Obviously, that is neither literally true nor fair to the still substantial number of people in positions of "expertise" who retain some semblance of integrity.
However, in a general sense, it is functionally true. What I mean by that is that the credentialed class is, as a class, so compromised by political commitments to various causes that you can no longer trust anything they say.
When somebody says "so-and-so is a Harvard professor" or a "law professor at Yale," that used to mean something to most people. It signaled that they had a stamp of approval that lent special credibility. They were at the top of their field. Take notice and listen. Even if they are wrong, you are likely to learn a new perspective worth considering.
Jason Arday is not the story. The story is how our universities took a real human being, spoke to him as one would speak to a special-needs child, and transformed him into a cartoon character to satisfy their own selfish need for conspicuous virtue. pic.twitter.com/Xb50X5eQWY
— Woke Mind Virus (@WokeMV) August 6, 2026
No longer. These same people are of the class that went gaga over Jason Arday. They didn't just love him. They didn't just promote him. They called him "the best in the world" and defended him to the end, accusing his doubters of being vile racists.
Despite Arday's story completely collapsing along with the reputation of Cambridge University among people in the know, the media are still trying to cover for both by basically ignoring the facts of the case. Basically, it's the same thing they have done with Fauci, focusing on Rand Paul as Inspector Javert rather than on the fact that Fauci ruined lives because he is a malignant little man with a God complex.
BBC News at Ten gives almost no relevant details at all about Jason Arday or the circumstances that led to his resignation, but states that 16,000 people signed a petition supporting him. It doesn't add that thousands of those names were joke signatories pic.twitter.com/vljUwbj2rl
— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 5, 2026
This is now the standard practice with all cases of experts lying and destroying lives. We still get the same insane coverage of climate change despite the fact that the research has been shown to be, a nearly infinite number of times, complete crap. Every prediction is wrong. Every "climate-fueled" wildfire is arson. Every "the polar bears are going extinct" claim is complete bullpuckey. None of it matters, because of The Narrative™.
"I’m a board-certified obstetrician, a lesbian, a mother, a lifelong Democrat," writes Solheim, who chaired ACOG's Iowa chapter and has performed gender procedures, "and up until recently, someone who placed immense faith and trust in the institutions that guided my profession." pic.twitter.com/uTaHbgw8aC
— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) August 6, 2026
No place is this pattern clearer than in the area of gender medicine, where the research is of such low quality that most can be called fraudulent, and yet the consequences are so damaging that thousands of lives will be ruined and suicides will be caused. We are going through a totally unnecessary culture war over whether men ogling teenage girls and masturbating in locker rooms is kindness and compassion to an oppressed class, or aiding sexual predators.
For God's sake, they are all Jason Ardays.
Karla Solheim writes in The Free Press about her own experience as an OB/GYN, in which she adopted the standards of care pushed by WPATH, assuming that they must be reasonable because they are so widely endorsed by The Experts™.
After Solheim published an essay on her blog about WPATH's misconduct, Rachel Pittman, a newly appointed VP at ACOG, called Solheim to a meeting, saying that "we aren’t planning on having a full discussion on the issue." pic.twitter.com/MYGWBIPVyw
— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) August 6, 2026
It makes sense, after all. She, too, was credentialed, and as a lesbian she identified with sexual minorities and their special needs. She could be privileged enough to serve an underserved community, right?
I’m a board-certified obstetrician, a lesbian, a mother, a lifelong Democrat, and up until recently, someone who placed immense faith and trust in the institutions that guided my profession.
I served as the chair of the Iowa section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for a year and a half, where I dedicated my time to expanding women’s health access to rural areas in my state.
But in March, one of ACOG’s vice presidents called me into a meeting and told me I had a choice: resign from my position as chair, or stop publicly criticizing ACOG’s endorsement of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s guidelines for transgender medical care.
I had come to realize that our profession was not doing the right thing by encouraging medicalization and surgery for transgender patients, when robust evidence that these treatments provided long-term health benefits did not exist.
The choice was easy.
I told the vice president, Rachel Pittman, that I would resign because I did not intend to silence myself on an issue about which I care so much, and one that impacts so many vulnerable patients deserving of the best, evidence-based medical care.
