Opinion: Can Stanford tell fact from fiction? Pandemic conference raises doubts

Stanford University’s newly minted president, Jonathan Levin, opened an on-campus conference this month about pandemic policies by expressing the hope that the proceedings would “bring together people with different perspectives, engage in a day of discussion, and in that way, try to repair some of the rifts that opened during COVID.”

He was followed to the lectern by the conference organizer, Stanford public policy professor Jay Bhattacharya, who described the event’s goal as fostering...