The treatment of one of our leading mathematicians over his evidence-based dissident views would have Galileo spinning in his grave
TILAK DOSHI
Few of us can remain unmoved when first acquainted with the story of the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei. His defence of heliocentrism – the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun – brought the wrath of the Catholic Church’s Holy Office of the Inquisition upon him. In 1616, the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be both scientifically indefensible and heretical, and after trying Galileo in 1633, found him “vehemently suspect of heresy”. It sentenced him to house arrest (which lasted to his death), his heliocentric books were banned, and the scientist – whom Albert Einstein called “the father of modern physics – indeed of modern science altogether” – was ordered to forever abstain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.
In our modern era that claims to champion scientific reason and empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge, the story of the cancellation of Professor Norman Fenton exposes a harsh reality. Like Galileo, Fenton’s crime was not falsehood but truth backed by inconvenient evidence. His experience reveals a modern inquisition where institutions — academia, media and shadowy government units — collude to silence dissent. The pursuit of scientific conclusions, we learn, can lead to professional ruin even in an age when there is no moral monopoly of truth being enforced by religious authority and divine revelation.
Professor Fenton — a mathematician of international repute previously at the Queen Mary University of London — has been cancelled by a relentless campaign of character assassination, de-platforming and forced resignation, echoing the fate of historical dissidents like Galileo. The experience of Professor Fenton forces each of us to ask ourselves: have we really left behind the age of religion, magic and superstition?
A Scholar’s Descent into Heresy
Norman Fenton built a distinguished academic career including over two decades at Queen Mary University. With over 400 peer-reviewed publications and expertise in Bayesian theory, risk analysis and medical statistics, he is an academic with world class stature. Yet, his scepticism of establishment narratives — first on climate change, then on COVID-19 — transformed him from a respected professor into an official pariah.
Fenton’s troubles began in 2015 when he presented, along with two other mathematicians Hannah Fry and Sir David Spiegelhalter, the BBC documentary Climate Change by Numbers. He was asked to scrutinise the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013 Summary for Policymakers‘ (SPM) claim that it was “95% certain” that over 50% of global warming was human-caused. As a mathematician, Fenton exposed the claim’s fallacy, noting it appeared only in the politicised SPM, not the full report. His critique, grounded in the ‘Climategate’ emails revealing data manipulation at the University of East Anglia, drew ire from other academics, who aligned with the BBC’s narrative. Fenton’s later observations about the scripted programme and its biases got little traction, foreshadowing the resistance he would face on COVID-19.
By March 2020, Fenton’s Bayesian analysis with Martin Neil and others had confirmed John Ioannidis’s findings on COVID-19’s low infection fatality rates (IFR) of 0.12-0.2% using a larger dataset. This finding went against the Government’s proclamations of a highly virulent epidemic with high fatality rates. He also identified flaws in PCR testing, noting false positives inflated reported rates of pandemic incidence.
His early scepticism extended to lockdowns, which he saw as a gross and unnecessary violation of human rights and a pretext for permanent climate-related restrictions, a view shared by others who noted the overlap between the Covid and climate hysterias that had enveloped mass media coverage. These findings, grounded in objective data – low infection rates, not-fit-for purpose tests of infection, lack of efficacy of lockdowns on infection transmission – marked Professor Fenton as a dissident when dissent was equated with causing danger to public welfare.
The Machinery of Suppression
Fenton’s public dissent on GB News in 2021, where he challenged the ‘safe and effective’ mantra of COVID-19 vaccines, ignited a firestorm. Unlike Mark Steyn, who lost his job for similar critiques, Fenton faced a more insidious campaign. His colleagues at Queen Mary university distanced themselves, refusing to collaborate on grant applications. Research papers authored by Prof Fenton, once routinely accepted, were rejected by journals without review and even by pre-print servers. “As soon as we started challenging the Covid narrative, our work was blocked at every turn,” Fenton told me in an interview on June 19th 2025.
The campaign escalated with anonymous complaints to Queen Mary’s HR department, which demanded that Dr Fenton respond to evidently frivolous allegations. In early 2022, a group of 12 student activists — out of 300 in a mandatory master’s module on risk assessment — demanded to be allowed to switch to a different module rather than be taught by Dr Fenton.
