Opinion by Kip Hansen — 10 February 2025 — 1800 words
There is a long list of things that have been singled out as needing fixing in our current system of academic scientific publishing. Among these are:
Publication bias: The tendency to only publish positive results, leading to an incomplete picture of research findings and potentially misleading conclusions.
Editorial Bias: In many journals, even those held in highest esteem, Editors determine what will be published, and this has led to what many see as huge biases in favor of some scientific viewpoints and against others. In some fields, papers that do not support the generalized consensus in a field of study simply stand no chance of publication.
Paywalls: Many scientific articles are behind paywalls, limiting access to research for scientists in developing countries and the general public.
Opaque peer review: The peer-review process, where experts evaluate research before publication, can be opaque and subject to biases, with reviewers sometimes not fully disclosing their identities or conflicts of interest.
Profit-driven publishing: For-profit publishers can prioritize profits over the dissemination of knowledge, leading to high subscription costs and limited access.
Lack of reproducibility: Difficulty in replicating published research findings, which can undermine the credibility of scientific results.
There have been repeated calls for a new paradigm in which scientific publishing is truly open, transparent, accessible, and sustainable. Some of these efforts include:
1. Brian Nosek the co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science (http://cos.io/) that operates the Open Science Framework (http://osf.io/).
2. John P.A. Ioannidis — a proponent of Evidence Based Medicine and author of the famous “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” which found “claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.” Ioannidis had strong views about the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has published 81 papers (link is a download .doc) on the subject as author or co-author.
3. Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky: (the co-founders of Retraction Watch) opined last year in the Washington Post: “An epidemic of scientific fakery threatens to overwhelm publishers” lamenting the rising tide of poor and often fake scientific papers published in junk and predatory journals.
And there are many, many more.
Now, in the field of Public Health, a new journal has been created. The reaction? The online magazine WIRED just published:
Donald Trump’s NIH Pick Just Launched a Controversial Scientific Journal
authored by Emily Mullin and Matt Reynolds, it is both a political attack and an attack from selected scientists.
What is the new journal? It is the Journal of the Academy of Public Health. The Academy itself is new and its internet Home Page states:
“The Academy of Public Health
The Academy of Public Health is an international association of public health scholars, researchers and practicing professionals in the field of public health and its many specialties. Members are united in their commitment to open discourse, intellectual rigor and broad, equitable access to scientific discovery.
The goal of the Academy is to promote open and transparent scientific discourse on science and public health. The vehicle for doing so shall be through its associated journal, the open access and open peer-reviewed Journal of the Academy of Public Health.”
And who is responsible?
The Founding Board members are:
Sander Greenland – Academy Member [ see here and here ]
George F Tidmarsh – Academy Member [ see here and here ]
David DesRosiers – Independent Board member [ President of the RealClear Foundation ]
The Journal’s Editorial Board is made up of: (long list, with links)
Martin Kulldorff, PhD, Founding Editor-in-Chief
Andrew Noymer, MSc, PhD, Editor-in-Chief
Christine Stabell Benn, MD, PhD, DMSc
Jayanta Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, (on leave — Donald Trump named Bhattacharya as his choice to lead the National Institutes of Health)
Marty Makary, MD, MPH, (on leave)
Mohammad Ali Mansournia, MD, MPH, PhD
Peter Gøtzsche, MD, DMSc, MSc [co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration]
Sergio Recuenco, MD, MPH, DrPH
One would hard pressed to find a group of people with more expertise and prestige in the world of Public Health.
So what is the objection to the new Journal of the Academy of Public Health? Mostly Politics
U.S. Two-Party Politics:
Marty Makary is on leave from the Editorial Board of the Journal because he has been tapped by President Trump to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Jayanta Bhattacharyais also on leave from the Editorial Board, having been tapped by President Trump to head The National Institutes of Health.
The RealClear Foundation publishes the Journal of the Academy of Public Heath as nonprofit journal subsidiary. RealClear is labelled in the Wired piece as a “right-wing news site” – meaning mostly that it is not a left-leaning media outlet.
