Science Quote by David Kay

Kay’s line lands like a grim inside joke from someone who’s watched a technical process get politicized beyond repair. “Almost in a perverse way” is the tell: he’s admitting a morally awkward preference for a cleaner kind of scandal. Undue influence is a familiar pathology in institutions - identifiable culprits, enforceable remedies, a narrative with villains you can fire. It’s corruption with a receipt.

The real anxiety is that what happened wasn’t that. By wishing it were undue influence, Kay is implying the alternative is worse: a systemic failure where no single bad actor can be neatly blamed, where assumptions, incentives, and groupthink did the damage. In a science-adjacent bureaucratic world, that’s the nightmare scenario because it can’t be solved with a personnel change. It requires dismantling habits, power structures, and the quiet pressures that make smart people produce convenient answers.

His phrasing also signals a strategic rhetorical move. Kay is distancing himself from partisan accusation while still pointing to accountability. “We know how to correct that” frames the problem as procedural, almost managerial, which gives the audience something concrete to grab onto. Then he pivots to “we get rid of the people,” injecting consequence. The subtext: if the failure can be framed as undue influence, the system can preserve its legitimacy by sacrificing a few names. If it’s deeper than that, legitimacy itself becomes the casualty.