Sorry Jay, "Consensus" is Not a Bad Word
Podcast Jay wins 2025's "Least Self-Aware Stooge" Award
The grand experiment of replacing the Director of the National Institutes of Health with neither a doctor nor scientist, but instead a loudmouthed economist who struggles with basic arithmetic…has not ended well for the reputation of the former Stanford Health Policy academic Jay Bhattacharya. The staff of the NIH does not respect his leadership, the overwhelming majority of American doctors and scientists despise him, and the reporting of what goes on inside this essential federal institution has not been kind. According to one source quoted in The Atlantic: “Bhattacharya is too busy podcasting to do anything.” The consensus is firmly against “Podcast Jay.”
You wouldn’t know anything was wrong judging by Jay’s social media activity. Over sixty-fucking-five podcast appearances (including with white nationalists) in 2025 alone, speaking at extremist rallies, writing obscene opinion editorials about “curing DEI” or a new “pandemic playbook” centered around long-debunked terrain theory, and looking like a tranquilized wombat while his bosses make obscene, fact-free claims. Most disturbing, however, is how the NIH Director maintains his not one, but two accounts at America’s largest genAI-powered Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) community, Twitter. Bhattacharya is the father of two children.
Over at the “NIHDirector_Jay” account, you might be fooled into believing that Jay is the only employee of the institution. It’s a constant stream of clips of himself as well as graphics with his face plastered on them. At the end of 2025, he posted a list of NIH “accomplishments” that didn’t highlight the contributions of a single NIH staffer. At the account “DrJBhattacharya,” where Jay has blocked numerous American doctors and scientists, he posts lazy memes & childish snipes at his critics, including:
“I’m lucky in the nicknames my enemies give me; ‘fringe epidemiologist,’ ‘unlicensed pundit,’ ‘Podcast Jay.’ I mean, if speaking publicly to everyone about why lockdowns and vax mandates are bad, and why reforming our scientific institutions is good, well, I’m guilty, I guess.”
Bhattacharya inadvertently gives up the game here. The staff of the NIH aren’t his professional colleagues, but “enemies” to be destroyed. You sure as hell can’t “reform scientific institutions” recording dozens of podcasts, either. The pathetic truth is that Jay considers himself a Special Boy, and all the world revolves around the erratic whims of Special Boys. You exist solely to realize the dreams of Special Boys.
When Bhattacharya talks about “speaking publicly...about why lockdowns and vax mandates are bad,” it’s worth deconstructing precisely what he means by this language. By “lockdowns,” Jay is talking about non-pharmaceutical interventions in their entirety. From an August 2022 tweet:
“Lockdown-by-stealth: policies that aim to keep people physically distant from one another by force or fear. -Mass asymptomatic testing & quarantines -Vaccine-based segregation -Mask guidance that induces people to treat others as biohazards”
This is the branding of the anti-vaccine war on science at work: Any effort to prevent the transmission of deadly and disabling viruses is actually a “lockdown” and thus must be violently opposed. In fact, there are hundreds of bills across the country currently in the works to ensure that the spread of infectious diseases may never be halted ever again! Only in America are lobbyists fighting for the rights of deadly & disabling viruses over the health & safety of your own children!
As far as “vax mandates” are concerned, what Jay is actually talking about are vaccine requirements that hospitals, schools, and other institutions have required without much controversy, long before 2020. Thanks to the dishonest sensationalism Jay Bhattacharya contributed to, in order to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic for his own gain, lifesaving no-brainer policy is now being destroyed.
The truth about Special Boys like Jay Bhattacharya is that they constantly need to feel special; to stand out. What’s the easiest way to stand out? Rage against the medical consensus at each and every possible term, regardless of the consequences.
In Jay Bhattacharya’s self-obsessed mind, “consensus” is a very bad word. It means other people might just know more than him.
Consensus versus Contrarianism
Last time on the PAI, we dipped a little into the history of Humanity’s first astrophysicist: Johannes Kepler, who discovered that the planets orbited around the sun in an ellipsis nearly half a millennia ago. Now remember, Kepler held the contrarian view of the time, but he supported his hypothesis with a mountain of hard work & solid evidence. What’s important to remember, however, is that Kepler wasn’t going up against the scientific consensus, but the consensus of highly unscientific astrologers.
For thousands of years, governments around the world employed state astrologers: “professionals” tasked with predicting all sorts of future events by tracking the movement of the stars in the night sky. What is obviously absurd now was considered incredibly serious business. If you weren’t the state astrologer and you attempted your own readings of the portents? Well, you were straight up executed! If you were the state astrologer and your predictions didn’t come to pass? Executed!
Scientific and medical consensus, on the other hand, is not judged by the odd drift of the stars in the night sky. According to PubMed, vaccines are one of, if not the, most rigorously studied fields of modern medicine. Prior to 2025, an incredible amount of manpower and resources was dedicated towards ensuring that vaccines are safe, and there are documented examples of unsafe vaccines being pulled from the market. This is basic, basic stuff.
What Jay Bhattacharya and his ilk don’t want you to understand is that science is a collaborative enterprise. This is the foundation of scientific & medical consensus, and completely anti-thetical to the worldview of Special Boys. Thus, consensus must become a very naughty word for narcissistic crusaders like Jay to crusade against.
