Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, Who Correctly Warned Against Covid Lockdowns, Says Harvard Fired Him
Warning about the politicization of research, Kulldorff writes: “Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it.”
Harvard University has undoubtedly been busy covering itself in shame.
Its former president, Claudine Gay, was forced out when the magnitude of her plagiarism became known in the intense scrutiny of her career following the discovery of her callous antisemitism. Furthermore, following a probe into data falsification, a Harvard University-affiliated teaching hospital retracted or corrected dozens of papers authored by four top researchers.
More recently, a key figure in the Harvard scandal related to body parts stolen from Harvard Medical School recently received probation.
Now, Harvard University has fired one of the few epidemiologists willing to question the necessity and effectiveness of the COVID lockdowns.
Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University since 2003, announced on social media Monday that he was “fired” by the university.
“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote in a lengthy essay in the City Journal, also posting the news on his X account. “The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.”
Kulldorff was a prominent opponent of vaccine mandates and school closures during COVID-era debate about the regulation of schools and businesses.
I am no longer a professor of medicine at @Harvard. Here is the story of my Harvard experience until I was fired for clinging to the truth.https://t.co/zSOQlNJTY2
— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) March 11, 2024
Legal Insurrection readers who followed our COVID coverage are familiar with Kulldorff. In 2020, he joined Oxford University’s Professor Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya to author the Great Barrington Declaration.
Called the Great Barrington Declaration, the group issued a letter saying “as infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold.
Kulldorff and the others were proven entirely correct in their assessments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently ended all isolation requirements for COVID-19, indicating infections can be handled exactly like all the other respiratory illnesses that commonly affect humans. A study from Johns Hopkins University confirmed that lockdowns failed spectacularly to stop either the spread or resulting deaths. Another study showed that there was a devastating learning loss between K-8 students due to the pandemic lockdowns.
Kulldorff shared his experiences working to provide information and guidance on pandemic policy and vaccines. In his City Journal op-ed, he recounts his experiences of being throttled on social media because he was labeled misinformation (which Legal Insurrection covered in our Twitter Files analysis).
However, perhaps the most crucial portion of Kulldorff’s article is focused on the consequences of the ideological capture of the sciences.
…Most Harvard faculty diligently pursue truth in a wide variety of fields, but Veritas has not been the guiding principle of Harvard leaders. Nor have academic freedom, intellectual curiosity, independence from external forces, or concern for ordinary people guided their decisions.
Harvard and the wider scientific community have much work to do to deserve and regain public trust. The first steps are the restoration of academic freedom and the cancelling of cancel culture. When scientists have different takes on topics of public importance, universities should organize open and civilized debates to pursue the truth. Harvard could have done that—and it still can, if it chooses.
Almost everyone now realizes that school closures and other lockdowns, were a colossal mistake. Francis Collins has acknowledged his error of singularly focusing on Covid without considering collateral damage to education and non-Covid health outcomes. That’s the honest thing to do, and I hope this honesty will reach Harvard. The public deserves it, and academia needs it to restore its credibility.
Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it. The scientific community will gradually lose public support and slowly disintegrate in such a culture. The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse, with zero tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation. My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.
As I noted previously, trust in science is already collapsing (a large part of it) due to how the COVID pandemic was handled by “experts.” Hopefully, another institution will find a place for Kulldorff and his science.
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Comments
He is a living, breathing reminder of the disaster they perpetrated in the name of Science. He had to go.
The question is “who” called for his dismissal? That will lead you to the truth. This action by Harvard is a symptom of how truth has become a declining commodity. FJB
The interim president of Harvard is from the medical school. Apparently he hasn’t spoken out against the firing.
Harvard fired its reputation long before this. See: Fauxcohontas and Obama’s affirmative action HLR position.
Sounds like Kulldorff was one of the last remaining true scientists at Harvard; the rest are just political tools.
I wouldn’t say most are political tools, they are just normal everyday people who couldn’t afford to lose their jobs, be kicked from their program (it is surprising how much of the base research is done by Grad Students) or just don’t have the clout to be heard.
Someone has to have done the research that these aggregate analysis papers are using. The information has been out there, but when you are rejected out of hand and you have the government (aka the University Administration), big tech and big media sweeping any “resistance” under the rug or just outright ruining people, well feeding and being able to care for your family and future become the focus.
One mistake we sometimes make is always throwing a wide net, when we should just focus on where the fish are so to speak. In other words we should be targeting the ones who lied to the public not the ones who did what they could to get the truth out.
