Kennedy was speaking on the Ultimate Human Podcast in an interview released on May 27.
The health secretary said existing journals have serious problems, including not publishing datasets. That makes it hard to replicate studies and incentivizes cheating, he said.
“What we’re going to do is we’re going to devote probably 20 percent of NIH’s budget to replication; every study has to be replicated,” Kennedy said.
“We’re going to publish the peer review for the first time. We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt.”
Kennedy cited Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet. Horton has written that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue,” with issues such as conflicts of interest and small sample sizes plaguing the field.
Kennedy also referenced comments from former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell, who wrote in 2009 that “it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.”
The current publication system means researchers must pay to get their research published, and often involves pharmaceutical companies funding research that supports their products, Kennedy said.
“Unless these journals change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing there, and we’re going to create our own journals in-house in each of the institutions,” he added later. “And they’re going to become the preeminent journals.”
A spokesperson for the New England Journal of Medicine told The Epoch Times in an email that the journal has “an impeccable record of scientific rigor and independence.”
“We use rigorous peer review and editorial processes to ensure the objectivity and reliability of the research we publish, whether the work comes from academic or industry authors,” the spokesperson said.
“NEJM will continue to focus on publishing scientific breakthroughs to improve the health of Americans and people around the world.”
The Lancet and JAMA did not return requests for comment by publication time.
The NIH did not respond to an inquiry by publication time.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH’s director, and Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, are on the editorial board of a publication, the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, that was founded earlier this year. The journal centers on open access, open peer review, paying and acknowledging reviewers, and letting any members of the academy publish their research “without article gatekeeping,” Martin Kulldorff, one of the founders, said in its first issue.
Both Bhattacharya and Makary are listed as on leave from the board.
The Make America Healthy Again Commission, which is chaired by Kennedy, recently said in its first report that American children have been getting sicker in part because of “overmedicalization” that is driven by “‘corporate capture,’ in which industry interests dominate and distort scientific literature, legislative actions, academic institutions, regulatory agencies, medical journals, physician organizations, clinical guidelines, and the news media.”
Assumptions about scientific literature, such as that the journals have confirmed the articles are accurate, are incorrect, the commission said. For instance, journals often don’t have access to patient-level data from researchers, which makes them unable to verify the accuracy of the reported data.
One of the commission’s 10 recommendations was that the NIH launch an initiative “to confront the replication crisis, investing in reproducibility efforts to improve trust and reliability in basic science and interventions for childhood chronic disease.”