Public Health Politics:
Worse yet, many of the board members were signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, which recommended against many of the governmental policies and mandates meant to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
And besides politics?
“Some experts are worried that the journal, which has links to the right-wing news site RealClearPolitics, could become a scientific mouthpiece for the Trump administration and a platform that these experts allege could publish dubious research.” [ Wired ]
Notice that the ‘experts’ are unnamed.
And making a very important point about science and medical research is Gigi Gronvall:
“This seems like more of a club newsletter than a scientific journal,” says Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.”
Besides not being asked to join, Gronvall may be objecting to point 4 of the journal’s Four Pillars:
“The Journal of the Academy of Public Health has Four Pillars that distinguish it:
- Open access, so that scientific articles can be read by all scientists and anyone in the public.
- Open peer reviews that anyone can read at the same time as they read articles; signed by the reviewer.
- Rewarding reviewers with an honorarium and public acknowledgement.
- Removal of article gatekeeping, letting the Academy of Public Health’s distinguished scientists freely publish all their research results in a timely and efficient manner, together with their associated peer reviews.”
From the by-laws:
In the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, members of the Academy may publish any public health related scientific article on which they are co-author, and as specified in the Author Guidelines of the Journal.
…
Any member of the Journal Editorial Board may invite prominent public health scientists as new members of the Academy by sending a written invitation to join the Academy. Nominations may be submitted without prior consultation with the nominated public health scientist, and acceptance by the invitee will result in immediate induction into the Academy.
…
Academy members may nominate prominent public health scientists to be new members. Nominations should be sent to the Academy Board.
…
The only criteria for membership shall be the quality and extent of their already published public health work.”
And while Gigi Gronvall may feel left out, all she need do to be included is to do good work and be nominated by any member of the editorial Board or member of the Academy itself. Calling their Journal “a club newsletter” is like referring to the Royal Society’s journals “Philosophical Transactions”, “Proceedings A” and “Proceedings B” as club newsletters because one hasn’t been invited to join the Royal Society – whose membership is determined by a very similar procedure. The Royal Society’s journals are today operated similarly to the Science, Nature, and Elsevier.
Wired goes on with another detractor: “Carl Bergstrom, a theoretical and evolutionary biologist, believes the journal is part of an ongoing effort to cast doubt around established scientific consensus. “If you can create the illusion that there is not a predominance of opinion that says, vaccines and masks are effective ways of controlling the pandemic, then you can undermine that notion of scientific consensus, you can create uncertainty, and you can push a particular agenda forward”. Bergstrom is apparently not interested in the validity of scientific studies, only whether or not they support his favored pre-existing consensuses while simultaneously fearing that open peer-review will not automatically disqualify non-consensus-supporting papers.
Kulldorff [Martin Kulldorff, PhD, Founding Editor-in-Chief] told WIRED that the journal will be a venue for open discourse and academic freedom. “I think it’s important that scientists can publish what they think is important science, and then that should be open for discussion, instead of preventing people from publishing”.
The Wired authors reached out to a lot of scientists to find negative viewpoints, including
“Taylor Dotson, a professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology who studies the intersection of science and politics” who is quoted saying:
“The worst-case scenario is you start having the journals for the people who are kind of populist and anti-establishment and the journals for the people who also read NPR and The New York Times.”
At least Dotson concedes, with caveats: “These are good steps,” says Dotson. “It’s good that it is trying to push against the power of the big scientific publishers.” But the researcher also warns that open-access studies might be more prominent and widely cited in the media just because they are easier to find and not because they are necessarily more scientifically rigorous.” [ Wired ]
Dotson fails, of course , as many do, to point out that just because a paper is published in one of the more prominent journals does not make it “necessarily more scientifically rigorous”.
Bottom Lines:
1. In the medical field, Public Health, there is a new journal based on many of the features being widely recommended to reform the subject of Scientific/Academic Publishing. It is The Journal of the Academy of Public Health.
2. It is fully Open Access – anyone with access to the internet can freely read all articles, papers and commentaries, including all the reviewer’s comments and author’s responses.