In fact, prior to converting the NIH campus into a podcast studio, Jay Bhattacharya tried to make attacking medical consensus his entire brand…
Podcast Jay’s Previous Podcast
A great way to learn a man’s true values is to let him be the star of his own show. In the spring of 2023, Jay Bhattacharya launched a podcast titled “The Illusion of Consensus.” The emotionally manipulative logo features an American flag styled graphic of a generic face being covered up by red redaction blocks and scary phrases in air quotes such as:
“Misinformation”
“Conspiracy Theory”
“Science Denier”
“Vaccine Hesitancy”
“Horse Dewormer”
“Anti-Vaxxer”
“Mask Up”
Of course, these are all very real terms grounded in harsh reality. Most notably, numerous Americans died of a toxic overdose because they read on social media that the anti-parasitical drug Ivermectin was an effective treatment for COVID-19, caused by a viral infection, so they went to feed stores to buy a version of the drug designed for livestock…and took a life-ending dosage. That’s why so many tried to warn their fellow citizen about “horse dewormer.” Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya thinks you’re a piece of garbage for trying to prevent such a pointless tragedy.
Jay’s co-host was low-life Twitter troll Rav Arora, an incredibly mature and reasonable adult who publicly responded to critics with well-reasoned statements like:
Shocking very few, Jay and Rav couldn’t find well-respected, experienced doctors willing to waste a couple hours teaching a remedial class on the finer points of basic medicine. Instead, “The Illusion of Consensus” was a rogues’ gallery of the biggest, most unaccomplished loudmouths who considered their own personal failures the fault of everyone else.
Guests of “The Illusion of Consensus” included Kevin Bass, the former medical student who was expelled for sexual misconduct, Tracy Beth Hoeg, the airheaded sports quack physician who is now attacking livesaving vaccines at the FDA, and Joseph Fraiman, who convinced Bhattacharya to pledge to sign an online petition to pull all mRNA vaccines from the market. Another Special Boy, Fraiman tried to make a name for himself on social media by posting fraudulent pre-prints to social media demonizing the COVID-19 vaccines. In the long run, Jay gave Fraiman what he wanted in slashing all NIH funding for future mRNA vaccines, a topic both clearly know nothing about.
“The Illusion of Consensus” is quite revealing of Jay Bhattacharya’s gimmick: No matter how strongly supported by hard evidence the medical consensus is, any opposing view, no matter how poorly argued, must be elevated above it. Matters of life and death are mere entertainment theater. Jay Bhattacharya is morally and mentally unfit to service as National Institutes of Health Director.
The Power of Medical Consensus
Johannes Kepler stood alone against the consensus of reactionary mythology and was actually persecuted for it, only for his dream of traveling to the moon to be finally realized centuries after his passing, thanks in part to his hard work & dedication. When actually practicing doctors and scientists with relevant experience managing pandemics explained to Jay Bhattacharya the many ways of why he was (obviously) wrong, Jay decided that he was suddenly the Galileo of our times...for making posts on social media. Only in America could such impotent hubris be considered a virtue.
In reality, Bhattacharya is gleefully on the side of reactionary mythology, falsely portraying himself as some brave “canceled” hero that is now “running science” while the host reads off advertisements for various wellness scams. All the while, children are dying & schools are shutting down thanks to infectious disease outbreaks, and vaccination rates are plummeting. None of the promises of “focused protection” or other proposals Jay said would save lives between 2020-2025 have been realized. This has led to the publication of The Murray Hill Declaration by Dr. Jonathan Howard over at Science Based Medicine, which you should all read and sign:
“Every school closure or epidemic of absenteeism is now happening under their watch and reflective of their indifference to high-quality education.” -The Murray Hill Declaration
Modern medical consensus is not derived from reading the portents or squinting at animal entrails, thankfully. This consensus is formed from rigorous research and study, something Bhattacharya has proven himself utterly incapable of. Hard work excludes the uninformed ramblings of random sideliners with an inflated sense of self-importance, and nothing to show for themselves except an iMdb page and countless podcast appearances before leeching off the American taxpayer.
Jay Bhattacharya’s only claim to fame is pretending that blindly standing against medical consensus for attention is some sort of brave or principled stance. His belief system is centered around the premise that if 95 scientists hold one view, supported by a mountain of evidence, then we must all drop everything and listen to the ramblings of the 5 scientists with an opposing view, no matter how poorly supported their arguments are. Especially if wealthy billionaires start astroturfing their media footprint in service of a wider deregulatory agenda.
This has nothing to do with scientific integrity or “restoring trust” in public health, an essential pillar of civic society that Bhattacharya and his ilk are very much against. It’s about political control. When you can sever one’s connection from tangible reality, and dictate what they believe to be real, then you command a great deal of power over them. Jay is obsessed with being seen as a very important person, and if American children must die of vaccine-preventable causes in service of his goals, then so be it.
So Now What?
Jay Bhattacharya’s continued immature antics are entirely incompatible with the responsibilities attached to the role of Director of the National Institutes of Health. The staff of the NIH are not tasked with running and maintaining an adult daycare for emotionally underdeveloped podcasters. The American taxpayer is currently paying for an egregious fraud being committed against them.
This is a crime. It must be investigated and prosecuted. The only way forward is to make an example out of frauds like Jay Bhattacharya, and every last crony he brought with him to the NIH - including Kevin Bardosh & Alex Washburne - to ensure that this may never, ever, happen again. America’s brightest deserve better.
Anything less is nothing more than submissive capitulation.
