# The Cost of Dissent: How a Viral Newsweek Op-Ed Led to Medical School Dismissal

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Podcast: [The Doctor's Lounge](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-doctor-s-lounge-7442524)
Published: 2026-03-15T13:36:52+00:00
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Duration seconds: 3554

## Resource

Kevin Bass, PhD, joins Anish and Dr. DiGiorgio to tell the story of how a viral Newsweek op-ed apologizing for his support of COVID lockdowns and mandates set off a chain of events that ended in his dismissal from Texas Tech's MD/PhD program. Kevin walks through the internal emails, sham professionalism hearings, and rigged dismissal process he uncovered through FERPA records requests — and his ongoing federal and state lawsuits alleging First Amendment retaliation. The conversation then shifts to what Kevin has been building since: using AI pipelines to do large-scale investigative data analysis, from parsing the Epstein files to probing Medicaid fraud — work he argues would have taken a newsroom months, done now in days by one person. YouTube Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction and Kevin Bass background 01:16 - Kevin's COVID arc: from establishment supporter to dissenter 03:14 - The Newsweek op-ed and Tucker Carlson appearance 08:00 - Internal emails and the professionalism complaint campaign 13:44 - Sham hearings, appeals, and eventual dismissal 19:19 - The rigged consolidated hearing and Darren Gibson 27:34 - Dr. DiGiorgio on the medical training dismissal system 29:51 - Why Kevin still believes in the broader legal system 33:00 - What Kevin has been building since dismissal 36:00 - Using AI to analyze the Epstein files 40:10 - The messiness of large health data sets 46:00 - Immigration policy data analysis 49:06 - Medicaid fraud and the limits of legal definitions 56:20 - Advice to physicians on AI 01:03:10 - The future of health policy research in the AI era @anish_koka and @drdigiorgio @drsloungepod 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-doctors-lounge/id1489323962 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7vE4aCMpVHnSGwuOHiGVLp ▶️ YouTube: https:…

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