 Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of science. Public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite. I fear that the COVID-19 pandemic showed that President Eisenhower was right to worry that the search for knowledge could become captive of a scientific technological elite and that the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, could be overshadowed by a cartel of experts with backing from the state. Don't believe the claim that the internet has corrupted our public discourse with misinformation. Experts don't have a monopoly on a search for truth. The internet has improved the scientific process by enabling anyone, no matter their expertise or credentials, to speak up and challenge prevailing wisdom. Take the case of Hydroxychloroquine. In March 2020, the iconic classic French microbiologist Didier Rao announced that it had cured 36 COVID patients enrolled in a clinical trial. It was a small study that wasn't randomized or controlled with a true massive attention. And I think it's going to be very exciting. I think it could be the game changer and maybe not. Could an inexpensive off-the-shelf drug really bring a quick end to the pandemic sweeping the globe? The answer turned out to be no, and most radical scientific ideas don't pan out. But trial and error is a necessary part of the process. The government added 63 million doses of Hydroxychloroquine to its national stockpile of COVID-19 treatments. And Florida added a million doses. Exercising their right to self-medicate, some coronavirus patients just started taking the drug. And then randomized controlled trials showed that not only was there no evidence that it helped COVID patients, but it might be making matters worse. We need to listen to the health experts, the epidemiologists. We need to do what science dictates here to save American lives. And if this president wants to be a wartime president, he needs to stop vacillating, listen to the experts or simply get out of their way. But the lesson of the Hydroxychloroquine brouhaha is not that the scientific establishment's uncredential challenges should be silenced or cut out of the conversation. Hydroxychloroquine didn't prove to be COVID's miracle cure, but life-saving discoveries often come from iconoclasts who threaten establishment thinking. Consider some of the 19th century breakthroughs that saved millions of lives. In 1847, Ignat Semmelweis begged his fellow physicians at the Vienna General Hospital to wash their hands before examining women in labor. Semmelweis was derided with the same vitriol directed at the promoters of Hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. In 1854, the public health establishment rebuffed the contrarian Dr. John Snow for suggesting that a London cholera epidemic was originating from a water pump contaminated with sewer water. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that most disease was caused by invisible gases rising from the ground. If the internet had existed in the 19th century, Semmelweis and Snow could have gotten their ideas out faster and it might not have taken decades for the establishment to accept they had been right all along. Surgeons and physicians vigorously striving to erect a medical establishment akin to our religious one wrote the classical liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer. Little do the public at large know how actively professional publications are agitating for state appointed overseers of the public health. Spencer wrote that in 1851, but it still applies today. Hydroxychloroquine didn't work against COVID, but experimenting with off-label use of FDA approved drugs is a proven path to medical innovation. Lithium treats bipolar illness, but was originally used for gout and bladder stones. The horrifying side effects of thalidomide on babies in utero when taken by pregnant women to treat morning sickness didn't dissuade innovators from discovering that it could be an effective treatment for leprosy and multiple myeloma. We need to welcome heterodoxy. Even random people on the internet with no medical credentials might have groundbreaking ideas, and sometimes reacting to bad ideas could lead to good ones. It's true that medical training can make it easier to detect cherry picking of data and to really understand what the evidence actually says, but I can tell you as a surgeon with 40 years of experience working in medicine, experience and credentials can also cause myopia, making it harder to see the value in radical new ideas. COVID was so politicized that those who broke with the priesthood were often attacked as cranks, accused of having blood on their hands and kicked off social media platforms for dangerous misinformation. Once a theory is labeled conservative or liberal, it becomes difficult for scientists to challenge it. The Harvard science historian Liv Greben noted in a May 2021 essay, some scientists are less prone to question hypotheses for fear of political and social pressures. It was pundits on Twitter without any medical credentials who saw the pandemic coming at a time when some mainstream outlets were dismissive and snide. After the pandemic started, some dissenters from conventional wisdom were banned from YouTube only to have their insights later endorsed by the likes of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing. An alarming new Johns Hopkins University study shows that 2020 lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2 percent. You know, it's very interesting. It shows once again that vaccination is superior to prior infections. New data suggests natural immunity from COVID provided better protection against the Delta variant compared to vaccination alone. We should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened. Openness to unconventional ideas has its limits. We don't take Flat Earthers seriously, nor is it worth paying attention to claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility, implant people with microchips, or change our DNA. They're not enough hours in a day to fully address every hypothesis. But the best experts show tolerance, respect, and openness to the opinions of outsiders. Science is a profession. It's not a priesthood.