In the United States, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, has publicly announced the possibility of prohibiting federal researchers from publishing in some of the leading international scientific journals. These include The Lancet, JAMA, and the New England Journal of Medicine (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/27/rfk-jr-nih-scientists-medical-journals-jama-lancet-nejm-00371349).
Kennedy justified this intention by claiming that these journals are corrupt and compromised by the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. He suggested that publicly funded research should be channeled through publications directly controlled by the government or federal agencies.
A Threat to Scientific Integrity and Collaboration
Even though the ban has not yet been formalized, the political message from Kennedy is unequivocal: to question the legitimacy of the main channels for disseminating international science. This proposed ban threatens to isolate US research from the vital peer-review circuit.
This announcement comes as the same administration has already removed federal recommendations on vaccinations for children and pregnant women.
Furthermore, it has drastically cut funding for biomedical research and laid off thousands of scientists. This creates a climate of uncertainty and widespread suspicion within the American scientific community.
Science as a Threat to Be Silenced
When a figure like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly proposes that American federal researchers be excluded from major international scientific journals, we are no longer dealing with the usual controversy against the editorial establishment. It’s not even the traditional lament about the real and profound limitations of the academic journal industry. What is revealed is a mindset that conceives of science as a threat to be disciplined, a voice to be silenced.
This perspective views science as an exercise that must bend to the obsessive control and surveillance of a political and ideological elite. Such an elite detests anything escaping its grasp.
Kennedy and his followers are not driven by a desire for transparency or reform. Instead, they are victims of a paranoid obsession, grown in the shadow of conspiracy theories and the cult of “public control,” which is, in reality, just political control.
It’s no coincidence that this administration, while threatening to ban publishing in The Lancet or NEJM, is also dismantling vaccination recommendations, laying off tens of thousands of professionals, and cutting billions from research. Kennedy’s vision is coherent, where science that thinks independently is first delegitimized, then isolated. It is finally emptied of its substance.
The Dangerous Justification: Blaming Journals
The way this authoritarian delusion is sought to be justified is as simple as it is dangerous: all possible blame is attributed to the major journals, without distinction. This invents a monolithic system of corruption. A perfect enemy is created to be overthrown to garner consensus from a base already poisoned by suspicion.
In this climate, any well-founded challenge is swept aside.
There’s no discussion of reforming review processes, increasing transparency, or promoting pluralism and competition among journals, as would be sensible. Instead, everything is thrown out, and a model of direct control is proposed. In this model, the HHS department publishes, the HHS department judges, the HHS department acquits or condemns.
This is precisely what science cannot tolerate, at the risk of its own dissolution. If this plan were even to begin to take shape, the damage would not be limited to American scientists. They would be condemned to irrelevance and a career without a future outside the USA. Moreover, this plan would impact the entire architecture of global biomedical research.
The Irreplaceable Role of International Journals
International journals are neither sanctuaries nor infallible tribunals. However, they are still the crossroads where data, ideas, and hypotheses are laid bare.
These journals allow for the comparison of ideas without regard for nationality or Kennedy’s political allegiance. Withdrawing American federal research from this circuit means creating two separate worlds: on one side, science that continues to expose itself to collective verification. On the other, a shielded, self-referential science forced to reflect only in the mirror of its own narratives.
The Slippery Slope of Suspicion
There’s something worse: the paranoid logic of Kennedy and his followers knows no bounds. Once you’ve banned publishing in “corrupt” journals, how long will it be before people are asked not to read them? Not to cite them? Not to collaborate with the “contaminated”? When the path of suspicion becomes the rule, the circle always closes tighter, and science is reduced to a liturgy managed by power.
In this cage, it’s no longer even possible to make mistakes publicly. The correction of errors—the true engine of progress—gets sacrificed to make way for official truth. This isn’t a country correcting itself; it’s a country amputating its tongue for fear of speaking the truth.
The Peril of Silencing Science
Allowing this madness to gain ground means accepting the programmed destruction of free science, and with it, an informed society. Let no one be under any illusion: those who dream of a science bent to suspicion, isolation, and control are simply the worst enemies of science itself.
And like all enemies of knowledge, Kennedy and his ilk will be remembered not for what they changed. Instead, they will be known for the damage they inflicted on generations of researchers, doctors, and citizens deprived of the right to know and discuss, without filters and without ministerial permission.
Enrico Bucci
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