Science Journals Publish Pro-Lockdown Reports, Censor Anti-Lockdown Studies: Authors
'The whole scientific review process on anything related to COVID-19 has become highly politicized and contaminated,' Johns Hopkins professor Steve Hanke says.
www.theepochtimes.com
Numerous physicians and academicians say they have been attempting to publish studies that show that lockdowns had enormous costs and marginal benefits, but they have found many doors were closed.
“The whole scientific review process on anything related to COVID-19 has become highly politicized and contaminated,” Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University and former member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan, told The Epoch Times. Mr. Hanke says he has been among those who have experienced censorship for criticizing lockdowns.
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The report by Mr. Hanke, Lars Jonung and Jonas Herby (HJH), titled “Did lockdowns work? The verdict on COVID restrictions,” concluded that lockdowns were “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions.” This study has faced rejection from mainstream medical publishers, while studies that praise lockdowns are being published, and amplified by the media.
While the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN), a premier publisher of medical and other scientific studies operated by Netherlands publisher Elsevier, rejected the final HJH report, it did publish articles that attacked the HJH report.
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By contrast, a report published by SSRN in September, titled “SARS-CoV-2 lineage importations and spread are reduced after nonpharmaceutical interventions,” gave a favorable evaluation of lockdowns. “Nonpharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) is the new euphemism for lockdowns, mask mandates, travel bans and other suspensions of civil rights during pandemics.
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Dr. Bhattacharya claims that he has also been censored by MedRxiv regarding his analysis that criticized lockdowns. In 2020, he and colleagues Christopher Oh and John Ioannidis, led by Stanford University infectious disease professor Eran Bendavid, conducted a comparison of countries like Sweden and South Korea that did not have government lockdowns against countries that did, and found no statistically significant benefit from mandatory orders on COVID spread.
According to Dr. Bhattacharya, “MedRxiv refused to post the piece, telling the authors that the topic was too sensitive to permit the publication of a preprint, even though the site teemed with modeling analyses purporting to demonstrate the efficacy of lockdowns in limiting the spread of COVID.”