None of this can be laid at one persons or groups feet. People just want to blame “scientists” this was never about science, it was a test by the left to see how far they could push their tyranny and I am sad to say, We the people failed this one. If you believe they won’t push further the next time they find a hook, well then I don’t have much for you.
Ok, ramblings over.
” But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.”
A necessity when Democrats gain full control of any group organization or institution.
There’s something fundamentally wrong and sick in a society that elevates, lionizes and lavishly compensates transparently greasy, self-serving, incompetent and unrepentantly mendacious frauds such as the vile Fauci, while vilifying and punishing truth-tellers such as Kulldorff.
What you describe is how Lenin and others built the former Soviet Union. Any deviation and the person doing so was removed.
Indeed. Removed, and/or, subjected to a worse fate. Fear keeps the peasants in line.
I seem to remember from back in my school days where great minds would say the Earth was round instead of flat if I’m not mistaken their heads were taken off
It seems that from Climate Change, to Covid, to genders and womens’ sports we are indeed in a “flat earth” world today. At least in those days they had the excuse that they really did not know better.
Climate change and COVID-19 both showed mainstream “science” to be anything but. The Harvard Corporation had to be hounded to get rid of an anti-free speech plagiarizer, but they’re fine with firing an authentic scientist who happened to draw conclusions that conformed with the scientific method and were actually correct. We are in the last days of the Republic.
“Kulldorff and the others were proven entirely correct in their assessments” have they lol, I think not.
Sweden.
lol what did they lol get wrong lol
How old are you? 12?
Citations please. I’m always willing to listen to other views.*
That’s how science is supposed to work.
While I question the assertion that you actually “think”. You are a perfect example of what has been being discussed. No data, no references, no assortations. Basically, just a typical leftist chronologically adult toddler yanking the thumb out of their mouth (or orifice of choice) shouting “Poopy Head” and running away.
“The Daily Show with John Stewart” taught a generation of Leftists that politics is not about dialectic and synthesis, but snark and dismissal.
Consequently, all remaining political discourse, and rational people in general, are on the Right these days.
I actually provided links to confirmations of my assertions…like a scientist. Your quip does not negate the facts.
Committed Leftists are all about control, everything, all the time. They know how to live your life better than you.
The Narrative must be maintained!
Covid was a pretext for the lockdown. This was the Great Reset.
Colleges have changed since when me and my wife went in the mid to late 70s. Our sons were born in the mid and late 80s. We saw our sons HS change and could not get teachers, admin, and school board to fix it. When the choice of college came they each decided on different Trade Schools and this was in the early 2000s. My sons earn as much as I was as an Electrical Engineer and me and my wife have now retired.
Colleges are being controlled by donors, wokeness, and propaganda science instead of core science. DEI has pushed into many colleges yet it goes against US Civil Rights Laws.
The situation has changed. Most of the population now has at least partial immunity to COVID, either from vaccination or from exposure to the virus. That means most people who are exposed to the COVID virus will either not contract COVID or will contract a mild and short-lasting case of COVID. That was not true when the Declaration was first issued.
It’s important to remember that over a million Americans died during the pandemic. It was not like a cold or seasonal flu.
Yes a million passed. It was mainly because of the decisions made in blue states. Especially Washington, NY, California. FJB
A lot of those who passed was due to excessive immune response, where peoples organs were damaged.
I even question that a million people died from COVID for a number of reasons.
1: The reporting of deaths that had nothing to do with COVID as COVID Deaths, which was rampant.
2: The inflation of the number of deaths that happened because of Leftist policies in the blue areas of the countries. Policies that should have lead to the arrest and trial of the politicians that made those decisions for accessory to murder or Negligent Homicide. (When you pack people with an active disease into Nursing Homes with healthy people, that is straight up Negligence and IMHO it was willful negligence.
3: The practice of diagnosing “COVID” by symptoms only. This inflated the numbers greatly, may of those people probably only had the flu. The flu didn’t just magically go away because of COVID, but for 3 years diagnosis of flu was all but nonexistent. (Couldn’t have any anything to do with the billions of dollars that were given based on COVID diagnosis and treatment, right?)
4: The absolute horrible performance of the rapid COVID testing kits. Their accuracy percentages were pitiful and even now are only dubiously trusted in the Medical Community (at least at my institution).
5: Also, during the pandemic actual testing for flu just wasn’t done as it should have been along side COVID testing.