3. Reviewers are both paid an honorarium and given credit for their efforts by being publicly named.
4. Members of the Academy of Public Health [pdf of organizing document] are free to publish “all their research results” bypassing the gatekeeping seen in other journals.
5. The Journal’s Editorial Board is made up of some of the most distinguished and widely published researchers in the fields of Public Health and Epidemiology.
6. Most of the attack points being made against the journal are political: based on the perceived association of many of the members with conservative issues, that they may have contrarian views on the public health policies instituted during the Covid pandemic, and the tendency of many of the members of the Editorial Board not being the proper “go along to get along”-type of researchers.
7. The new journal is a good sign that “The Vibe” may be changing in scientific publishing as well.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
The status quo – the entrenched scientific publishers – do not want to give up their lucrative business models. Academics and researchers who have made their reputations supporting consensus views fear good science findings that may invalidate those consensuses.
This new effort in Public Health will not be easily shouted down by nay-sayers. The widely recognized quality of their Editorial Board members will (hopefully) make the journal unassailable.
The WIRED article even attacks one Board Member for supporting the “lab leak” theory, which has recently been acknowledged as most likely by the CIA.
Let’s support the new effort of Open Access publishing as best we can.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The academic world of publish or perish which reportedly results in individuals publish a paper every 37 hours is likely to resist.
Many of the journals, once again reportedly, require a payment of $1500 to $5000 to gain publication. Of course, if that is true, it will be a source of resistance.
Open, honest, transparent, and not coupled to money should bear good results.
Can we get one for climate related research?
Sparta ==> The for profit journals want to stay that way — and it is BIG business.
“Can we get one for climate related research?” It would require a critical mass of climate related scientists willing to stick their necks out …. we already have the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change which publishes, occasionally. CLINTEL published a counter to AR6 called: The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC.
Kip, we won’t get academic climate nonsense out of the usual joirnals until the funding is dried up. Simply too many careers with vested interests. Doubt a counter journal would help much. Besides, we have WUWT as an open source journal with much ‘peer review’.
Rud ==> Agree that a counter-journal would not be a solution….but once the pendulum starts to swing back to real science based on real evidence, as it has in epidemiology, then a counter-journal, or a least a non-biased/non-consensus-gatekeeping journal will add impetus to the shift.
What was that ClimateGate email –
“we’ll keep this out of the literature, even if we have to redefine what peer review is”
Looks like a good start. The opposite of Fauci’s COVID19 responses.
The pharmas made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Or so his story will be.
Why would any government official accept a presidential pardon if they had nothing to hide?
He knowingly funded WIV gain of function via cutout EcoHealth Alliance. Then in sworn testimony denied it to Senator (MD) Rand Paul.
It has been known since 1919 that masks do not stop aerosolized respiratory viruses.
He made up the 6 foot spacing rule, likewise knowing it won’t help with aerosolized viruses.
And because of nursing home transmissions, it was known by YE 2020 that COVID was at least partly aerosolized.
He had plenty to hide. So did Biden. Hence the (unconstitutional) blanket preemptory pardon back to 2014.
I very much doubt that the pardons were unconstitutional. They were, however, certainly unconscionable.
Article 2 says ‘Offenses against the United States’. There has NEVER before been a purely prospective pardon, since no ‘Offense’ has been established by a court of law. On the contrary, Hunter had already been convicted of one.
Only Congress can convey immunity.
Pre-emptive pardons are, by their definition, a conveyance of immunity.
According to the Supreme Court in 1915 (?), accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt.
For one thing, Real Clear is an aggregator, mostly. Real Clear Politics, which I think is the original site, “reprints” articles on politics from a variety of viewpoints, not all “right wing”. They do some original reporting, which I would characterize as rather small “l” libertarian to moderately conservative. More Rand Paul than John Cornyn.
Their other sites, like Real Clear Science, tend to be fairly neutral, which will get them called “right wing”.
The other thing is the business model of science journal publication. Forty years ago, it was the need to typeset and do separations for printing graphics for a fairly small print run that drove costs. With newspapers, doing classified ads was their “cash cow” that subsidized the rest of their operation. Desktop publishing is a fairly mature technology, and broadband and rather cheap storage very much reduces the need for gatekeeping, at least on the basis of cost.
