This is the super dangerous strategy of the Alt-Right and allies.<\/p>\n
There is of course a rise and fall of scientific journals<\/a> over the years but in the past this was more driven by scientific interests than by providing a scientific backup of political decisions. What if we can\u2019t rely on PubMed anymore?<\/p>\n PubMed is incredibly reliable. And a lot depends on it. It\u2019s an ecosystem built around MEDLINE, the steady feed of new publications in biomedicine: It determines which journals count, takes their output in, adds valuable information and linkages, and feeds it back out \u2013 free to users globally. And there\u2019s a lot\u00a0more, too, that we rely on from the NCBI (the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the NIH\u2019s National Library of Medicine).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Last month\u00a0a prominent right-wing dark money group<\/a> launched its own Academy Public Health<\/a> journal to compete with other medical journals.<\/p>\n At first blush, the RealClear Foundation\u2019s foray into public health research looks like\u00a0 serious venture. The academy\u2019s webpage claims it is an \u201cinternational association public health scholars, researchers and practicing professionals in the field of public health and its many specialties,\u201d and declares that \u201cmembers are united in their commitment to open discourse, intellectual rigor and broad, equitable access to scientific discovery.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Carl Bergstrom was the first<\/a> to note the anti-vaxxer clique<\/p>\n The bylaws reveal a wild sort of National Academy of Sciences cosplay, dialed up to eleven and designed to exclude everybody except fellow…er…contrarians. Only members can publish, new members are brought in by existing ones, and the editor-in-chief cannot reject members’ peers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Who is on the editorial board? It looks like a COVID-19 misinformation rehabilitation group<\/p>\n Martin Kulldorff, PhD Walker Bergman is going through all the names<\/a> – basically all of them have been prominent voices in discussions about COVID-19, infectious disease modeling, vaccine effectiveness, and public health policies.<\/p>\n Several, such as Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, were involved in the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized strict lockdown measures and advocated for focused protection of vulnerable populations during the pandemic.<\/p>\n Others, like John Ioannidis and Carl Heneghan, have been critical of certain public health responses.\u00a0 While they are not right-wing themselves, their ideas have been embraced by right-leaning or libertarian political groups.\u00a0 More recently some names have become more famous<\/a> as reported by WIRED.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n This is the super dangerous strategy of the Alt-Right and allies. There is of course a rise and fall of scientific journals over the years but in the past this was more driven by scientific interests than by providing a scientific backup of political decisions. What if we can\u2019t rely on PubMed anymore? PubMed is … Continue reading Don’t get your work published? Just create your own journal!<\/span> \n
\nAndrew Noymer, MSc, PhD
\nCarl Heneghan, BM, DPhil
\nChristine Stabell Benn, MD, PhD, DMSc
\nDavid Livermore, PhD
\nG\u00fcnter Kampf, MD
\nHelen Colhoun, DMed, MPH
\nJayanta Bhattacharya, MD, PhD
\nJohn Ioannidis, MD, DSc
\nMaged Kamel Boulos, MD, PhD
\nMarty Makary, MD, MPH
\nMohammad Ali Mansournia, MD, MPH, PhD
\nPeter G\u00f8tzsche, MD, DMSc, MSc
\nRuth Gil Prieto, PhD
\nSander Greenland, DrPH
\nScott Atlas, MD
\nSergio Recuenco, MD, MPH, DrPH
\nSimon Wood, PhD
\nSunetra Gupta, PhD
\nTom Jefferson, MD, MSc<\/p><\/blockquote>\n