The categorical endorsement by renowned science journals of the Democratic contender in the U.S. presidential race is a plausible response to Donald Trump administration’s comprehensively hostile stance towards all evidence-based research and scientific institutions.
Premier academic journal Nature and its more popular counterpart, the Scientific American, have openly backed former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the contest, emphasising his faith in the enterprise of science and his commitment to the multilateral framework. Rather than issue an outright call for the latter, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has adopted a seemingly more circumspect position, urging voters to deny Mr. Trump a second term. The London-based Nature’s recent editorial is perhaps the most sweeping of all the criticism, as it repudiates the President’s anti-science, anti-immigrant and blatantly xenophobic policies. The journal deplores the so-called ‘America first’ approach as no more than a subterfuge for ‘Trump first’, as the President has gone about withdrawing Washington from the landmark Paris climate deal, from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, and the World Health Organization this year.
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The NEJM’s bluntly titled editorial, “Dying in a leadership vacuum”, is the first time in its more than 200-year-old history that the institution has weighed into a presidential contest. It is also only the fourth instance that all of its editors have thrown their weight behind the widely-read column. The complete failure of the leadership in the U.S. is, in its view, why the country accounts simultaneously for the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, and over 215,000 deaths now due to the disease. Particularly scathing is the observation that “Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed opinion leaders and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies”.
The NEJM highlights another glaring contrast —in the U.S. response to the pandemic. the mortality rate from the disease has been three deaths per million in China, the country home to the world’s largest population, compared to the staggering rate of over 500 deaths per million in the U.S., the world’s richest nation. Further, the ratio of tests conducted per infected person in the country is way below than in nations with meagre medical capacity, such as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, observes the journal. In its October 1 editorial, the Scientific American declared that it was breaking its 175-year convention of never backing a presidential candidate and endorsed Mr. Biden.
The intervention by the top-ranking peer-reviewed science journals into the 2020 presidential contest is evidently uncharacteristic, if not entirely unprecedented. Noteworthy is Nature’s June 1933 editorial, unequivocally condemning the consequences for academic freedom arising from Germany’s expulsion of eminent intellectuals and artists under the sway of Adolf Hitler’s fanatical ultranationalism.
A slew of missteps
The candour of the three publications underscores the dangerous levels to which the trust, confidence and credibility of various specialised agencies have been undermined during the Trump administration. The administration, anxious to announce a breakthrough COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the November 3 election, recently sought to block the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from releasing additional guidelines in order to boost public confidence in the development of a safe and effective preventive. Earlier, the agency was pressured into authorising the malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat hospitalised COVID-19 patients, before the manifestation of side-effects forced a reversal of the decision. Instructions issued in July to hospitals to transfer data concerning patients directly to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services raised concerns that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was being bypassed. The body has since come under pressure over norms on reopening of schools and gathering in public places. The CDC’s crucial guideline for passengers and employees to wear masks in public transportation has been overruled.
Against this gloomy backdrop, the three journals have clearly determined that silence would amount to complicity.
garimella.subramaniam@thehindu.co.in
