Scott Atlas is the newest member of the White House senior staff. Appointed barely a month ago, he’s undergoing a public hazing. His brief as a special adviser to President Trump, he tells me in an interview by Zoom, is to “advise the president on integrating the science and developing a policy for how we deal with the coronavirus pandemic.” Still living out of “multiple suitcases” in a Washington hotel, he was paid a mighty Beltway compliment this week when two national newspapers ran hit pieces on him.

Flecked with references to unnamed White House insiders, the Washington Post and New York Times articles questioned his fitness and credentials for a Covid-19 adviser’s role. The Post pointed out that Dr. Atlas—a former professor of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center—“does not have a background in infectious diseases or epidemiology.” The Times sniffed that he is “neither an epidemiologist nor an infectious disease expert, the two jobs usually associated with pandemic response.”

On the day we speak, Dr. Atlas, 65, discovers that his Wikipedia page has been edited to reflect this alleged vocational failing. “Although Atlas is not an expert in public health or infectious diseases,” the crowdsourced encyclopedia now says, “he was selected by President Donald Trump to serve as an advisor on the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Do you know anyone who is an editor at Wikipedia?” he asks. “They keep distorting what I have said. Honest people need to fight back against intentional distortion.” A proud and feisty man, Dr. Atlas is the first person in his family to go to college. His father was a barber and traveling salesman in Chicago, his mother a secretary. He doesn’t take kindly to being trashed in the national media. “It’s pretty obvious that objective journalism is dead in the country,” he bristles. “These are intentional attempts to delegitimize me. I think everybody knows that as soon as you get a White House badge there are forces out to try to destroy you. But I’m very comfortable with my CV.”

Dr. Atlas describes himself as the author of “more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.” as well as of “Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine,” which he calls “one of the, if not the, leading books in MRI.” Since 2012 he’s focused almost exclusively on health-care policy as a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.