This incident highlights a curious shift in student activism. In the 1970s, students protested against the ‘Establishment’, opposing the government in key areas of public concern such as the Vietnam War. Today, as Dr Fenton noted in his interview, “student activists align with government policies in Covid and climate, even cheering for war in Ukraine”. This inversion reflects a generation conditioned to enforce orthodoxy rather than challenge it.
The most chilling allegation involves the UK’s 77th Brigade. A British Army unit originally tasked with monitoring online foreign terrorist threats and countering ‘disinformation’ by foreign powers, it strayed far beyond its remit and reportedly monitored domestic critics. Dr Fenton believes he was tracked by the brigade, possibly with assistance from the ‘Mutton Crew‘, a vicious social media trolling group highly active on Twitter. His claim of surveillance, while unproven, aligns with reports of the 77th Brigade’s activities during the pandemic.
Institutional Betrayal and Forced Resignation
The NHS delivered the final blow. In June 2023, Fenton was invited to speak at its Health and Care Analytics Conference on Bayesian probability in medical statistics — his specialty. Days before the conference, the invitation was rescinded, citing his vaccine critiques. Freedom of Information (FOI) and subject access requests revealed partial documents suggesting 77th Brigade involvement, a claim Fenton pursued through the Free Speech Union (FSU).
The NHS denied his requests for a judicial review, an apology or a charitable donation, instead accusing him of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’. In a surreal twist, Fenton was accused of being associated with the American white supremacist movement because he used the clown world emojis which it was claimed were synonymous with ‘Heil Hitler’. This was a baseless smear echoing the absurdities of historical witch hunts. It should be noted that Professor Fenton’s Polish father was a Holocaust survivor whose entire family was murdered by the Nazis, while his maternal grandfather fled the Arab pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem in the 1920s.
Queen Mary University’s response was similarly unsympathetic. In addition to appeasing the students who refused to attend his module, they refused to support him against the continued baseless accusations being made against him (such as being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ and a ‘fraud’). Despite his impeccable record, with the inevitable pending HR procedures Fenton felt compelled to ‘retire’ in December 2022. His emeritus status was nearly denied, granted only because he agreed to supervise three PhD students gratis.
Fenton’s cancellation exacted a heavy toll. His fellowship at the Alan Turing Institute was terminated, as were those of all members of his research team uninvolved in his Covid research, suggesting a broader purge. Invitations to speak at Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, where he was once a regular, ceased after 2020. The betrayal by colleagues and students, whom he expected to value objective inquiry, was particularly stinging. “I was just presenting data,” Fenton told me, “and I was shocked at how destructive it became.”
This shock underscores a key theme: the naïvety of assuming truth will prevail in an age of ideological conformity. The BBC, once a bastion of impartiality, failed to engage with Prof Fenton’s critiques. The NHS’s complicity, alongside the 77th Brigade’s alleged role, suggests a state-backed effort to enforce compliance, reminiscent of the church’s surveillance of Galileo.
The BBC’s role in Prof Fenton’s saga mirrors its earlier treatment of David Bellamy, a renowned naturalist and broadcaster whose career was derailed for questioning man-made global warming. In 2004, Bellamy publicly expressed doubts about the climate change narrative, calling it “poppycock” in a Daily Mail interview and arguing that natural cycles, not human activity, drove warming. The BBC, a gatekeeper of environmental orthodoxy, side-lined him. His regular appearances on programmes like Botanic Man ceased, and by 2005, his broadcasting career was effectively over. Bellamy later claimed the BBC “froze him out” for his views.
Contrast this with Sir David Attenborough, whose embrace of the climate alarmist narrative elevated him to iconic status. Attenborough’s documentaries amplified the BBC’s agenda, earning him a knighthood and global acclaim. While Bellamy’s scepticism led to his erasure, Attenborough’s compliance ensured his deification. This dichotomy illustrates the BBC’s selective amplification of voices, a tactic repeated in its dismissal of Fenton’s Covid critiques. As with Bellamy, Fenton’s evidence was not refuted but suppressed, signalling that dissent, not inaccuracy, is the true crime.
