Editorial

In this Editorial, I once again touch on the problem with the publication of scientific and professional papers in the so-called top medical journals.As a young assistant, I could easily send my work to one of the top journals and expect fair treatment.This changed radically in the last 30 years or so, when the pharmaceutical lobby indirectly took over the publication of their patent-protected new chemical entities, i.e. prodrugs.Works that did not originate from the pharmaceutical kitchen had minimal chances.This problem was pointed out by the current Minister of Health and Social Welfare, USA, Robert F Kennedy Jr (Ultimate Human Podcast with Gary Brecka).Nicolas Hulscher in his article "War on the Journal Cartel" points to Kennedy's statements and writes: "We will probably stop publishing in the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they are all corrupt.Even the heads of those journals, like Marcia Angell, who was the head of the New England Journal of Medicine for 20 years, say that we are no longer a scientific journal.We are a vessel for pharmaceutical propaganda."Dr Marcia Angell, who was editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine for more than 20 years, has publicly acknowledged that her journal and others have been taken over by industry.Her exact words: "It is simply no longer possible to trust much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.I do not relish this conclusion, which I have come to, slowly and reluctantly over two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."RFK Jr. also mentioned Dr Richard Horton, current editor-in-chief of The Lancet, who admitted: "The argument against science is simple: much of the scientific literature, perhaps as much as half, is simply untrue.Plagued by small sample sizes, small effects, flawed research analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, coupled with an obsession with following fashionable trends of dubious relevance, science has taken a dark turn."In the podcast cited above, RFK Jr. laid out a clear plan to fix this corruption: 1. NIH scientists will stop publishing in these corrupt journals unless major reform occurs; 2. NIH will allocate 20% of its budget to replication studies-restoring scientific integrity; 3. Peer review will become transparent and public; and 4. New, independent NIH-supported journals will be launched within each healthcare institution-becoming the new standard for legitimate science.At the McCullough Foundation, we have encountered the Journal Cartel firsthand.The best example of this is when Elsevier blatantly violated COPE guidelines by censoring our study "A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings in Deaths Following COVID-19 Vaccination" -shortly after successful peer review and official acceptance-presumably because it showed a high probability of a causal relationship between the COVID-19 vaccine and death.Our study had just become the #1 research paper in the world in all subject areas before Elsevier suddenly intervened: You can now read our paper in the impartial and transparent journal Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law.Access controls, targeted censorship, and unethical retractions have stifled much-needed life-saving research-especially that which challenges pharmaceutical narratives about vaccine safety.RFK Jr.'s comments come as the US Department of Justice launches an investigation into leading medical journals for bias, fraud, and corruption during the pandemic.