Epoch Times - Doctor launches new independent medical journal free from conflicts of interest
Aired: 2025-04-18
Duration: 07:43


=== Conflicts of Interest Crisis (07:28) ===

[00:00:01]  There is a crisis in research and reproducibility of research as we speak.
[00:00:07]  And some people would even say corruption of research.
[00:00:09]  And you're trying to tackle this head-on.
[00:00:11]  What is it that's happening?
[00:00:12]  Well, there is no question that, you know, unfortunately, most of the research is being taken hostage by a variety of interests: pharmaceutical industry, political interests.
[00:00:23]  There are so many things.
[00:00:24]  And what we're trying to do is just to get True science out there without any outside influence.
[00:00:33]  That's very difficult, because if you think about it, conflicts of interest are present everywhere.
[00:00:38]  When you look, for example, on the number of peer reviewers that have some kind of conflict of interest that it pertains to pharmaceutical industry, more than 80% of people that review papers for a journal have some kind of conflict of interest.
[00:00:55]  So it's very difficult to have a clean...
[00:00:59]  And what's an example of a conflict of interest that's common?
[00:01:03]  Let's say that you speak for a pharmaceutical company and you promote one of their products.
[00:01:10]  And then you get a paper that has to do with that product.
[00:01:14]  So more likely than not, you will accept that paper just because you work for the other guys.
[00:01:20]  You get money that's being paid to you as a result of your interactions with that particular pharmaceutical company.
[00:01:27]  But conflicts can also be sort of unconscious as well.
[00:01:30]  Like you might not be thinking to yourself at that moment,"Aha!
[00:01:33]  Because I work for them, I'm going to accept it." Correct.
[00:01:37]  I mean, there's going to be a time frame where you will not realize that you have a conflict.
[00:01:42]  I mean, you don't realize it because you've been doing it.
[00:01:44]  It's part of your normal way of doing things.
[00:01:47]  But if you think about it, in reality, you have an important problem.
[00:01:54]  And you have to recognize them.
[00:01:56]  Trying to get people to recognize that they have a conflict of interest is even more difficult.
[00:02:01]  Because, you know, many journals, what they do is they say, just disclose your conflict of interest.
[00:02:05]  That's just not good enough.
[00:02:07]  I'm sorry, that's not good enough.
[00:02:09]  If you get a stipend from a pharmaceutical company or stuff like that, just putting it as an addendum to the article, that's not good enough.
[00:02:18]  Where does this crisis of reproducibility come from?
[00:02:23]  Years of manipulation of data, years of manipulation of studies by Big Pharma.
[00:02:31]  You just say that so blanket, but explain that to me.
[00:02:36]  I mean, it's not as easy as it means, but when you have, let's say, a paper that has 20 authors, and out of those 20 authors, more than 90% of them...
[00:02:48]  Are in the payroll of a specific pharmaceutical company that makes the product that you are studying, that's a conflict.
[00:02:55]  And the fact that you disclose it, just you say, you know, we are members of this company, that's not good enough.
[00:03:03]  Well, there's this famous saying that I always forget who it's attributed to.
[00:03:06]  Maybe it's Mark Twain.
[00:03:08]  If you're financially motivated to see a particular outcome or to not see a particular outcome, then you will...
[00:03:18]  It's the question about it.
[00:03:19]  You know, throughout the years, we have seen all these kind of randomized, controlled clinical trials that are funded by particular entities.
[00:03:28]  That when they start seeing that things are not going their way, they change the outcomes.
[00:03:33]  In the middle of the study, they change the outcomes.
[00:03:37]  And just explain what that means, they change the outcomes.
[00:03:40]  What they look is, you know, you're looking for specific points to show, let's say, that a drug works, it doesn't work.
[00:03:45]  And they say, okay, we're going to look at A. But then in the middle of the study, they say, you know what?