Gatekeeping should be more on the basis of the reputation and track record of the host and reviewers. Knowing who agrees with the study can very much matter, and anonymous peer review seems too likely to be abused.
I find RealClear to be a good source of information on both (or occasionally many) sides of a question. Most of the time when they highlight an article saying XYZ is good they highlight another article saying the opposite. It seems to me that this is a conscious and enforced practice among the article-choosers that work there.
Any site that runs articles from the LA Times and The Federalist on the same topic is trying to be diverse in a good way.
Tom ==> JAPH, the new journal, handles peer review by paying a honorarium to reviewers and having them sign their reviews, all open to the public, open access.
The “need” for gatekeeping in modern academic publishes often is based on politics or “taking sides” in controversies.
Kip: It certainly sounds like a good start at addressing many of the issues. What I’d like to see in addition is a systematic process to generate independent replication of research. Maybe original papers would be printed with a disclaimer – “This study has not been independently replicated”. Some organization should be created to promote and fund replication studies and as they’re completed the original papers would be updated to include those results – “Results confirmed by 3 replication studies, (1) (2) (3).” Any paper that could not be supported in replications would ultimately be marked as likely invalid.
Too much to hope for, but someone needs to do something.
Full disclosure: I spent 35+ years working in a materials and products test business where results were routinely verified by multiple replicate tests run by different operators on a blinded basis. For critical issues with life safety implications replicate testing was often contracted to other labs.
Rick ==> Replication is a very important and top shelf idea currently, as you know. So much so that they call it the Replication Crisis.
One of the big problems is Funding — almost no one wants to pay do re-do someone else’s study. Certainly, in medicine, important findings, especially that may change clinical practice, should be required to be replicated, and the honor for important results shared with those replicating the findings.
Currently, the scientific system is based on “supporting” studies. Weak and often biased by expectations and group think
WIRED is a reliable source of misinformation much like the Guardian newspaper in the UK. Neither can be believed on any subject they publish.
Be that as it may, the point made was valid.
Under this post, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/29/lets-run-out-the-clock-the-doomsday-clock/ , I made this comment which seems to apply to those who object to any open and honest journal.
Gunga ==> Been true in CliSci for decades…
Pardon my interruption, Kip, but that is actually “CliSciFi.”
dave ==> I have been trying,off and on, to get CliSci into popular use,the same way that PoliSci is used — but have made little progress.
I’d like the authors to share their data and processing algorithm unless there’s a patent at stake.
Kevin ==> I believe JAPH has that covered in their operating regime….check the latest issue and see.
This is good news!
“Let’s support the new effort of Open Access publishing as best we can.” Agreed!
David ==> Maybe we can get a little more going in CliSci.
There certainly is a lot of readily accessible observational data out there as starting material.
> Paywalls: Many scientific articles are behind paywalls
By definition, likely for profit. Equally by definition not scientific.
The two most prestigious ‘peer reviewed’ paper stables are Nature and Science. Despite their august reputations both have published multiple papers on climate related topics that are easily proven false, comprising academic misconduct. I noted several in various Blowing Smoke essays.
Also publishing the peer reviews should help eliminate ‘pal review’.
And certainly after COVID19, the public health community needs to up its game. This looks like a good starting forum on topics like RFK Jr will be bringing to HHS.
It appears to me that Wired is a good candidate for listing as a conspiracy theory club.
Ed Z ==>WIRED marches to the beat of NY Times, NPR, Washington Post == left leaning, uber-“progressive” Or as Tom Dotson is quoted in the WIRED article “ people who also read NPR and The New York Times” versus “people who are kind of populist and anti-“consensuses”.
Story Tip
Earth To Mars In Just 30-60 Days: Russia Testing New Plasma Rocket Engine To Make This Possible
Moscow: In what could come as a giant leap in technology, Russia’s new plasma rocket engine might cut travel time to Mars from existing 7 months to just one or two months.
