Opinion: Independent medical journals key to medical progress
Medical journals must be able to operate independently, free of political interference, according to two editors of such journals.
Eric Rubin and Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo—editors, respectively, of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)—made their case in a July 21 opinion piece in the Washington Post. They wrote the article in response to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s threat to bar government scientists from publishing in NEJM, JAMA, and other independent journals in favor of in-house, government-run publications.
Rubin is also an adjunct professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“Just as democracy depends on a free and independent press to hold power accountable, medical progress depends on independent journals to vet, challenge and advance science without political interference,” they wrote.
Rubin and Bibbins-Domingo noted that lifesaving medical findings published in top medical journals—such as the cure for many childhood leukemias and the link between smoking and lung cancer—are painstakingly scrutinized in a peer review process involving independent experts and editorial teams including statisticians and physicians. Editors also work closely with authors to ensure that findings are communicated accurately. The goal, said the co-authors, is to publish only the strongest research aimed at improving health care.
The existence of independent journals that compete to publish the best research helps reinforce rigor and creates checks and balances, according to the authors. “Centralizing control in a single government-run journal, as Kennedy suggests, would undermine these safeguards, risking the politicization of the scientific review process and resulting in the filtering of evidence through ideology,” they wrote.
Read the Washington Post opinion piece: This system is critical to Americans’ health. We must defend it.
Learn more
Barring federal research from medical journals could have negative health impacts (Harvard Chan School news)
