The Scientific American Dustup

  • What happened at Scientific American and why we’re responding

  • The letter from Dr. Jeffrey Flier, former Dean of Harvard Medical School regarding our article and SciAm’s refusal to allow a rebuttal (nor did they publish Dr Flier’s letter)

  • Our corrections to the “corrections” published by Scientific American

What happened:

Shannon Brownlee and I wrote an OPINION PIECE, “The Covid Science Wars,” with a sidebar, that was published by Scientific American. Publication was followed by attacks on our article and on us personally. SciAm then published a set of false and misleading “corrections” to our articles. The SciAm editors have refused to either take down their “corrections” or to publish our corrections to their “corrections.”

 Below is the letter from Jeffrey Flier, former Dean of Harvard Medical School (2007-2016) to the editors of Scientific American. SciAm has not published his letter. And since we have no other way to correct the public record, we are posting our responses to SciAm below Dr. Flier’s letter.

Dr. Flier’s letter

12/17/2020

 Laura Helmuth, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

 Michael Lemonick, Opinion Editor, Scientific American

 Dear Dr. Helmuth and Mr. Lemonick,

 I am writing to express my disappointment at the unfair and journalistically questionable manner in which Scientific American, a storied and highly respected magazine, treated Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee and their article on the debate over heterodox views in science. By printing a lengthy correction to their article, while refusing to permit them the opportunity to address the inaccuracies therein, Scientific American has needlessly besmirched the reputations of two distinguished and accomplished journalists who deserve a great deal of credit for their work over the years, including efforts to expose problematic issues in biomedical science.

I am a physician and researcher, and served as dean of Harvard Medical School from 2007-2016. I have a keen interest in how science is conducted, interpreted, published, ad when necessary corrected. I have had no personal or professional relationships with either Lenzer or Brownlee, though I have read their work over the years.

The COVID Science Wars by Lenzer and Brownlee was a valuable and well researched piece. I disagree with various elements of both the Great Barrington Declaration and the John Snow Memorandum regarding the public health approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, as discussed in the story. However, I believe strongly that both points of view deserved the opportunity to be heard and debated by the scientific community, as we all seek to get closer to the truth at a time of great public health challenges and political polarization.

Though John Ioannidis didn’t sign either declaration, his extensive and quite remarkable scientific output and interim conclusions flowing from them have at times diverged from those held by the medical majority, as expected for any outstanding scientist at a time such as this. Unfortunately, his perceived deviations were unaccountably treated as being politically motivated, resulting in many false accusations regarding his data and analysis, as well as his motivations and ethics, attacks that violated the central requirements of a well-functioning scientific community to engage in open inquiry and debate, as free as possible from personal recriminations. This is true even if some of his analyses were at times cited by the Trump Administration and others to justify their failed public health response to the pandemic. By bowing to the mob that has been attacking Ioannidis with false accusations that distort the totality of his work, Scientific American has lent support to behaviors that violate the norms of ethical scientific conduct. By refusing to permit Lenzer and Brownlee to address the accusations implied by your corrections, Scientific American appears to me to be violating the norms of journalistic integrity.

To mention one particular point among several, your accusation that Lenzer and Brownlee failed to disclose their past co-authorship with Drs. Ioannidis and Prasad as if this were on par with an unstated financial conflict of interest is erroneous. First, the article and sidebar were opinion pieces, and their support of Dr. Ioannidis was quite explicit. The fact that years ago they co-authored peer reviewed articles with Prasad and Ioannidis on unrelated topics added little or no relevant information for readers. I am well aware of the extensive rules governing conflict of interest in the medical literature; prior co-authorship of this nature, subject and timing fails to rise to the level of a reportable COI relationship. Your statement that Lenzer and Brownlee failed to disclose these prior co-authorships implied they were material events the authors were seeking to hide. Unlike many financial relationships, co-authorships are public knowledge – as a quick search of PubMed will show. The norms of scientific publishing would not consider these to be reportable COIs.

