Robert Malone Targets Physician Who Alerted Medical Board to Misinformation

A Hawaii hospital worker who reported the controversial scientist to the Maryland Board of Physicians was subjected to harassment and a retaliatory complaint after Malone made his name and location public.

Written byCatherine Offord

| 8 min read

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Update (October 3): California governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last Friday that formally classifies the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation from a physician to patients in their care as “unprofessional conduct.” The move paves the way for state medical boards to take action against physicians who spread falsehoods about the disease or its treatments, but only in a healthcare setting. The bill is “narrowly tailored to apply only to those egregious instances in which a licensee is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with a patient under their care,” Newsom said in a statement.

Aphysician who alerted the Maryland state medical board about controversial scientist Robert Malone’s alleged promotion of COVID-19 misinformation has been harassed online, faced a retaliatory complaint to his own medical board, and received complaints to his institution after Malone publicly disclosed his identity.

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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