BoingBoing: “The Department of Justice recently sent letters to perhaps “tens” of scientific journals, accusing them of being “partisan” and asking whether they are including “competing viewpoints.” One such letter went to the journal CHEST, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American College of Chest Physicians that specializes in research focused on chest and diseases, emergency medicine, pulmonology, cardiology, and other related issues. Dr. Eric Reinhart, a social psychiatrist, political anthropologist, and psychoanalytic clinician who has published in numerous academic journals (including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and more) as well as many popular magazines and news outlets (including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, TIME, Slate, The Atlantic, and more) got a copy of the leaked letter, which was sent to CHEST Editor-in-Chief, Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, from Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Dr. Reinhart then posted about it on his Xitter account. Here’s an excerpt from the letter, which you can read in its entirety here:

It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates – that is, that they have a position for which they are advocating either due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations). The public has certain expectations and you have certain responsibilities.
Would you please answer these questions:
*How do you assess your responsibilities to protect the public from misinformation?
*How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?
*Do you accept articles or essays from competing viewpoints?
*How do you assess the role played by government officials and funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health in the development of submitted articles?
*How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled their readers
*1 am also interested to know if publishers, journals, and organizations with which you work are adjusting their method of acceptance of competing viewpoints. Are there new norms being developed and offered?…”