DOJ probe of science journals’ lab-leak quid pro quo, misrepresentation broader than thought

The Justice Department investigation into science journals’ alleged pay-to-play practices, misrepresentation and enforced orthodoxies, including Nature Medicine’s “Proximal Origin” paper dismissing a lab-leak explanation for COVID-19 that was secretly shaped by Biden administration officials, swept in more targets than previously known.The letters regarding journals “conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” sent by then-interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin in spring 2025, went to a dozen publications, according to a public records production given to FYI Science Policy News, which published it Wednesday.
Only five were known a year ago: the Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Chest, Obstetrics & Gynecology and Nature Medicine. Though investigative journalist Paul Thacker published the Nature Medicine letter March 28, 2025, FYI Science Policy News falsely said it wasn’t previously known.
The other seven receiving the letters: American Family Physician, American Journal of Public Health, Cancer, Family Medicine, Pediatrics, Science and Scientific American, the last of which responded that it was a news magazine, not a science journal. The JAMA and Nature Medicine letters said they covered their respective publishers’ entire range of publications.
The records show Cancer, Science, and Family Medicine responded to Martin’s letters, the last two of which referred Martin to their lawyers.
“This was the government sticking its nose in places where it doesn’t belong, all in an effort to pursue speakers who express views it doesn’t like,” infringing on their First Amendment-protected “editorial decisions,” Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression deputy director of litigation J.T. Morris told FYI Science Policy News.
Martin recently left DOJ after serving as pardon attorney for more than a year, to “fight Legal Battles for the upcoming Midterm Election, and the Presidential Election of 2028,” President Trump said last month. He was only interim U.S. attorney for four months in 2025.

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