CBS News has a provocative report questioning whether the National Institutes of Health killed a study on how best to communicate with the public because of political pressure from conservatives promoting disinformation.

In 2021, retiring NIH Director Francis Collins recognized the ongoing problems battling mis- and disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, and in his final year in office set up a program called Advancing Health Communication Science and Practice to research the best ways to present prevailing medical understanding about everything from routine health questions to pandemic-level events.  Upon taking over as acting director in December 2021, his successor Lawrence Tabak, put the program on hold; nothing more has been done with the program in more than a year and a half, leading people within the field to believe the program is dead.

The question is, why was a program aimed at improving the dissemination of information from the world’s premier medical research facility dropped?  In the midst of a disinformation war in the country–with Republicans in Congress perversely claiming that by censoring federal public health professionals, they’re fighting censorship–having a study on how to get the public to believe valid information from respected sources would seem logical.

Tabak appears to have caved to pressure from conservative politicians who had started a pro-disinformation campaign in the wake of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.  Rooted in the unwillingness of Trump supporters to believe experts who countered what their idol said, particularly during the pandemic, Republicans started to actively undermine the experts at NIH.  Now, the pressure from the disinformation sources appear to have shut down a program to have legit sources combat them.