Most doctors like to follow gold-standard medicine when they can, and the gold-standard care is supposed to be based on solid research built on experience and follow-up to see what kinds of care lead to the best outcomes. Evidence-based medicine, you know. The sort of thing the Cochrane Review, which, as you may recall, demonstrated that masks don't work (and was bullied into a half-assed "except, perhaps, with COVID" note), is supposed to provide.
Except, when Solheim began to question whether some of the procedures she was performing were medically justified, she was driven out of her medical association.
...in 2023, a patient came to my office seeking a hysterectomy and made me rethink everything. She was in her early 20s and perfectly healthy, but she did not intend to undergo a full medical transition. Instead, she identified as nonbinary, but presented very much like a conventional woman—in the way she looked, but also in the way she acted and dressed. She indicated she did not plan to pursue any other medicalization, such as testosterone. I felt a deep sense of anxiety over performing the procedure. I couldn’t understand how her request was any different than asking for an elective hysterectomy—a surgery that has no medical justification, and against which ACOG strictly recommends. I began to reflect on this patient, and all the other patients who had come through my door asking for me to remove their uteri. Why was it that for a healthy young person it would be nearly impossible to get their uterus removed without an underlying medical issue, but if one were simply to identify as a man with no other plans to transition—or even just say they are nonbinary—the surgery is freely available?
When I reached out to a community of ob-gyns on Facebook and explained my reservations, almost everyone was in favor of the procedure. One group of respondents was highly credentialed doctors at some of the best academic institutions in the country telling me the procedure was “medically necessary,” that ACOG, guided by WPATH’s guidelines, explicitly recommended it. And the second was a group of doctors who called me names like “ignorant” and “transphobe” for even questioning whether to perform the procedure in the first place.
But nobody could provide a strong, evidence-based argument as to why this procedure would help my patient get better, so I declined to perform it. I was nervous to tell the patient. I was scared she would go into the community and tell her friends, and that I’d be labeled a “transphobic doctor” and my practice would be at risk. I had seen that happen to plenty of highly regarded physicians before me.
Already aware that she faced professional risk, but buoyed by the fact that she was very highly regarded in the OB/GYN world, including in the gender medicine wing of that group, she decided to write about her concerns, hoping that it would spark a conversation about the poor quality and even fraud that was evident in the research.
It did not go well.
In December 2025, I authored an essay on my blog titled “Physicians Must Demand Answers from WPATH.” In it, I argued that it was time for members of my profession to hold ourselves to the highest, most rigorous and data-driven standards of care when treating patients with gender dysphoria, even if it means having to admit we had previously been misguided.
I didn’t expect ACOG to completely disregard all of the concerns I had raised. On February 4 of this year, two months after publishing my article, the newly appointed vice president Rachel Pittman sent me an email stating my article “raises concerns” because of my “public expression of dissatisfaction with ACOG’s inclusion of WPATH in its clinical guidance.” She requested I join a meeting with her and the association’s legal staff. On March 10, ahead of our meeting, she followed up to emphasize that I could voice my concerns during the meeting “relating to care for transgender people,” but added that “we aren’t planning on having a full discussion on the issue.” The meeting lasted only 20 minutes, and in the end, I was forced to resign if I wanted to continue expressing my concerns publicly.
What made my dismissal all the more ironic was that the very day I was ousted, ACOG awarded the Iowa section the State Legislative Advocacy Award for my work to recruit and retain ob-gyns in the state. A week earlier, ACOG recognized me with a service award and asked me to give a presentation in Washington, D.C., about my work in Iowa to a national audience of ob-gyns.
She was doing great work, as evidenced by the fact that the organization that demanded she resign was simultaneously giving her multiple awards for it, but she wouldn't toe the line on defending fraud.
Sound familiar? That's exactly what Cambridge did until it could no longer sustain its defense of Jason Arday. It lashed out at every critic, not because they were wrong, or even plausibly so, but because they were speaking out loud about the uncomfortable but obvious facts.
Shut up, they explained. Or else.
The credentialed class is fatally compromised. Their loyalty is not to truth, rigor, or any vision of the good you and I can recognize. It is to their ideological commitments, which include a complete disdain for the hoi polloi and whatever we consider to be important values.
These days, the tweed coat, the white coat, or any other symbol of high-status credentials should be viewed with special suspicion.
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