What’s Cookin’ with the “Gaslight Journals” These Days?
Maybe this is why they don't know what it costs to publish . . .
Last week NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya spent some time sharing his views on journals and publishers he doesn’t much care for, which reminded me that I hadn’t checked in on the “gaslight journals” in a while.
The “ick factor” (hey, could that be a new alternative metric in the making?) on these freaky web portals with ISSNs and DOIs is high, but don’t worry, I’ll be quick..
Journal of the Academy of Public Health
Journal of the Academy of Public Health published the latest of its five whole Research articles on March 27 (the first four were with the February 2025 launch issue, posted January 30). These papers include odd little studies on topics that line up with areas of MAHA focu$, like a GPS prototype to aid in monitoring our exposomes and ClinicalTrials.gov reporting compliance audited by a spooky-looking tech company named insilica.co.
There is something called an External Article Review where an author just complains about other people’s papers.
There are a bunch of Perspectives on the same things we already knew these people had perspectives on, some written by Martin Kulldorff or Peter Pitts and duplicate-published by Pitts’ Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (no relation to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has very different perspectives). Derivative works include the MAHA Report, the NIH 2026 Budget, ACIP Redux, and the 2025 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship awards.
Kulldorff is now listed as Inaugural Editor-in-Chief and Jay and Marty Mackary (FDA) are “On Leave Editorial Board members” because they are busy publishing their perspectives directly to other media outlets.
The new Editor-in-Chief Andew Noyer is famous for publishing Retraction Requests for papers that dare mention the wrong COVID origin, which might explain why they don’t have more papers in the hopper for an Issue #2.
They were serious about transparency, though, because the author of the main paper cited in a Pittspective on NIH funding being wayyy too basic posted a comment that he was honored that Pitts had cited his work, but needed to clarify how he had misinterpreted it in three ways. Classy.
There are two News features on the homepage: one is an Exclusive Interview(!) with Jay on Paul Thacker’s Substack, and when I clicked on it I got a message that some stranger had shared it with me (ewwww . . .). The other one is a direct link to Nature’s editorial announcing their new practice of publishing their reviews.
What the huh? Do they think Nature copied them? Is it a brag or a diss or a Google ad?
Journal of Cardiovascular Research & Innovation
Alrighty then, over to Peter McCullough’s flagship Journal of Cardiovascular Research & Innovation which published his foundation’s blockbuster Meta-fueled analysis on mRNA vaccine-induced myocarditis that sent News Nation, Congress, and Dr. Drew into a tizzy and inspired a black box warning.
Just one Big Beautiful Editorial and that Landmark Study with 341 whole references; no new items since March.
Jay and Marty could have at least returned the favor and thrown something over the transom, but they went with JAMA the other day instead.
International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research
Bobbyjunior’s also got John Oller leading Stephanie Seneff and the rest of the gang over at the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. They seem to be waiting for more papers to fill out Vol. 4 Issue 1, which is boldly themed “Reconceptualizing Vaccinology.”
The issue only has one impassioned paper, published in April, titled “Evidence Showing Childhood Vaccination Are Causing Autism and Other Intellectual Disabilities.” Then again, I guess the case is now closed. Vaccinology has been reconceptualized and autism solved.
With journals like that I can now totally understand how it would be easy to grossly underestimate publication expenses and use that math as a basis for a sweeping federal policy change.
It all makes sense now. They are practicing radical transparency as promised and invisible publishing is free.
And no, I’m not embedding any links to their junk here — that would be reckless endangerment as well as pageview and citation inflation, and I won’t be party to that.
In other words, do your own research.
Isn’t that what they tell us to do?