RFK wants to ban scientists from publishing in top medical journals

[Peacetrain]

RFK Jr. and the Worm That Ate His Brain Threaten to Ban Government Scientists From Publishing in Top Medical Journals

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rfk-jr-ban-scientists-from-publishing-in-top-medical-journals

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that he will likely ban government scientists from publishing research in top medical journals, because why disseminate important knowledge that could advance human health when you can just log on to TikTok and hear what a MAHA influencer has to say about seed oils and beef tallow?"

[SheltieLover]

1. pootin must still be really jealous of our education system and professionals -- both medical and engineering -- 2

dynamics apparently missing in functional form from ruskie culture (because pootin repeatedly raped the country and her people).

[Peacetrain]

6. I just read this about 10 minutes ago and my first inclination was.. Just try it

who the heck do these people think they are wiping their feet on the Bill of RIghts..

[SheltieLover]

9. I couldn't agree more. Nothing sickems me as much as kraznov in our WH

destroying our country for pootin!

[3catwoman3]

15. Not just their feet.

[NotHardly]

25. Freedom of Speech ... he has no power there

[Bayard]

2. His dad and uncle would be so ashamed of what he's become....

But, the argument could be made that their influence would have kept his brain worms at bay.

[RJ-MacReady]

3. ignore him

Do it anyway. Enough is enough.

[louis-t]

4. And vitamin A. And cod liver oil.

And ivermectin. And ingesting disinfectant. Wtf? And it seems they are bent on destroying any previous research that real scientists have worked on for decades.

[allegorical oracle]

12. Don''t forget that light placed in a body cavity. Somebody needs to put a light in RFK Jr's

body cavity. At least we could know where he is at night.

[Jim__]

5. I wonder if the courts can override that. He's only prohibiting publication in some journals.

I really hope he doesn't have the power to do that.

[allegorical oracle]

11. Katy Tur earlier reported that RFK Jr said he would prefer to have "in-house" publications be

the research sources. In-house suggests that the data will come from kooks and be worthless.

[choie]

30. The point of these publications

Is for research to be peer reviewed. Not sycophant reviewed.

[Irish_Dem]

7. If scientists cannot report the results of their research, then there is no reason to conduct research.

Research is done for a purpose.

To advance science, innovation, technology, knowledge, facts, reality.

If the research cannot be discussed or used for the betterment of mankind, then there is no point to it.

[Peacetrain]

8. I know!!! It is so absurd its hard to believe anyone would even think to try such a tactic

[Irish_Dem]

10. Our current reality has become totally absurd.

And people just go on with their daily lives.

[Botany]

23. It is almost like stopping the Climate Observatory on Mt. Mauna Loa

Last edited Wed May 28, 2025, 08:56 PM - Edit history (1)

Because the fossil fuel industries don't like the data about CO2.

Science is science and should be non partisan.

Burning America to the ground.

[Irish_Dem]

27. Scientists must be destroyed because they are truth tellers based on data and facts.

This is a threat to the billionaires and politicians who make money and gain power based on total lies 24/7.

[dalton99a]

13. +1

[dalton99a]

14. RFK Jr. already has all the knowledge you need.

[Fil1957]

16. Could someone tell me why? How does this benefit RFK jr or MAGA or anyone else for that matter?

[edhopper]

20. They want to destroy the expert class

Everything they do is based on a falsehood. In Economics, in Science, in Medicine. They want to destroy the people that can get in their way. They want to get rid of those that might reveal they mare lying.
They also want to end any good that Government does so they can gut it and lower taxes for the rich.

[Cha]

21. It benefits Putin to have America Destroyed..

That's who they all work for.

I know it's sickening there could be so many Traitors to the USA living in America.

No Kings Hands Off! 💙🌈

[milestogo]

17. He is obviously seriously mentally ill.

And if it were not that the controlling party and cabinet are also fucking nuts we would not be reading shit like this.

[allegorical oracle]

24. Anyone else notice how often we end up concluding that so many people in this admin. are nuts? From

the top on down. Plays with my mind to believe that all those people are abnormal. But they seem to be.

[sakabatou]

18. Then there needs to be an underground journal

[ShazzieB]

19. Since when does he even have the power to do this?

Even IF there are medical journals that he might have some control over, he surely can't control them all. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine (possibly the top peer-reviewed medical journal of all) is published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Surely they will tell him to go fly a kite if he tries to tell them what to publish.

