The Nature of hypocrisy: pharma-funded journals smearing independent voices

Nature alleges that I endanger public health, but it is the journal — steeped in pharma money — that ought to be looking inward.

When an editor from Nature emailed me this week, it wasn’t a neutral request for comment. It was a prelude to a hit piece — filled with defamatory accusations and framed around a predetermined narrative.

According to the email, I was being lumped into an “anti-vaccine movement,” accused of “endangering public health,” and “profiting from disseminating misinformation.”

No evidence was provided. No articles were cited. No definition of “anti-vaccine” was offered. No complainants were named. Just blanket accusations intended as a character assassination.

Conflict of interest at the heart of Nature

And who is casting these stones?

Nature — a journal that publishes vaccine research while pocketing revenue from pharmaceutical advertising and sponsored content.

To then assign an editor to target independent journalists who scrutinise that very industry is a glaring conflict of interest.

A medical journal acting as both mouthpiece and judge of what counts as “misinformation” is like a tobacco company funding lung health studies while attacking anyone who questions them.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

On its own website, Nature boasts of partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AstraZeneca and other vaccine companies, dressing them up as “pioneering collaborations” to “support science.” It even publishes paid advertising features.

Meanwhile, I’ve never taken a cent from the drug industry. My work is sustained by readers who choose to support independent journalism.

Yet Nature accuses me of “profiting” — as if being funded by public is more corrupting than raking in thousands, if not millions, from the very companies you’re supposed to scrutinise.

To test how deep the rot runs, I’ve requested that Nature disclose its advertising revenue for the past decade, broken down by pharmaceutical corporations, government agencies, and NGOs.

I will publish those figures if and when they are provided.

Loaded language

Nature’s email branded me part of an “anti-vaccine movement.” But what does that actually mean?

Is questioning regulatory capture “anti-vaccine”?

Is demanding the timely publication of safety signals “anti-vaccine”?

Is exposing the failures of the vaccine injury compensation scheme “anti-vaccine”?

Is pointing out the poor oversight of vaccine trials “anti-vaccine”?

By that logic, critics of arsenic in drinking water would be “anti-arsenic,” and anyone calling for safer driving would be “anti-car.” The absurdity is obvious, yet the label is useful to silence debate.

And the email’s language was revealing.

Phrases like “scientific consensus” and “peer-reviewed science” are waved around like trump cards, but in practice they are red flags — appeals to authority rather than evidence.

‘Consensus’ can be manufactured. And ‘peer review’ is no shield against corruption when journals themselves are compromised.

I have documented journal–pharma ties, the retraction of inconvenient studies, and the use of pharma-funded “fact checks” masquerading as science to discredit politically uncomfortable findings.

So when an editor of Nature hides behind these clichés instead of addressing the evidence I present, it tells you everything. This isn’t about protecting science, it’s about protecting a narrative.

And I’m clearly not the only target.

Dr Robert Malone — also a Substack publisher and now a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practice — received the same media request from Nature.

The journal’s smear campaign extends even to those who now sit on America’s top vaccine advisory body.

Nature insists that “anti-vaccine stances are supported by a small body of evidence compared to the larger weight of evidence for vaccination.”

But that’s probably because journals act as gatekeepers, blocking challenges to orthodoxy and shutting out novel viewpoints. Studies that raise concerns are rejected, buried or retracted, while industry-friendly findings sail through unopposed.

It isn’t the science that’s lacking — it’s the willingness of journals to let inconvenient results see the light of day. The house of cards is collapsing, and that is why the attacks on dissent are more aggressive than ever.

And those attacks often come from self-proclaimed experts who are themselves conflicted, embedded in institutions sustained by the teat of industry, and unwilling to disclose their own conflicts.

Pot calling the kettle black: the Proximal Origin scandal

Notably, while Nature postures as a guardian against “misinformation,” it bears responsibility for one of the pandemic’s most notorious scandals.

In March 2020, Nature Medicine — part of the Nature portfolio — published “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which declared the virus could not have been engineered in a lab.

The paper was splashed across headlines and weaponised to dismiss the lab-leak theory as a “conspiracy.”

But private emails and Slack chats told another story. The authors harboured serious doubts and admitted a lab origin could not be ruled out.

Hundreds of scientists now call the paper a ‘political tract’ dressed up as science, and thousands have petitioned for its retraction. Yet Nature Medicine refuses, brushing it aside as a “point of view” piece.

If that isn’t misinformation, then what is?

Even the White House has distanced itself. Its website now acknowledges that the Proximal Origin paper was used to suppress debate, and alleges the authors were nudged by Dr Fauci to push the “preferred” zoonotic origin narrative.

Time for accountability

Make no mistake, this is ‘the system’ at work.

Powerful journals with financial ties to industry unleashing hatchet men to smear independent journalists and scientists, rather than engaging with evidence.

I won’t play along. My job is to hold institutions accountable, not to curry their favour. If Nature wants to brand that “misinformation,” so be it. History shows that today’s heresy is often tomorrow’s truth.

This goes to the heart of the corruption of medical publishing — a system Robert F. Kennedy Jr has repeatedly warned about, and one that now demands scrutiny at the highest levels.

With Dr Jay Bhattacharya at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, there is finally an opportunity to investigate the conflicts of interest, selective censorship, and financial entanglements that journals like Nature have normalised.

When those who profit from pharma partnerships claim the authority to police what lies “outside the scientific consensus,” public trust in science collapses.

And that collapse is not the fault of independent journalists asking hard questions. It is the fault of journals that serve industry interests over science.

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