Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of online “medical professionals” gained notoriety through their (often wrong) pronouncements of doom and despair. From the pushing of masks and lockdowns to provably false declarations about the vaccines, Eric Feingl-Ding and Peter Hotez remain some of the most prolific examples, though there are many more.

For his part, Hotez recently found himself in the midst of an online fight with top-performing podcaster Joe Rogan. As RedState reported, Rogan challenged Hotez to an untimed debate on his show with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the latter of which has been highly critical of the COVID-19 vaccines.

After much blustering, Hotez eventually backed down, and he completed his humiliation with a Sunday evening appearance on MSNBC.

Dr. @PeterHotez on why he won’t debate @RobertKennedyJr: “In science, we don’t typically do debates. What we do is we write scientific papers … one doesn’t typically debate science. Maybe the one-off discussion of evolution versus creationism & that sort of thing, but that’s not… pic.twitter.com/amiFU9vI9N

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 19, 2023

2/n first science is not something that is typically debated like say 18th enlightenment philosophy or political issues. That’s not typically what we do pic.twitter.com/8SA6NM8ths

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) June 19, 2023

The sheer lack of self-awareness is a sight to behold. He claims that “science is not something that is typically debated like 18th enlightenment philosophy” without beginning to realize that’s exactly why so few trust anything he says. He could have just plastered “I can’t back up most of what I say” on his forehead and made it easier for everyone.

Hotez embodies the severe loss of credibility within the scientific community. His mix of arrogance and cluelessness has fueled rightful skepticism since COVID-19 made all these “medical professionals” online celebrities. Instead of keeping their heads down and doing good work, people like Hotez have spent years doing cable news hits and making inflammatory predictions online that have greatly harmed public trust.

His choice to run back to the comfortable confines of MSNBC, appearing with conspiracy-fueled anti-Semite Mehdi Hasan, only underscores that. Hotez doesn’t want a real debate because he knows he’d lose one. And that’s not to say there aren’t some scientists out there who could successfully counter someone like RFK Jr., whose anti-vaccine views go well beyond COVID-19 and into disproven absurdity at times. It is to say that Hotez can’t do that because he’s nothing but a too-online fake who receives massive grants to accomplish nothing of value. He is the embodiment of the scientific communities transition from respected to scam.

But while Hotez and his cohorts continue to boost their public profiles in friendly territory, they are wreaking havoc on the very thing they claim is important.

Quite honestly, @DrJBhattacharya said to me “I was at Stanford for 35 years as a researcher and didn’t know how any of this really worked.”

Fauci/Collins/Daszak didn’t just break trust with lay people. They showed even successful researchers that there’s a secret 🌎 in science.

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) June 18, 2023

Here is what Public Health did:

The disease threat was real, but seemed exaggerated particularly for young healthy people.

The vaccine benefits were wildly exaggerated.

Any interest in vaccine alternatives was ridiculed.

Any attempt to find the origin was demonized as racism.

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) June 18, 2023

Believe it or not, despite my deep distrust in the medical establishment, I do think it’d benefit everyone if we could get back to a place of trust. It was an objectively good thing when you could take the opinion of a doctor at face value and not wonder whether he was just chasing online clout.

But as long as people like Hotez remain at the forefront of the scientific movement, that trust can never be restored. It can only return when there is a public rebuke of those who lied to the American people, with that rebuke including them never working another day in the field. Unfortunately, science has become so politicized that such is almost certainly not going to happen. Instead, Hotez will keep the MSNBC hits rolling, all the while blaming others for what he’s ultimately responsible for, which is the destruction of the scientific community.