As for the, and I will be kind here, marginally effective “vaccines” that were literally forced on people. The thing they don’t like to admit is that after mandatory vaccination was stopped for the most part and people stopped being vaccinated for the most part, COVID infection numbers did not rise. (example for the COVID Bivalent Vaccination or COVID Vaccine 4 only 17% of people actually got that vaccination and even fewer are getting the current vaccination. Yet we continue to see either a drop off or a stagnation of the COVID numbers.
Compare that to the number of cases during the “COVID Surge” when vaccination was mandatory and COVID numbers just continued to rise and not just from negligent reporting of cases though that did play a role.
Also, for those that screech, but it worked because COVID is declining. Well I presume that they have never taken Microbiology and didn’t pay attention in high school. COVID has followed the typical progression of a virus. Viruses tend to become more widespread, but less deadly with each mutation (strain). Though this is only one aspect of the reduction in the numbers.
This is just part of what I have witnessed since I was assigned to monitor COVID by the hospital in March 2020. Thankfully, I had the good fortune to work with Physicians and Scientists, I am a Nurse, who for the most part read all of the data and were skeptical of any data that they were informed they were required to believe. Because of this my facility had a fairly measured response to COVID and we were one of the first to stop requiring the COVID vaccinations, even though it meant we had to pass up a not insignificant amount of funding by doing so. Oh, and there was no significant difference in our Covid cases after we stopped requiring vaccination.
My personal advice to non-medical folks is when it come to medical concerns a healthy distrust of anything the government is pushing is always best. I typically give the Government a bit lest trust than a door to door salesman, at least the salesman can usually demonstrate his product, the Government….well it doesn’t have an actual product. Only vague promises and assertions combined with a remarkable lack of positive outcomes (at least is the past 30 years or so).
“I typically give the Government a bit lest trust than a door to door salesman, at least the salesman can usually demonstrate his product, the Government…”
…never makes its product voluntary or optional, but always “sells” it to you at the point of a gun, the only mode of interaction unique to government.
The problem with your theory is that we knew what we know now after the first 6 months to a year, it was just ignored in favor of power and narrative.
MoeHowardwasright: Yes a million passed. It was mainly because of the decisions made in blue states.
Republicans had a 15% higher death rate from COVID. See Wallace et al., Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic, JAMA Internal Medicine 2023.
“Data sourced from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the 10 states with the highest vaccination rates all voted for Biden in 2020, while nine of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Trump.”
rjriley5000: A lot of those who passed was due to excessive immune response, where peoples organs were damaged.
Autopsies showed that SARS-Cov-2 directly attacked lung, but also other tissues, which also left the body open to opportunistic infections. See Suran, Autopsies Reveal Lung Damage Patterns From COVID-19, JAMA 2021. See Stein et al., SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence in the human body and brain at autopsy, Nature 2022.
Gremlin1974: I even question that a million people died from COVID for a number of reasons.
Excess deaths tracked the ebb and flow of the pandemic. See Paglino et al., Excess natural-cause mortality in US counties and its association with reported COVID-19 deaths, PNAS 2024.
Gremlin1974: 3: The practice of diagnosing “COVID” by symptoms only.
Testing was pervasive after a few missteps at the beginning of the pandemic.
Gremlin1974: The flu didn’t just magically go away because of COVID, but for 3 years diagnosis of flu was all but nonexistent.
There’s a test for influenza. During the 2020-21 flu season, almost all tests for influenza were negative (0.2% of 818,939 tests). It wasn’t magic, but social measures, including distancing and masking.
Gremlin1974: 4: The absolute horrible performance of the rapid COVID testing kits.
False positives are rare. Of course, more accurate testing is also available. See Gans et al., False-Positive Results in Rapid Antigen Tests for SARS-CoV-2, JAMA Network 2021.
In answer to both of your testing assertions. Other than PCR testing none of the rapid or at home tests even make it above 69% accuracy even today. Yes I realize they say they are 99.3%, but that is before you read the caveats. For example “if used within the first week of developing symptoms” after which accuracy falls off dramatically, or the drop off in accuracy if the person happens to be a asymptomatic covid positive. Then there are the caveats regarding differences in accuracy by manufacturer, case in point the ones the government were handing out at first that were made in China, which were a joke.
I would also point out that the data here is from the NIH who has a long history of manipulating data to the point of being at the very least less than trustworthy.