In the interest of fairness, I implore you to take one of two possible actions to remedy this unfortunate situation: allow Lenzer and Brownlee to address several of your “corrections” in a published rebuttal, or take editorial action to correct the errors introduced by your “corrections”.

The continued and well-earned reputation of Scientific American as an ethical venue for scientific journalism requires that you do this.

Respectfully yours,

Jeffrey S. Flier, M.D.

Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Higginson Professor of Medicine and Physiology

Harvard Medical School

Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee correct the “corrections” posted by the editors of Scientific American regarding our article, The Covid Wars and its sidebar

Scientific American’s claims (in italics below and marked SA), triggered an outpouring of hate mail and false claims both about John Ioannidis and about our integrity as journalists. Our responses follow in bold. Scientific American has declined to post our corrections.

SA:  This article was originally published on November 30, 2020 with a number of errors and misleading claims. First, it should have been labeled “Opinion,” but was not. JL & SB: The main piece was clearly labeled “opinion,” the sidebar was not. This was Scientific American’s fault, not ours. [Note: this is important as it relates to claims that we allegedly had undisclosed conflicts of interest]

SA: Second, the authors’ bylines were omitted. JL & SB: Failure to include our bylines was Scientific American’s doing, not ours

SA: Third, the authors failed to note that they have collaborated in the past with both John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad, who are discussed in this essay, and also in this accompanying story. This, we now understand, was also the case with a similar opinion piece by the same authors in Undark magazine in June. JL & SB: We filled out an extensive conflict of interest form of SciAm’s making that asked about financial and other forms of conflict. They did not ask about a history of co-authorship on peer-reviewed medical articles (in which no money changed hands), presumably because they did not consider it a conflict. Far from hiding our point of view (which was to let all scientific voices be heard), we published our articles in SciAm as opinion pieces. We are happy to have that disclosure added. The piece in UnDark was also an opinion piece and we did disclose that to Undark at the time the article was commissioned, which led them to publish the article as an opinion piece. UnDark chose not to include our “disclosure” until after critics claimed that we had a conflict of interest. UnDark failed to put a statement on the website indicating that it was not us, Lenzer and Brownlee, who failed to disclose, but Undark that failed to do so. Years after publication, despite our requests, the editors of UnDark have not corrected the false claim on their website about our disclosure.

SA: Fourth, the authors did not disclose that there were other problematic issues raised about the design of a study co-authored by John Ioannidis, most notably how the study authors recruited study participants and how independent faculty at Stanford said that they were unable to verify the accuracy of their test JL & SB: Recruitment of study participants was better than (or no worse than) similar studies, which have recruited by standing outside of grocery stores or in town squares. It also did not seem important to our sidebar since we had already written about it in UnDark. As for the test characteristics, all tests have problems with false positives and false negatives. If the critics were concerned with science they would focus on test problems across the board, instead of using the problem to charge Ioannidis with “sloppy science.” In addition, there was no “independent faculty” at Stanford. The person who refused to verify the accuracy of their test was himself the creator of a competitor test that he wanted the Ioannidis team to use instead.

SA: The authors of this piece failed to mention that the BuzzFeed story was based on a whistleblower complaint filed to Stanford by someone involved in the research. This complaint spurred the investigation cited later in the piece. The whistleblower complaint clearly stated, “Concern that the authors were affected by a severe conflict of interest is unavoidable.”  JL & SB: “Concern” is not the same as fact. Neither John Ioannidis nor his lab received a penny for his work on the study in question. An external law firm hired by Stanford conducted a “fact finding” and found no conflicts of interest. And the alleged “whistleblower” never filed a formal complaint

 A final note: Scientific American violated the first rule of journalistic integrity: One never publishes accusations without inquiring of the accused. They never spoke with us prior to publishing their “corrections.” Other charges were made, but for the sake of brevity, we are addressing only the most serious ones here.