And that's just one example. I was an academic librarian long enough to know that the organizations that publish peer-reviewed journals (in any field, but especially the sciences) don't take kindly to any kind of censorship. Good luck with that one, Bobby. I will be in the front row cheering when the Massachusetts Medical Society and all of the other publishers of peer-reviewed medical journals tell you to pound sand !

[fargone]

26. The opinion of the journals does not matter

The journals are not being censored. The scientists are administratively blocked from sending articles to those journals. If the scientist ignores that they can be charged with insubordination and be dismissed.

[ShazzieB]

32. Yeah, I see that now.

I read the OP too fast and got so outraged about the censorship issue that I got carried away and typed up that reply in too big of a hurry. (What can I say, the idea of censorship of any kind makes my blood boil!)

I wonder how this is going to play out, whether any of the scientists will be willing (and able) to defy this edict and submit their work to the journals anyway. I guess we'll see.

[cab67]

22. in-house journals are not, in and of themselves, bad things.

In my field, much of the literature I use comes from journals based at a specific museum. The American Museum of Natural History publishes American Museum Novitates and Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History; the Field Museum in Chicago publishes Fieldiana; and so on. Some of these are private institutions, but not all - the Smithsonian, for example, is responsible for several publication series.

Most of these journals are peer-reviewed just like any other journal. I've reviewed manuscripts for several of them. A few of the older ones aren't peer-reviewed so much as edited, but these are in the minority and generally publish in very narrow fields in which the only experts qualified to review them work for the museum. Authors aren't necessarily museum employees, though there's usually some connection to the mother institution, either with one or more authors or with specimens described in the paper.

These are in-house journals. I cite them all the time. They're just as good as other journals.

There are even precedents for journals or periodicals operated by federal agencies. The US Geological Survey used to publish a bulletin series, for example. It started in the days before peer review became a thing, but instituted peer review after it became one.

But what's being discussed now is a whole other thing.

What scares me isn't the suggestion that the CDC and other agencies should publish in-house journals; it's that these would almost certainly be set up with an editorial board appointed by the crazy person running HHS, or by people who think like him. They would not treat the journal like other journals. They'd likely enforce some sort of ideological purity. I'm sure they'd call it something like "adherence to current departmental norms," but it would lead to the promotion of the crazy shit this crazy person believes.

If a journal based out of the CDC could be managed by proper scientists who know how peer review works, I'd be all in favor of it. But that will have to wait until the CDC answers to an HHS secretary who isn't a crazy person.

[dutch777]

28. Wonder if there will be any quality scientists left in our governmental employ given all the nonsense?

The brain drain is real from what I read.

[choie]

29. Can he even do that?

1st amendment and all that.

[Doodley]

31. This is what happens when you put simpletons in charge.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

33. Maddow Blog-The Trump administration's 'MAHA Report' cites nonexistent scientific studies

There's new evidence that the White House's “The MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again” relied in part on scientific research that doesn't exist.

In case this isn’t obvious: In a healthy political system, if officials released a hyped report on health policy, and the document relied on scientific sources that didn’t exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-05-29T17:43:57.657Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-administrations-maha-report-cites-nonexistent-scientific-studies-rcna209732

With this in mind, no one was especially surprised when the White House report started crumbling under scrutiny. The Washington Post reported, “Some of the report’s suggestions ... stretched the limits of science, medical experts said. Several sections of the report offer misleading representations of findings in scientific papers.”

That was last week. This week, NOTUS advanced these concerns, reporting that the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report “misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all. ... NOTUS also found serious issues with how the report interpreted some of the existing studies it cites.

For example, the administration’s document listed epidemiologist Katherine Keyes as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents — except she didn’t write it.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”....

I would gladly make note of the defense of the MAHA document from Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least so far, neither the controversial secretary nor the Cabinet agency he ostensibly leads has commented on these new allegations. HHS did not respond to NOTUS' request for comment on the citation inconsistencies, the outlet reported.

Of course, given Kennedy’s recent track record, there’s no reason to assume he’d be able to answer questions about the document anyway.

To be sure, the traditional norms surrounding American politics have been largely shattered, but in a situation like this one, it’s worth emphasizing that in a normal and healthy political system, if officials released a much-hyped report on public health policy, and scrutiny found that the document relied on scientific sources that didn’t exist, those officials would be expected to resign — quickly.

Bob aka RFK JR does not want people to publish is the Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine because these publications are peer reviewed and check sources.