Life's Best Medicine Podcast · Dr. Brian Lenzkes

Episode 290: Joe Duarte

March 25, 2026·1 hr 30 min·5 clips

He points to a San Francisco grant spending over $3 million with no published results.

1. Life's Best Medicine Podcast episode 290 features Joe Duarte discussing ideological bias in psychology and NIH grantmaking. 2. Brian Lenzkes hosts Joe Duarte, a PhD in social psychology, because Duarte worked on identifying bias in science funding. 3. The episode asks what a “clean science framework” would look like for NIH and NSF. 4. Duarte says he first got interested in positive psychology through Marty Seligman while working in software. 5. He explains that positive psychology studies human strengths, happiness, well-being, and character instead of dysfunction. 6. Duarte says academia pushed him into social psychology because positive psychology is not a standalone PhD field. 7. He describes transferring from UNC to ASU and then encountering strong ideological bias in psychology programs. 8. He says the University of Arizona social psychology PhD program denied him admission after asking about his criticism of Jimmy Carter. 9. Duarte and colleagues later wrote a paper on ideological bias in psychology with John Ioannidis and Lee Jussim. 10. He says that work showed how bias undermines the truth of claims about conservatives and other political groups. 11. Duarte says he pitched J.A. Bhattacharya on cleaning ideological bias out of NIH grants and was hired in May as a contract senior advisor. 12. He says he built a framework while working remotely, then moved to Tucson after he did not get consistent feedback from NIH leadership. 13. He cites a grant about microaggressions and marijuana use as an example of funded research he considers invalid. 14. Duarte says NIH also ignores male suicide, especially among white males and American Indian males. 15. He argues that NIH has also backed away from studying religious faith, prayer, and church attendance despite possible health effects. 16. Brian Lenzkes responds with examples from seniors, loneliness, church life, and Roseto, Pennsylvania to show why social cohesion matters. 17. The interview style is conversational and argumentative, with Brian prompting and Duarte answering with policy examples. 18. The tone is combative but clinical, with references to NIH, NSF, COVID policy, and grant language. 19. Listeners interested in health-policy debates and research bias will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting light medical advice or a casual chat may skip it.

As heard by us

A blunt argument about masks, misinformation, and who gets to define medical truth.

The episode takes a blunt run at masks, misinformation, and the question of who gets to define evidence. It keeps circling back to the claim that weak studies were treated as settled science, and it treats cloth masks and fact checking as flash points in a larger fight over…

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If you want a sharp argument about masks and medical censorship, start here.

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