STORY AT-A-GLANCE In January 2022, House Oversight Committee Republicans released National Institutes of Health emails that show Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins led the effort to bury the lab leak theory, even though the consensus in early February 2020 was that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan lab Fauci and Collins appear to have participated in the creation of a Nature Medicine article that denied the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan, arguing instead for a natural origin of the virus The Nature Medicine article is a glaring example of propaganda being promoted as science, and of science in turn being used for political aims Behavioral scientist Simon Ruda, cofounder of the British Behavioral Insights Team, unofficially known as the “Nudge Unit,” confirms that the British government has been using propaganda tactics to scare the public into complying with COVID rules Using behavioral science to manipulate people to achieve political goals is fundamentally anti-democratic