Carl Bergstrom, a theoretical and evolutionary biologist, believes the journal is part of an ongoing effort to cast doubt around established scientific consensus. “If you can create the illusion that there is not a predominance of opinion that says, vaccines and masks are effective ways of controlling the pandemic, then you can undermine that notion of scientific consensus, you can create uncertainty, and you can push a particular agenda forward,” he says. Peer-reviewed papers, he says, can provide cover to politicians who want to make certain decisions and they can also be used in court.
When reached by phone on Thursday, Kulldorff said Bhattacharya and Makary were approached to be on the editorial board before their nominations by President Trump. “Right now, they are not active members of the board,” he said. (The journal’s website lists Bhattacharya and Makary as “on leave”.) He added that there is “no connection” between the journal and the Trump administration.
Kulldorff told WIRED that the journal will be a venue for open discourse and academic freedom. “I think it’s important that scientists can publish what they think is important science, and then that should be open for discussion, instead of preventing people from publishing,” Kulldorff says.
Kulldorff and Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at UC Irvine who has been a proponent of the lab leak theory of Covid’s origin, are named as the journal’s editors in chief. Scott Atlas, who was tapped by Trump to serve on the White House Coronavirus Task Force in 2020, is also named as an editorial board member. Atlas, a radiologist by training, has made false claims that masks don’t work to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
In January, Noymer wrote an op-ed supporting Bhattacharya’s nomination for NIH administrator. In it, he praised Bhattacharya for his open-mindedness to different points of view. That op-ed was published in RealClearPolitics.
Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist and research scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, says she worries that the journal could be used to prop up and legitimize pseudoscientific and anti-public health views. “I don’t think this is going to give them any credit with real scientists. But the public may not know the difference between the Journal of the Academy of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine,” she says.
Taylor Dotson, a professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology who studies the intersection of science and politics, says there is a “legitimate concern” that the journal could become a repository for evidence that bolsters arguments favored by people in the administration. If confirmed, Bhattacharya and Makary’s boss could potentially be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, who is known for promoting a wide range of debunked scientific beliefs, including that there is a link between vaccines and autism and that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus.
Dotson warns that there is a risk that the existence of journals closely aligned with a certain political view might deepen the politicization of science. “The worst-case scenario is you start having the journals for the people who are kind of populist and anti-establishment and the journals for the people who also read NPR and The New York Times.”