Lancet's credibility is now zero, and millions of people know it.
The UK medical journal Lancet has long been regarded as one of the primary sources for accurate medical research. The present editor, Richard Horton, now has a track record of delaying and cancelling extremely important debates about the Coronavirus. In two instances, Lancet has failed to publish extremely important findings exposing conflicts of interest and questionable science, that were in the public interest: they failed to acknowledge the criticisms of Peter Daszak who organised a letter rubbishing the lab leak theory in February 2020; Daszak had a huge conflict of interest in that he was heavily involved in gain of function research in the Wuhan Lab. More recently, Lancet failed to publish Norman Fenton’s objections to a May 2021 Israeli study about the effectiveness of the Coronavirus.
Norman Fenton and the Israeli study
The study was published on 6 May 2021, and Norman Fenton submitted his letter on 17 May 2021. They received no response from Lancet until 8 January 2023; Fenton published this letter on Twitter and received over a million impressions:
This is certainly not how science is supposed to work. Lancet should have published Norman Fenton’s objections immediately.
It has since come out that Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis previously worked for Pfizer and signed a non-disclosure agreement that prevented her from publishing any criticisms of the Pfizer vaccine; effectively muzzling her.
This summary of events is from Norman Fenton’s recent article, “The Lancet has become a laughing stock”:
On 6 May 2021 The Lancet published a blatantly flawed study of the effectiveness of the Pfizer covid vaccine on the population of Israel, claiming it was 95% effective.
On 17 May 2021 we submitted a rapid response 250 word letter explaining why the study was flawed.
After an initial response saying they would ask the authors for a response to our letter we heard nothing until 20 months later.
On 8 January 2023 we got an email out of the blue from The Lancet Senior Editor Josefine Gibson apologising for never having got back to us about the letter, saying that they had asked the lead author Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis (SA-P) to respond to our letter but, because she did not provide any formal response, they have decided not to publish our letter.
We tweeted The Lancet's response and within 24 hours it got over one million impressions. We also published a substack article highlighting the fact we were now aware of additional problems with the paper relating to SA-P’s relationship with Pfizer.
On 10 January 2023 we got an unsolicited email from Josefine Gibson (which we can only assume was a result of the reputation hit they got from our tweet) saying “Thank you for bringing your letter from May 2021 back to our attention. We are looking into next steps and will get back to you as soon as we can.”
On 11 January 2023 (at 10:58) we sent an email to The Lancet's Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton directing him to our substack article (which highlighted these new problems relating to SA-P's relationship with Pfizer) stating that The Lancet was clearly taking a credibility hit surrounding the publication of the Israel-Pfizer study and its response to criticisms of it.
On 11 January 2023 (at 11:21) we got an email from Josefine Gibson apologising for the ‘sub standard experience’ we had with The Lancet. She said that, after discussing it with Horton, they were now inviting us to publish the original letter or an update to it, suggesting the update ‘reflect more current experience with the vaccine’.
On 12 January 2023 we submitted our updated letter (of an agreed 350 words).
On 13 January 2023 we got a response from Josefine Gibson saying they had decided against publishing the letter.
UK Science and technology inquiry into the origins of the Coronavirus.
In December 2021, the UK Science and Technology Select Committee conducted an inquiry into the suspicious origins of the Coronavirus: the committee concluded that the weight of the evidence indicated that the virus came from a leak from the Wuhan Lab. The first cases occurred in the lab employees’ residential district. The testimony of Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan and Lord Matt Ridley, authors of Viral, was instrumental in providing the evidence.
They interviewed the editor of the journal Lancet, Richard Horton, who was clearly ignoring and suppressing evidence that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab. It took them more than 18 months to acknowledge a major conflict of interest in a letter instrumental in silencing objections to the lab leak theory.
Peer-reviewed studies funded by the NIH in Wuhan going back to 2013 reveal that the Wuhan lab was indeed working on gain of function. Peter Daszak, who wrote and signed the letter published in Lancet in February 2020 calling the Wuhan lab leak a conspiracy theory, was exposed as having a large conflict of interest, because his organisation Eco-Health Alliance used NIH funding to collaborate with Chinese scientists on gain of function research in the Wuhan lab.
Richard Horton, clearly under pressure in his testimony, eventually admitted that it took them over a year to persuade Daszak to declare his full competing interest.
Richard Horton should resign
It has now come into the light of public knowledge that Richard Horton has twice suppressed scientific debate in the Lancet journal, in an extremely grievous way, and it is clear that his suppression of evidence may have resulted in loss of life.
The knowledge that the Coronavirus came from a lab early on in 2020 may have resulted in research being directed specifically towards those particular strains, which could well have saved many, many lives.
The knowledge that the vaccine is not 95% effective as the Israeli study fallaciously claimed may have saved many lives as well.
Horton’s role as the editor of a journal that has twice been caught suppressing debate on important issues is now deeply in question, and the credibility of Lancet is now in tatters.
Sources.
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/3211/pdf/
Norman Fenton’s complete article is well worth reading: