The Department of Justice recently sent letters to perhaps "tens" of scientific journals, accusing them of being "partisan" and asking whether they are including "competing viewpoints." One such letter went to the journal CHEST, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians that specializes in research focused on chest and diseases, emergency medicine, pulmonology, cardiology, and other related issues. Dr. Eric Reinhart, a social psychiatrist, political anthropologist, and psychoanalytic clinician who has published in numerous academic journals (including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and more) as well as many popular magazines and news outlets (including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, TIME, Slate, The Atlantic, and more) got a copy of the leaked letter, which was sent to CHEST Editor-in-Chief, Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, from Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Dr. Reinhart then posted about it on his Xitter account.
Here's an excerpt from the letter, which you can read in its entirety here:
It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates – that is, that they have a position for which they are advocating either due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations). The public has certain expectations and you have certain responsibilities.
Would you please answer these questions:
*How do you assess your responsibilities to protect the public from misinformation?
*How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?
*Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?
*How do you assess the role played by government officials and funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health in the development of submitted articles?
*How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled their readers?
1 am also interested to know if publishers, journals, and organizations with which you work are adjusting their method of acceptance of competing viewpoints. Are there new norms being developed and offered?
Dr. Eric Reinhart provided a scathing critique of the letter, commenting, for instance, on the absurdity of the notion of "viewpoint diversity" in scientific research:
'Viewpoint diversity' – is sarcoidosis actually bad? Should trans people get treatment for chest infections? Is ivermectin the cure for lung cancer? Why shouldn't Joe Rogan perform lung transplants? So glad RFK Jr is in charge to ensure these important views get airtime.
Dr. Reinhart followed up his initial postings with some further discussion of why certain journals might be being targeted by the Trump administration:
Why target CHEST? It's not a super prominent journal, but impact factor is relatively high, so did they just target all high-impact journals? Or a more likely scenario: this fascist intimidation campaign is key-word driven. A search at CHEST for "transgender," for example, returns 33 hits. If this follows tactics we've seen at CDC, NIH, etc., then "minority," "gender," "Black," "equity," etc. are also likely triggers.
An article posted Friday in MedPage Today by Kristina Fiore, MedPage Today's Director of Enterprise and Investigative Reporting, includes more reactions from the medical community:
Adam Gaffney, MD, MPH, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, said the letter "should send a chill down the spine of scientists and physicians."
"It is yet another example of the Trump administration's effort to control academic inquiry and stifle scientific discourse — an administration, it warrants mentioning, that has embraced medical misinformation and pseudoscience to reckless effect," Gaffney said in an email to MedPage Today. "Journal editors should join together and publicly renounce this as yet more thinly guised anti-science political blackmail."
Over on Xitter, Dr. Reinhart agrees, as he wrote:
The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure 'viewpoint diversity.' Journal editors should be public about this and coordinate to refuse to comply with these fascist tactics.
Dr. Reinhart tweeted this clear advice to editors: "Don't give an inch."
MedPage Today also interviewed JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who firmly stated that in this First Amendment case, the law is clear. Morris explained that what journals publish is wholly their decision, and not the purview of the government. He states, "When a United States Attorney wields the power of his office to target medical journals because of their content and editorial processes, he isn't doing his job, let alone upholding his constitutional oath. . . He's abusing his authority to try to chill protected speech." Morris' advice is to push back against those who are trying to "intimidate Americans into parroting the government's view," and emphasizes that the First Amendment "packs a powerful punch, and it has these medical journals' backs."