A Call to Defend Truth
Norman Fenton’s cancellation is a microcosm of our broader affliction. From academia to media, dissenters are silenced through de-platforming, smears and professional exile. The Daily Sceptic has documented similar cases, from scientists questioning vaccine mandates to journalists challenging the climate hysteria. This trend threatens the foundation of free inquiry, replacing evidence with orthodoxy.
We must resist this machinery of cancellation. The NHS, BBC and universities like Queen Mary must be held accountable for stifling debate. The 77th Brigade’s alleged actions demand scrutiny, as does the role of behavioural units like SAGE in manipulating public perception. Students, once idealistic rebels against power, must rediscover their role as truth-seekers, not enthusiastic enforcers of fashionable dogma.
Like Galileo, Fenton’s vindication may come too late for his career. Yet, his courage, like that of other dissidents, lights the path forward. As I learned from my own cancellation, the fight for truth requires resilience. We owe it to Prof Fenton, to ourselves, and to future generations to defend the right to question, lest we surrender reason and truth to the altar of power.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
This article (The Cancellation of Professor Norman Fenton: Climate and Covid Dissident) was created and published by Tilak Doshi and is republished here under “Fair Use”
See Related Article Below
Doctor who warned of Covid jab harms struck off after tribunal
But those who pushed Covid jabs keep anonymity and face no charges
NEWS UNCUT
By Sally Beck
THE body that regulates doctors in the UK has proved again that patient safety is secondary to protecting the pharmaceutical industry. On Wednesday, June 26, they ‘erased’ yet another doctor with an exemplary clinical record, whose main crime was trying to raise awareness of Covid “vaccine” injury.
Dr David Cartland, 42, a GP from Cornwall, faced 17 charges of harassment and dishonesty between 2022 and 2024, brought by three doctors who remained anonymous. They complained that he wrote medical exemptions for patients not wanting to take a Covid jab required for travel, so they could maintain their ‘bodily autonomy’ but still visit dying relatives abroad, and engaged in social media spats with them. He was also accused of insulting the LBGTQ+ community.
The social media exchanges mainly occurred on X, where he has 300,000 followers.
He was struck off by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal, who determined that his actions amounted to serious misconduct that impaired his ability to practise.
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Paul Diamond KC, the barrister who represented Dr Cartland at the hearing, said that the General Medical Council’s (GMC) barrister Thomas Moran KC, had ‘dutifully and skilfully portrayed him in the worst light possible’. He added: “We do have a difficult case and we do recognise elements of misconduct by Dr Cartland, but we do refute that it’s serious misconduct.” He said that it was at the lower end of the scale, because the conduct had taken place in the ‘Twitter zone’.
He described how the online debates had personally affected Dr Cartland. “He has lost his job, individuals contacted his workplace, watched his children and even involved the Football Association, because he was a referee. There was a mob that had turned on him.” He added: “Dr Cartland is a fine doctor and no risk to patients. There were positive comments from patients in his appraisals and in testimonials from them.”
Mr Moran said that Dr Cartland ‘lacked insight’ and ‘showed no remorse’ and had taken ‘no real steps to remediate his behaviour’. He acknowledged that Dr Cartland had apologised and that he was willing to undergo social media training but said he did not ‘attach any weight to that’.
Mr Moran added that Dr Cartland had continued to post about Drs A, B and C. He gave the Tribunal some examples including a link to a video about the Covid-19 “vaccine”, including Dr A with the comment: ‘…how many lies in one short video’. Dr Cartland called Dr B an ‘attention seeking nark’ and claimed that Dr C was part of a ‘dark organisation’. Mr Moran added that Dr Cartland had also breached the anonymity of Dr A, Dr B and Dr C by naming them online as complainants and made a veiled threat of ‘Karma is a bitch’.
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Mr Diamond said they recognised that doctors do hold a role in society and the main objections to Dr Cartland’s tweets is that they were unprofessional and engaged in baseline insults. But insults had been traded both ways he said, however the complainants’ insults had been dismissed. “It’s a one-off unusual case,” he said. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never never hurt me. I know we say that in the playground and many people will say that words can be very unpleasant but words in our society have always had a protected characteristic.”
