Covid Subcommittee Invites Scientific-Journal Editors to Testify on Their Relationship with Federal Government

A congressional panel tasked with investigating the handling of the coronavirus pandemic is asking the editors of three peer-reviewed scientific journals to testify in two weeks on whether the federal government shaped their editorial decisions regarding Covid-19 articles.

Representative Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, sent separate letters on Tuesday to the editors in chief of the Lancet, Science, and Nature in order to determine the extent of their relationships with federal-government officials during the pandemic. The hearing, “Academic Malpractice: Examining the Relationship Between Scientific Journals, the Government, and Peer Review,” is slated for April 16.

The hearing is being cast as an opportunity to scrutinize whether the federal government suppressed scientific discourse related to Covid-19 and, if so, ensure that it doesn’t exert similar influence during future public-health crises.

In each of the three letters, Wenstrup said the subcommittee has acquired documents, some of which were made public through the Freedom of Information Act, showing that the three top scientific journals were in direct contact with Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins about the Covid-19 pandemic.

“These documents raise questions regarding whether these journals granted the federal government inappropriate access into the scientific review or publishing process and whether the federal government censored or otherwise manipulated these processes,” Wenstrup wrote.

The chairman did not cite any reports or studies in the letters, which were issued to Richard Horton of the Lancet, Holden Thorp of Science, and Magdalena Skipper of Nature.

“Millions of people worldwide relied on Science, Nature, and The Lancet to provide scientifically accurate and impartial research during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wenstrup said in a statement. “However, documents show that the federal government may have censored and manipulated the sacred scientific review processes at these journals to progress their preferred narrative about the origins of COVID-19.”

“Should these world-renowned scientific journals have done more to protect scientific discourse and ensure the peer review process was completed without outside influence?” the Republican congressman asked. “The Select Subcommittee expects the invited Editors-in-Chief to attend this hearing and address concerns that their research was inappropriately influenced by a political agenda.”

National Review has contacted the Lancet, Science, and Nature for comment.

The Coronavirus Select Subcommittee’s invitations come months after it heard testimonies from public-health officials and experts, including Fauci and Collins. Both, who are now retired, testified behind closed doors in January about their influential roles during the pandemic and on such issues as social-distancing guidelines, gain-of-function research, and the lab-leak theory.

Fauci testified that the possibility of the coronavirus originating from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China — a hypothesis he tried to disprove using Nature Medicine‘s March 2020 “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper — was not a conspiracy theory after all. According to evidence released by the subcommittee last year, Fauci had prompted, edited, and approved the writing of the article with the goal of refuting the lab-leak theory.

During his own transcribed interview, Collins agreed with Fauci’s admission that the lab-leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory. Collins also acknowledged that Fauci invited him to attend the February 1, 2020, conference call that precipitated the writing of the “Proximal Origin” paper.

Before retiring at the end of 2022, Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical adviser during the Trump and Biden administrations. Collins had stepped down from his position as the director of the National Institutes of Health the year before.