The BMJ: An Anti-vax Enabler?
An editor with an anti-vax grift is a Senior Editor, and they support medRxiv
Peter Doshi is an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. He has no medical training or any medical license. He has an AB in anthropology from Brown University, an AM in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and PhD in history, anthropology, and science, technology, and society from MIT. It’s unclear how he’s qualified to teach at a school of pharmacy, to be frank. Apparently, he is focused on pharmaceutical health services research, which is data crunching, not medicine or pharmacology in any meaningful sense.
As with other grifters like RFK, Jr., and Jay Bhattacharya, he’s never treated a patient.
Despite his thin qualifications and marginal academic appointment, he found his way to becoming a Senior Editor at the BMJ, a role he has leveraged to hobnob with Senator Ron Johnson, a Russian “useful idiot” and anti-science goon of the first order; to play footsie with the Brownstone Institute, an infamous source of vaccine misinformation and anti-science activism and nuttery; to get published in the BMJ with other Brownstone Institute people with even fewer qualifications and more questionable motives; and, to push an anti-vax narrative with a journalist co-author of a forthcoming book to get same promoted in the pages of the BMJ itself.
- Speculation: The book might be published by Skyhorse Publishing, which is run by RFK, Jr.’s main guy.
A new resource I just discovered — it feels far too late — is the Encyclopedia of American Loons, an online register of exactly what it says. The number of entries must be exploding.
Doshi is featured, of course, with the entry for him ending with:
Denialist and hack who likes to pontificate on issues outside of his areas of expertise – a common enough type of character trait in denialist circles, but Doshi has, somehow, managed to hold onto a position as editor of the BMJ. He is, accordingly, in a position to cause immense harm with misinformation and conspiracy theories. The broader question, however, is of course: What the hell is wrong with the BMJ?
The BMJ has a complex story when it comes to its role in the anti-vax phenomenon. Back in the early days of the anti-vax fraud, excellent reporting there broke the story of Andrew Wakefield’s MMR and thimerosal scam and documented facts used to sideline him and retract his work. That was the good side of the BMJ at work.