Monday, May 5th, 2025
Medical journals hit with threatening letters from Justice Department
Author: Rob Stein
Source: npr
Publication Date: May 2, 20254:30 PM ET
Link: Medical journals hit with threatening letters from Justice Department
Stephan:
For the past 20 years I have written a column for the largest holistic medicine journal, Explore. I am also on the editorial board of about 8 other peer reviewed journals in a spectrum of disciplines, and, over the years, I have been the editor of several scientific journals. I tell you this to make it clear that I understand the peer review process and what it takes to get a research paper published in a scientific peer-reviewed journal. This article describes yet another attack by the Trumpers to control science in the United States and make it conform to the MAGAt fascist materialist ideology. American science, which has been a world leader for several generations, is now being dismantled, and you will be the victim of this stupidity.
Credit: Michael A. McCoy/Getty
The letters began arriving at medical journals around the country over the last few weeks.
“It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications … are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” wrote Edward R. Martin Jr., the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in a letter to the journal CHEST.
Martin then asks a series of questions — about misinformation, competing viewpoints and the influence of funders such as advertisers and the National Institutes of Health.
“The public has certain expectations and you have certain responsibilities,” the letter adds. Martin asks for a response by May 2.
“We were surprised,” says Dr. Eric Rubin, the editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, one of at least four journal editors to get a letter from Martin and probably the most prominent. “Other journals had gotten letters before, so it wasn’t a shock, […]