[00:03:51]  It looks like we're not getting A. So let's change A and make it B. That's not right.
[00:03:56]  That's not right.
[00:03:59]  Okay. Well, there's still a whole lot of papers that are being published across, you know, thousands of scientific journals, some of greater impact, some of less impact.
[00:04:09]  How do we even know what is good?
[00:04:12]  Because presumably some of it's still good.
[00:04:14]  In the past, we used to look at the impact factor.
[00:04:17]  And the impact factor is the number of times that a paper gets referenced in that particular journal.
[00:04:21]  The problem is that you can even manipulate that.
[00:04:23]  I can go ahead and write a paper and cite that same journal multiple times so that at the end of the year, the impact factor for the journal goes up.
[00:04:34]  So those are things that are easily manipulated.
[00:04:38]  They're not right.
[00:04:39]  I mean, these are the things that, as a scientist, make me very uncomfortable.
[00:04:44]  So what's your solution?
[00:04:46]  I know that this is part of what you're actually trying to do with the Independent Medical Alliance.
[00:04:50]  So what the Independent Medical Alliance has done, as you well know, we're all about science and advocacy.
[00:04:56]  That has been our two major things.
[00:04:58]  What I have been pushing for from the very beginning was the creation of a journal, of an independent journal, a journal that is unbiased.
[00:05:08]  And you're going to say, well, it's very difficult to get rid of all the biases and conflicts and stuff like that.
[00:05:13]  But I try to do it as best as I can, trying to keep as transparent as we can.
[00:05:18]  The things that are particular about the Journal of Independent Medicine, which is a journal of the IMA, is that it's a journal that is not sponsored by pharmaceutical industry or any other kind of industry.
[00:05:30]  It's basically self-funded.
[00:05:32]  We fund our journal.
[00:05:34]  It's a journal that accepts all sorts of scientific papers, but we accept them in a way That nobody knows who is the person writing the paper until the very end.
[00:05:46]  Because I don't want to have any bias.
[00:05:48]  So we have what I call a double-blinded method.
[00:05:50]  What that entails is if you send me a paper, and let's say I know Jan is such a nice guy that I know that everything he writes is good.
[00:06:00]  So therefore, I'm just going to accept whatever comes with his name.
[00:06:03]  Well, what I do is I take away your name from the paper.
[00:06:06]  We actually have a whole system where we remove your name from the...
[00:06:10]  The papers will remove what institution you are affiliated with.
[00:06:14]  There is no way to identify you.
[00:06:15]  No way to identify you whatsoever.
[00:06:18]  I send that to reviewers, the external peer reviewers, and we have a board of more than 50 people from pretty much all over the world that will look at your paper in a constructive way.
[00:06:29]  I mean, we're not trying to reject things.
[00:06:31]  Now, the reviewer doesn't know who you are, and then they give me feedback.
[00:06:36]  And the feedback is either accept, Except with some changes, requires a lot of changes, I need to see a revision, or definitely reject.
[00:06:46]  We try to make sure that we include all sorts of topics, even though at the beginning, as you remember, we were mostly COVID.
[00:06:53]  Now we do pretty much everything.
[00:06:56]  I am very interested in the use of repurposed drugs, so we encourage the submissions of papers that have to do with repurposed drugs and some of the other things.
[00:07:08]  You know, we have editorials.
[00:07:10]  We have original investigations.
[00:07:12]  We have reviews, systematic and narrative reviews.

=== Healthcare Professionals' Forum (00:28) ===

[00:07:15]  Some people want to learn more about a particular medication.
[00:07:18]  Well, we have those things done.
[00:07:20]  We also have an area of legal aspects.
[00:07:23]  I mean, some people have manifested interest in knowing more about the legality of A, B, or C. Well, we have that.
[00:07:29]  And we have, like, a forum where you can have even people who are not healthcare professionals.
[00:07:37]  Can submit to you a good paper that may be their own personal experience with the healthcare system.