The heated exchange between Anthony Fauci and Rand Paul in a recent Congressional hearing made a mockery of fact-finding. Fauci and Paul are both medical doctors, with the former being the COVID czar and the latter a US senator from the State of Kentucky. In an unscientific manner, Fauci dismissed Paul's rational queries about the origin and spread of COVID. Scientists do not take sides. They take questions. Fauci did not want to take legitimate questions from Paul who happens to be his fellow medical professional. As such, Fauci acted and sounded like a cornered politician, which he was but shouldn't be.

Fauci and his ilk won't survive history. Their mediocrity will never lead to a scientific breakthrough that promises to change the world for the better. Fortunately, above conspicuous mediocrity are inconspicuous top scientists working day in and day out under the media's radar. Here let me cite the example of Marguerite Vogt, a medical scientist who pioneered poliovirus research in the early 1950s.

Having survived Nazi persecution, Vogt came to America and ended up in the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She grew and isolated poliovirus at great personal risk in a basement laboratory, literally a no-man's land. Painstakingly, she managed to come up with a method for studying poliovirus. Her method is still in use today when it comes to COVID. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci is busy playing politics in the name of science.

--- by Lingyang Jiang

Marguerite Vogt (1913-2007)