As far as testing being pervasive after some missteps, true, however it took 2 years to fully correct those missteps, so for the first half of the pandemic testing was suspect at best.
On Flu, I didn’t mean to downplay the effect masking, lockdowns, and distancing had on Flu cases and that probably was the reason for a good part of the lower numbers, but remember that number is an estimate based on reported testing and misses a lot of flu cases, like those based on a symptomatic diagnosis or just unreported cases. But even the studies from the NIH and CDC admit that while the lion’s share of the lack of flu was those measures, even they admit they don’t know the rest of the reason for all of the drop off.
I have a theory that 2022 – 2023 was the measures combined with it being a mild year in the flu case cycle. Haven’t had time to look into that yet but it makes sense.
Also, I see people saying that us stopping those measures is the reason why Flu is so bad this year. Which I am sure has a big impact, however the reason that isn’t being talked about so far is that the Government really screwed the pooch this year on what strains to put in the Flu shot, they did the same thing a few years ago when they finally had to admit that the Flu shot from that year was only like 40 something percent effective and that number was probably inflated.
I think what happened this time is that no one took into consideration that the strain cycle for flu may have dramatically changed due to the pandemic. For years we have had a fairly predictable flu cycle that strongly mirrored Australia, whose Flu season ends a couple of months before ours starts, due to the Seasons being different, and that usually informs us on how our Flu Season is going to look. I am afraid all of that has changed, though we won’t know for a few years.
(Anecdote: when I began in Nursing in the mid-90’s the “Flu Test” was a questionnaire that asked 3 yes or no questions.
1: Is it flu season? Yes No
2: Does the pt. have symptoms of the flu? Yes No
3: Has the patient been around people with the flu or flu symptoms? Yes No
If all 3 answers were yes…then it was the flu. If all 3 no…it wasn’t the flu. If any 1 question was no…Then it’s probably the flu, so it’s the flu. If 2 questions were no….then it’s probably not the flu, but just to be safe, it’s the flu.
Now the interesting part of this is that those 3 questions, once testing became the standard, became the basis of whether someone should be tested for the Flu. Example, the CDC does not recommend testing outside of Flu season. Questions 2 and 3 are now the basic indicators of if testing should be considered.)
Thank you for you discussion @Zachriel, we may not always agree, but at the very least you make me think and you can disagree without some of the nastiness we see here often. Hope you are doing well.
Gremlin
Gremlin1974: I even question that a million people died from COVID for a number of reasons.
The number of excess deaths closely tracked the number of deaths attributed to COVID—even subdivided by regions, as well as before and after vaccine availability.
Yes I have seen this and we discussed it in our team meetings, it is based on the original reporters updating/changing their report, it is not an investigative study. So the original reporter had to admit to a mistake in reporting and according to our epidemiologist that rarely happened. Basically, this is a typical report written to make it look like someone is actually doing something productive.
Huh? The study has not been retracted. See Paglino et al., Excess natural-cause mortality in US counties and its association with reported COVID-19 deaths, PNAS 2024. Notice the close correlation across regions, strengthening the finding.
And now that we know that those of us against the insane WuFlu lock downs, etc., were right, where do we go to get the last 4 years of our lives back?
While I sincerely believe that there are a lot of our “betters” who will spend eternity in hell for what they have done, I’d like to see some punishment in the here and now.
At Harvard, the three most important things are: the narrative, the narrative and the narrative. Everything else must advance one or more of the three most important things, or else it falls into a special category called “grounds for termination.”
Martin Kulldorff should sue Harvard.
Actually, it is more Narrative, Funding, Narrative, Funding, and Narrative.
As Nancy Pelosi said, “You have to get the shot to find out if it will kill you or not.”
Doctor Lysenko could not be reached for comment.
One must wonder if we have all the facts of the Kulldorff story. I say that because of the Roland Fryer story. He was ousted from the Harvard economics department and put on two years’ unpaid leave, though I believe he’s back now. His “sin” was announced to have been that he supposedly spoke some sexist-sounding comments to a member of his research staff. But in fact, his cardinal sin was to have published a statistically solid data-based study showing that police do not discriminate against blacks when writing traffic tickets. Apparently it was ex-president Gay who led the charge to discipline Fryer, who BTW is black himself. Sometime the deeper stories of these episodes can reveal more hidden agendas.
I;m sorry he was fired; that was truly unjust, but I heard him defending the so-called vaccines, saying they were effective. There’s lot of doubt about that that he could do research on.