Thread by @MaryanneDemasi

📢The silencing of scientific curiosity
Medical journals have became enforcers of orthodoxy—retracting genuine hypotheses while protecting proven fraud.

Why is a 'hypothesis' a threat to science?


@SabinehazanMD @Jikkyleaks @Kevin_McKernan @MdBreathe @newstart_2024blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/the-silencin…

As a scientific writer and researcher, I’ve witnessed the decline of medical journals firsthand. I interviews Rita Redberg, ex-EIC of @JAMAInternalMed, Richard Smith ex EIC of @bmj_latest and John Ioannidis, the most cited scientist in the world blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/are-medical-…

Never have I seen a more absurd example of this decay than the retraction of a hypothesis paper—yes, a hypothesis—authored by @SabinehazanMD in Frontiers in Microbiology.
In May 2023—more than a year after the article was peer-reviewed and published—the journal retracted the paper following a series of complaints on PubPeer, offering only a vague explanation about “scientific soundness.”

Retraction is historically reserved for cases of fraud or clear misconduct.
But in the case of @SabinehazanMD, the journal simply erased the paper on her "hypothesis" offering no transparent justification, no engagement with the scientific process, and no accountability.

It violated the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. publicationethics.org/guidance/guide…

Why was @SabinehazanMD attacked for proposing a hypothesis?

Is there professional jealousy in the microbiome space? Are pharmaceutical companies, threatened by low-cost alternatives like ivermectin, pressuring journals to kill competing narratives?

If so, the Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) should investigate. Suppressing research that could affect investor decisions—by inflating the perceived value of antivirals or vaccines—could amount to securities fraud.

Journals may quickly cave to pressure. In July 2024, @BharatBiotech sued 11 authors—six of them students—and the editor of Drug Safety, Nitin Joshi, over a peer-reviewed article questioning the safety of their Covaxin vaccine.

The journal, under legal duress, retracted the paper. The authors were left to fend for themselves. blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/breaking-jou…

In other cases, journals protects industry sponsored studies that are clearly fraudulent. Whistleblower Dr. Peter Wilmshurst has spent years trying to get the MIST trial retracted—published in @CircAHA. It’s riddled with false claims, undeclared conflicts, and unreported adverse events, yet the journal continues to protect it.

There’s a growing list of researchers penalised—not for bad science, but for exploring uncomfortable truths.

FULL STORY 👇👇👇 blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/the-silencin…