According to reports, the plasma rocket will use magnetic forces to gain the unimaginable acceleration coupled with charged hydrogen particles that will enable travel upto 100 kms per second.
Krishna ==> Hmmm….sounds like the old Popular Science Magazine, “a flying car in every garage”.
The Republic article gives no references to any outside source, quotes no single press release or study, or even a person ….
It is a know technology and may, someday, make inter-planetary travel possible. But, as for Mrs in one or two months — all of us old SciFi reading teenagers (in the 1950s) know that spaceships have to speed up to get going and then turn around and slow down again — greatly adding to overall travel time.
I read first about in German news and looked for an English source and linked one I found fast.
Now, after your appreciated hint, I looked further
https://interestingengineering.com/space/russia-plasma-engine-could-reach-mars-early
https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/rosatom-scientists-developed-prototype-plasma-rocket-engine-for-deep-space-missions/
https://atommedia.online/en/2025/02/07/uchenye-rosatoma-zavershili-razrabo/
https://en.iz.ru/en/1834706/andrei-korsunov/plasma-heart-russian-engine-will-deliver-mars-one-or-two-months
With some photos
If this “plasma” engine is what NASA has called the ion drive, then there might be something there. They have already used one to power a satellite out in the asteroid belt.
It needed chemical rockets to get off the surface and to leave Earth orbit. After that, it was ion drive all the way out.
Climate science was and remains politically and ideologically captured.
The process of ‘DOGEing’ climate science has begun at least in the USA. Initial EO from Trump with respect to offshore wind, and the process of removing all references to the hypothesis of CAGW from all federal government public & internal interfaces is a start. I anticipate additional measurers to be taken, with potential closure of entire federal ‘climate change’ departments, or agencies. It will be very interesting to see the levels of waste, fraud and abuse that is uncovered in agencies such as the EPA once DOGE goes in there.
Just to continue on DOGE for a moment. We knew there would be leftist radical institutional capture with associated global and domestic funding, however the level & extent of this waste, fraud and abuse is staggering. And that is just USAID, we have only just begun. The long march by the Marxists has been shown to be unbelievably successful and utterly pervasive.
So too politically captured many other sciences, particularly medicine. We all witnessed what happened to medicine, both practice and research at all levels during the COVID ‘pandemic’ this continues today.
The Real Clear websites are not conservative or right wing.
The last three websites I check every morning ti find good articles to recommend are:
Real Clear Energy
Real Clear Science
Real Clear Health
My wife reads Real Clear Politics every day.
In our opinion, Real Clear has a good variety of viewpoints, but we both believe there are more articles by liberals than by conservatives when a subject has different points of view.
Richard ==> It is the wokies who are labeling Real whatever as right-wing. I carefully mentioned this in the essay, they really mean “not left-leaning”.
Very nice Kip.
Scientists need to earn a living
They say what pays off
After they retire, they can say what they really think if they have a good pension and savings.
Climate science is not a problem even though there are a huge number of unanswered questions.
Climate scientists are the problem.
They often get attention by making scary long term climate predictions. Long term climate predictions are not science because they are always wrong.
There is also the never explained claim of a “climat problem”.
Throughout history, anecdotes reveal a colder than typical climates was strongly disliked – bad news.
Now we are told a warmer climate is bad news.
No matter which way the average temperature moves, warmer or cooler, it’s bad news?
You must not lump real scientists with climate scientists. We work to different standards. The real science of my career (now retired) was driven by “delivering the goods” each day. Targets are set by colleagues, seniors or self, so you use best science to solve or answer them. Standards were not set by counts of published papers or their rankings, or by discussing subjective scenarios. Geoff S
You are to be commended, and I honour you, sir. You walk in the Groves of Academe with Aristotle and his students – but this way, in education, and later, science, was abolished with changes to Pedagogy in England, high and low, in about 1840. Widespread education required reorganisation and introduction of exams in the Imperial Chinese Mandarinate example brought ‘home’ – opium for them, ‘progress’ for England which needed it. Sad but inevitable, and, irreversible.
On the plains of N America, the grass just grows – and the bison then supported the nomads. Rail lines changed all that. England then and we now need Scientists, and unlike the grass, require funding. A lot of it. Scientists are human beings.
