Stanford is distancing itself from Trump's controversial coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas

(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

published 17 November 2020

Stanford University appears to be trying to distance itself from Dr. Scott Atlas, President Trump's coronavirus adviser and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, is known for his controversial view that the U.S. should not rely on restrictive methods to curb the virus' spread, but rather naturally achieve herd immunity. On Tuesday night, Stanford addressed questions about the university's relationship with Atlas, stating that Atlas' views are inconsistent with the school's approach. "We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing," the university said in a press release.

But Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall argues that Atlas is far from the only person affiliated with Stanford and the Hoover Institute to espouse controversial ideas or produce questionable studies about the pandemic. Marshall, in fact, thinks the university has been "a hotspot" of COVID-19 misinformation since the early stages of the crisis.

Last week, in a Twitter thread, Marshall pointed to a now-discredited and potentially unethical antibody study; a letter known as The Great Barrington Declaration, which takes an anti-lockdown stance; a prediction that only 500 people in the U.S. would die from COVID-19; and even epidemiology expert John Ionniadis' early estimates that fell short of the virus' eventual toll. All of those cases had ties to Stanford and Hoover, Marshall noted. Read the full thread here.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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