Compromised credibility

If you had asked scientists, public health professionals and researchers eight months ago what they thought of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you would have gotten a sense of resounding confidence in the institution and its research. The institution, in its current form, dates back nearly three quarters of a century. Since its founding, it’s been the epicentre of research, disease surveillance globally. It became synonymous with scholarship and a source of evidence-based guidance for the US public and many around. It’s not a perfect place — and its involvement in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was deeply problematic but CDC has since tried to repair the damage, and had regained the trust of scientists and public health professionals.

Until this year.

Today, scientists and health professionals are urging the public not to listen to CDC anymore. It’s a remarkable fall from grace of a revered institution with a proud history. I’m sure that in the years to come, historians of science will write about how political incompetence and interference destroyed the trust in the institution, and how that intrusion left a permanent scar on the country’s public health. But the story of CDC is not just a story of destruction from the top, it is also a collapse of credibility from within.

As the White House continued to create chaos in its response to the coronavirus, scientists, researchers and administrators at CDC did little to challenge that. Interviews, and off-the-record remarks of scientists now published in several outlets, suggest that even when researchers knew the official policy was wrong and outright dangerous, they did not speak out. Instead, they continued to do what the White House expected them to — even when everyone at CDC knew it was wrong. As a recent extensively detailed report in ProPublica (October 15) points out, employees “surrendered and did as they were told. It wasn’t just worries over paying mortgages or forfeiting the prestige of the job. Many feared if they left and spoke out, the White House would stop consulting the CDC at all, and would push through even more dangerous policies.”

The result of staying silent, and doing what they knew was wrong, is now self-evident. The US leads in the number of deaths and daily infections with no clear end in sight. It will take generations to repair the trust — and maybe CDC’s credibility will never be repaired. The credibility is not just of the institution, but personal and scientific credibility of those who looked the other way. It’s a colossal loss.

The CDC scientists — perhaps in their minds — were making pragmatic decisions, even when they knew they were wrong. Decisions that many people working in the government have to make every day. But at some point, one should ask, is the pragmatism really worth integrity, decency and human rights? Will my decision undermine the lives and livelihoods of innocent people? When people in our own government who know better, take positions that are deeply problematic, only for realpolitik or pragmatism, should they not ask how history will judge them? When important issues of human rights against innocent people are dismissed as non-issues, or a propaganda, should they not worry what it means to be on the wrong side of history?

Institutions have two kinds of people: those who lack a moral compass and bend at the whims of the day, and those who stand up right, work with integrity and speak the truth. In general, we have plenty of the former, and few of the latter in our institutions. But in times of crisis, we need the latter more than ever. It’s the latter that should not get swept in nationalist rhetoric, no matter how enticing.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2020.

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