Robert F. Kennedy has threatened to bar government scientists from publishing their work in some of the world's most prestigious medical journals. On the Ultimate Human Podcast With Gary Brecka on Tuesday, the US health secretary called the established journals corrupt and said the National Institutes of Health, the agency that funds medical research, would probably create "in-house" journals, reports STAT. "We're probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they're all corrupt," he said. Kennedy said the journals were being controlled by pharmaceutical companies.
He said the NIH and other agencies his department oversees, including the CDC and the FDA, have also been "sock puppets" for the industry, reports the Washington Post. "Unless those journals change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing in them and we're going to create our own journals in-house," Kennedy said. The three journals Kennedy named were established in the 19th century. They "publish original, peer-reviewed research and play a central role in disseminating medical findings worldwide," the Post notes. Kennedy said the department's journals would become the "preeminent" medical journals because receiving NIH funding is "anointing you as a good, legitimate scientist."
Politico notes that Kennedy's stance is at odds with that of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who said in a recent interview that "academic freedom means I can send my paper out even if my bosses disagree with me." Public health researcher Adam Gaffney tells the Post that prohibiting "NIH-funded researchers from publishing in leading medical journals and requiring them to publish only in journals that carry the RFK Jr. seal of approval would delegitimize taxpayer-funded research." (More Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stories.)