Dr Cartland had his version of events which the MPTS and GMC deemed inadmissible or irrelevant, leading Dr Cartland to describe the hearing as a ‘kangaroo court’. The position of the MPTS is that the insults he received are inconsequential and that, as a doctor, he should always remain professional. They did not explain why the same does not apply to Drs A, B and C.
Dr Cartland was not allowed to submit evidence against them, although Dr B is a TV doctor who told viewers, “One dose of any covid vaccine gives you 100 per cent protection against being hospitalised or dying”, which was subsequently proved inaccurate.
Dr A, an obstetrician, promoted the vaccine to pregnant women before the drug companies had completed safety studies for that cohort. Dr C, a PhD sheep farmer, engaged in psyops and attacks anyone with a high profile who questions the official Covid narrative. He heads a gang of particularly vicious X trolls who engage in four-letter tirades. They boast they are a front for the 77th Brigade.
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The GMC, the governing body whose role is to protect patients, investigated 248 complaints against Dr Cartland. The case was adjudicated in Manchester by the MPTS, chaired by Mrs Claire Lindley, the independent body responsible for prosecuting doctors. Dr Cartland chose not to attend.
The primary legislation governing doctors is the Medical Act 1983, introduced to protect the public from rogue practitioners like murderer GP Harold Shipman from Hyde, Yorkshire, who killed more than 200 patients. Shipman was not suspended on arrest and allowed to practice for another two years until his conviction in 2000.
However, the MPTS goes hard on doctors who threaten Big Pharma, like Dr Sam White, the Hampshire GP, who was struck off in 2024, for what they said was spreading ‘dangerous’ and ‘baseless conspiracy theories’ about the Covid pandemic which the MPTS said was ‘unreasonable scaremongering’.
In contrast, married senior GP Dr Peter Rubin, from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, who had sex with a patient in his surgery then prescribed her the morning-after pill, was suspended but not struck off, in 2024, for just 12 months, although it was his second sexual misconduct suspension.
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Consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Ali Shokouh-Amiri was sanctioned in Guernsey in 2019, after six women complained, but not erased. It was alleged he removed the ovaries of two women without their consent and carried out solo intimate examinations on multiple women. The MPTS said the accusations were not proven but admitted an ‘over- familiarity with patients’. Dr Shokouh-Amiri moved to a hospital in Southend where 10,000 people signed a petition urging that he be struck off.
Dr Cartland has many supporters including lawyers, doctors and patients who back his efforts to ‘whistleblow’ on “vaccine” harms. Mr Diamond said: “He may well be proved right [on his criticisms of the jab].”
Reports are widespread that millions of people have died and been injured worldwide after taking a Covid jab. Side effects of the jab include myocarditis, pericarditis, stroke, blood clots and death.
Mr Diamond referred to the HIV and hepatitis infected blood product scandal of the 1970s and 1980s. Doctors tried to raise the alarm but were threatened with the GMC. Forty years on, 300 have died as a result.
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Mr Diamond also said Drs A and B had profited from Covid and Pharma. An Freedom of Information request, shows that Dr A, a consultant obstetrician with a special interest in vaccinating during pregnancy, received £250,000 through a Trust to run a: ‘pilot scheme to improve the way immunisations are offered and delivered in maternity services in order to overcome challenges which are currently faced with achieving high uptakes of the covid-19, flu and pertussis vaccinations for pregnant women’.
Dr B received money from AstraZeneca to promote one of their jabs.
“They had a conflict of interest,” said Mr Diamond. “Dr B pushed theAstraZeneca vaccine which has now been withdrawn.” At the time Dr B told viewers: “There is absolutely no scientific reason for us to refuse the vaccine.”
Mr Diamond said it was an emotional time and they had all made mistakes, including Dr Cartland, but Drs A and B were possibly ‘embarrassed’ by theirs.
Dr Cartland, who has been driven to the brink of suicide, said: “I believe in the Hippocratic oath, ‘first do no harm’ and tried to raise awareness of those harms. My debates online were focused on getting the message out in the strongest possible terms. Drs A, B and C pushed a narrative that I believe did more harm than good, yet I’m the one who has been sanctioned. I’m distraught.”
This article (Doctor who warned of Covid jab harms struck off after tribunal) was created and published by News Uncut and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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