Mr Greene, to whom you reply, has a keener grasp of human nature. Incentives change behaviour. Smart people, which up until v recently was coterminous with ‘scientist’, must be MORE perceptive of incentive, rather than less.
And a keener grasp of likelihood. Your noble example can never deliver the goods – there are v v few truly good men.
Harness the incentives correctly, or the recent pleasure (perhaps brief) of exposing charlatans will do very little good.
Kip => “For-profit publishers …”
They’re all for profit. Some by subscription charges, some by page charges, some pay-per-view and some (open access) pay by author.
I don’t see why any business model is more susceptible to bias than any other,
Pat ==> There are online publishing outlets – like PLOS (Public Library of Science) that are non-profit.
BIAS — depends on which of the multitude of biases you are talking about.
The point made about For-profit publishers is that they can prioritize profits over the dissemination of knowledge, leading to high subscription costs and limited access.
That particular point was not about bias.
Non-profits are nevertheless supported by generated revenue.
I’ve had two experiences with PLoS One. In both cases, different fields, the editor bench-rejected the submission, preserving the narrative on the back of seriously specious reasoning,
Publishers that prioritize profits are necessarily biased toward narratives that maximize sales. That bias may be toward high impact science. Or it may be toward popular narratives.
I had a similar experience with Marine Ecology Progress Series where the “chief editor” said that the subject wasn’t “appropriate” suggesting another journal. The implication was that it was too much physiological, true, but they had published such and the founder of the journal was well known for physiological work. I had made it clear that I had no affiliation and was impressed with their system including moving papers to open access after five years. An actual person did reply.
The subject was perhaps a little controversial but they had recently published one more “ecological”on the it. I wrote the author with suggestions about his work but never received a reply. Everybody is ‘too busy.’ Some book publishers also play the same game with fees and no royalties. I have a colleague who did this and was satisfied with his book.
As often mentioned the problem is not just about climate, ‘tipping points’ and ‘regime shifts’ are common now in marine ecology papers. Yes, the ocean can be nasty, mass mortalities long known and some researchers know it. Another problem has been the centralization of journals despite the great increase in numbers.
The Academy of Public Health seems to be a scientific Heterodox Academy.
And good on them, II say.
Pat ==> Well, they are a bunch of non-conforming researchers, though many of them are in the top 1 and 2 % of their fields (see the quips on the Editorial Board members page.). Lots of them have bucked trends and pushed back on non-science….
I have followed the Heterodox Academy for years and received their notices and press releases.
One small issue with the journal’s rules: “The only criteria for membership shall be the quality and extent of their already published public health work” doesn’t allow for someone who wants to start their paper-authoring career in the journal, or for someone who has consistently been rejected by other journals (as in “papers that do not support the generalized consensus in a field of study simply stand no chance of publication“). Since the rules clearly involve the journal making an assessment of a membership application before approving (“criteria for membership shall be the quality and extent of their already published public health work“), hopefully they will in fact consider as-yet-unpublished authors.
Incidentally, I saw an interesting comment elsewhere today – someone who had been invited to review a paper had their review rejected! (Even though they had recommended acceptance, and I am pretty sure the paper would have been biased towards acceptance of that particular paper.)
Mike ==> The Academy is structured like the Royal Society in the UK — membership by invitation — the members nominate people to be invited. To be nominated, a researcher has to have already done good work. It is not an Academy of newbies, in that you are right. It is also not a journal for grad students, associate professors, etc. Like the Royal Society, one has to ear one’s place by doing good work.
On the review topic: are you saying that someone invited to review a paper for JAPH had their review rejected? Not clear to me. If so, can you find that “comment” for us?
I cannot comprehend that any adult person who understands the word “honesty” in its long term sense could possibly object to reforms such as better peer review, less pal review, censorship by journal editors, for example. The more I read about objection to topics like these, the more I suspect nothing much deeper than greed, using special pleadings to gain more $$$.
“academic” lies? All they do is spew lies. All funded by USAID. imagine that shit.