Scientific censorship (in all its myriad forms) is a threat to free-speech, free-thought and for our ability to apply the scientific method to understand our world.
Two of the greatest tools that humanity has developed (telecommunications and the scientific method) are now being manipulated to suppress “inconvenient” data and shape a narrative that does not serve our quest for objective fact finding and truth. Anonymous targeting of high-impact studies to produce retractions is censorship – and is a backdoor method by publishers to control information and provide a veneer of legitimacy to their actions.
Integrity, transparency and self-correction are at the heart of ethical and moral publishing (in all forms), but it is vital and central to science, medicine and engineering publications. If we let one type of censorship blossom in our publication system without calling out the perpetrators, we are allowing for the wholesale control and debasement of a critical tool that provides objective facts to a wider community. Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, chlorine dioxide, vaccine-injury and many other studies have been blocked, censored, or retracted via non-transparent and questionable methods in journals.
American Buddhist Net 