Large medical freedom coalition with a social media footprint of over 63 million followers tells Kennedy and Trump “Remove mRNA shots or pay a political price.” justthenews.com/government/w…

FOLLOW THE MONEY — ESPECIALLY WHEN IT SITS BEHIND “PEER REVIEW”. A 2024 JAMA study examined 1,962 US physicians who reviewed papers for The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. Between 2020 and 2022: • 1,155 reviewers — 58.9% — received at least one industry payment. • Total payments reached US$1.068 billion. • US$64.18 million comprised general payments, including US$34.31 million in consulting fees and US$11.80 million in non-CME speaking fees. Most payments were research funding connected with the reviewer or their institution. The study did not prove that any reviewer was paid for a review or that a particular publication was corrupted. But peer review remains largely opaque: reviewer conflicts are rarely disclosed publicly, and the authors could not determine whether particular financial relationships were relevant to the papers reviewed. That concern sits alongside the documented history of scientific ghostwriting. Litigation records examined in PLOS Medicine showed how commercial publication planners produced manuscripts, recruited academic “authors”, placed articles in medical journals and shaped messages to promote benefits and downplay harms. A Cochrane review of 75 papers found that industry-sponsored drug and device studies were more likely than independently sponsored studies to report favourable efficacy results and conclusions. There is a considerable body of literature in this area. I co-authored Chapter 16 of the International Handbook on Whistleblowing Research, in which we addressed funding, ghostwriting and scientific misconduct within the broader context of corporate fraud, evidence and whistleblower incentives. I am not alleging that any reviewer or journal identified in the JAMA study engaged in misconduct. The point is that financial influence, hidden authorship and undisclosed evidence are recognised research-integrity risks. They are not speculative concerns. This does not make every industry-funded study false. But when one side can fund research, shape manuscripts, finance expert relationships and influence the information pipeline while dissenting researchers lack comparable money and access, the public does not receive a level contest of evidence. “Safe and effective” must therefore never become a marketing slogan immune from scrutiny, particularly where adverse signals remain unresolved or material data are unavailable. Public safety requires transparent funding, identifiable authorship, disclosed reviewer conflicts, independent replication, access to underlying data and proper investigation of adverse events. Science must be tested. It must never be purchased, ghostwritten or protected from challenge. Sources: Nguyen et al, JAMA (2024). Adriane J Fugh-Berman, ‘The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”’ (2010) 7(9) PLOS Medicine e1000335. Andreas Lundh et al, ‘Industry Sponsorship and Research Outcome’ (2017) Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 2, MR000033. Tom Faunce, Kim Crow, Tony Nikolic and Frederick M Morgan Jr, ‘Because They Have Evidence: Globalizing Financial Incentives for Corporate Fraud Whistleblowers’ in International Handbook on Whistleblowing Research (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) 381–404.