to Correct Factual Errors in the Editorial, "Trump’s Pick to Lead the NIH Gets Some Things Right"

On November 27, 2024, The New York Times published an Op-Ed titled "Trump’s Pick to Lead the NIH Gets Some Things Right” by Zeynep Tufekci. The piece contained several factual inaccuracies about NIH Director nominee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

On December 12, Martin Kulldorff, Bryce Nickels, Anish Koka, and Kevin Bass sent a letter to The New York Times requesting corrections to these errors. The letter was covered in an article by the Daily Caller titled "NYT Op-Ed Blasting Trump’s NIH Pick Apparently Has More Holes Than Swiss Cheese."

Dear Editorial Board,

Dr. Zeynep Tufekci’s November 27, 2024, editorial, “Trump’s Pick to Lead the NIH Gets Some Things Right” (Tufekci, 2024), includes several false and misleading claims that require correction.

First, the editorial falsely claims that Dr. Bhattacharya “repeatedly predicted that the virus would likely kill about 20,000 to 40,000 Americans.” In fact, Dr. Bhattacharya co-authored a March 2020 article (Bendavid & Bhattacharya, 2020) that presented a range of potential death estimates--from 20,000 to 2 million--to highlight the uncertainty of early pandemic projections based on limited seroprevalence data.

Second, the editorial falsely claims that Dr. Bhattacharya’s 2020 Santa Clara Study grossly overestimated infection numbers. In fact, the estimated community infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.17% is consistent with findings from several independent studies that also excluded nursing homes (COVID-19 Forecasting Team, 2022; Ioannidis, 2021; Pezzullo et al., 2023).

Third, the editorial falsely claims that implementing focused protection measures for older people and vulnerable populations was never feasible. In fact, Sweden successfully adopted this strategy and achieved the lowest excess mortality rate among major Western countries during the pandemic.

Fourth, the editorial falsely attributes the statement "vaccinating the whole population can cause great harm" to Dr. Bhattacharya. This is not a quote by Dr. Bhattacharya; it is a headline he did not write (Agarwal & Bhattacharya, 2021; Bhattacharya & Nickels, 2024).

Fifth, the editorial contains a passage implying that an article co-authored by Dr. Bhattacharya (Agarwal & Bhattacharya, 2021) was connected to "a deadly wave that killed millions of people" in India. This passage should be removed, and a clear statement issued to clarify that there was no intent to defame Dr. Bhattacharya by implying an article he co-authored was connected to millions of deaths.

Sincerely,

Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D.
Former Professor of Medicine, Harvard University
Co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration

Bryce E. Nickels, Ph.D.
Professor of Genetics, Rutgers University

Anish Koka, M.D.
Cardiologist, Koka Cardiology

Kevin Bass, Ph.D., M.S.
Research Fellow, Collateral Global Charity

On December 13, David Firestone, Deputy Editor of The New York Times Editorial Board, sent the following response:

Thank you for your note regarding Zeynep Tufekci’s opinion blog post on Nov. 27. Here is our response to your five points regarding false claims:

The March 24, 2020 essay in the Wall Street Journal, co-written by Dr. Bhattacharya, never describes 2 million as the high range of potential death estimates. In fact, the entire article is devoted to explaining how much more limited the death toll would be. But our blog post was incorrect in saying he had repeatedly made those claims — it appeared that he did so at most once or twice — and we have removed the word “repeatedly” and added a correction.

Dr. Tufekci referred to a gross overestimate of the number of people who were infected; your point has to do with a different statistic, the infection fatality rate, which she did not address. The dispute over the Santa Clara study, co-written by Dr. Bhattacharya, and the large number of scientists who strongly disagreed with its findings, was covered at length in a separate Opinion essay.

Dr. Tufekci’s statement on the feasibility of protecting only older people in the United States is her opinion and does not require a correction.

The quote about the harm of vaccinating the entire population is the headline on Dr. Bhattacharya’s own essay, published four years ago, and that headline is clearly backed up in the essay.

Dr. Tufekci’s blog post never says or implies that the essay itself led to a deadly wave that killed millions in India. The plain meaning of that paragraph is that Dr. Bhattacharya’s prediction was wrong in the extreme.

Best

Df

Later in the day, The New York Times added the following text to the article:

An earlier version of this article misstated the nature of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s predictions about Covid-19. He said that Covid-19 was likely to kill 20,000 or 40,000 Americans once, in The Wall Street Journal, on March 24, 2020. He did not make that prediction repeatedly.

Astonishingly, the added text repeats the lie that Dr. Bhattacharya claimed Covid-19 was likely to kill 20,000 or 40,000 Americans.

Bryce, Kevin, Martin, Anish, and others are now considering how to respond to The New York Times' decision to knowingly publish false and defamatory claims about Dr. Bhattacharya.

---