The National Institutes of Health isn’t just concerned about how much taxpayers are spending to read scientific and medical journals where the published research has already been funded by taxpayers. It wants to know more about publishers’ possible ties to hostile powers.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a cap starting this fall on how much journals can charge “NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible” and told investigative journalist Paul Thacker the fees prop up Germany-based publisher Springer Nature, which has a “tremendous investment and interest in the Chinese scientific establishment.”
The 3,000-journal publishing behemoth declined to confirm to Fox News last month the Trump administration terminated one contract and didn’t renew three others, claiming there was “no material change” to its “global business.”
One of its journals is Nature Medicine, which published the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissing a COVID-19 lab leak from China after forcing the coauthors to completely rule out the plausibility of a leak as a condition of publishing it.
The paper was covertly shaped by Bhattacharya predecessor Francis Collins and then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who funded the research that may have unleashed the pandemic with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sought information from Nature Medicine this spring, suggesting it committed a quid pro quo with Collins and Fauci, who soon after gave coauthor Kristian Andersen federal grants, by leaving their names off “Proximal Origin.”
Springer Nature also publishes Scientific American and Nature, which both endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president in 2020. The former tried to quash the Chinese lab-leak theory as “xenophobia.”
Hellbound and Down 