If I, as a member of the general public, had written an opinion piece about the covid shots starting with, "They are trying to kill us," it would have been a lot closer to the truth. And 100% unlikely to get published.
This is correct, because the development of the Covid shot was not with the intention of killing people, but in fact was developed with the intention of preventing death from a highly communicable disease.
There is an old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. I do not dispute that the mRNA platform vaccines did save lives, but the blatant dishonesty regarding adverse events and efficacy of these vaccines has led to a general distrust of all vaccines.
Fauci promoted the kind of research that may have contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and then secretly promoted the view that a lab leak was implausible. He shadow authored a paper to this effect and then referred to the paper as independent scientific evidence. This is scientific misconduct.
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes! Thank you for writing this. I agree with all you say, but am especially bothered by scientific medical journals (and societies) getting into social issues. It is appropriate for them to publish opinions critiquing studies, but IMO not regarding social issues. For me this decreases the reputation of the scientific validity and purpose overall.
Seem to have? Ever since the AMA went all in on the Affordable care act without ever asking the rank and file members for their opinion. I dropped my membership and have never been tempted to pay for this representation any more.
You might want to ask if healthcare is more affordable before or after the affordable care act overall. It expanded those who have insurance but I promise you it is far more expensive overall.
You'd have folks believing that vertical integration and private equity taking over hospitals has absolutely nothing to do with pushing profit margins and eliminating competition.
Believe me that is a huge issue, but as I tell my patients sometimes my solution is worse than your problem. What the government should do is to break up the insurance monopoly and pass laws to outlaw the vertical integration, but if you believe that government taking over healthcare will make it better and cheaper I can almost promise you it will not. I also believe the affordable care act is the biggest driver of where we are today it has driven the consolidation of insurance companies and hospitals. So I double down on my assertion that often government solutions are worse than the problem they are attempting to fix.
Dr. Flier, there is a sense of gratitude on my part for your courage in writing this, but there is also a sense of disappointment. As someone with such a lofty collection of titles and accomplishments, it is curious that it took the example of the Arday affair for you to speak up. The Arday story is a "slam dunk", so to speak, in terms of institutions egregiously going beyond their roles and attempting to manipulate and create a society that fits their world view. The fact that this ended tragically should clearly be a wake up call but this slow moving ideology of institutions using their previously earned gravitas in areas outside their expertise has been occurring for years.
The NEJM, while a past venerable publication, has lost any semblance of that in the general medical population. As a younger physician, I was stunned 20 years ago, to hear a speaker at a large annual conference denounce the NEJM as a "leftist rag". He was extremely accomplished and well respected. But his comment made me consider why he would say that. I then began to realize he was correct. An insidious streak of social commentary was becoming more and more prevalent to the point that medical science and societal and political opinion became equal in importance.
The author of this article to which you refer has strong feelings and as you say is entitled to them. The NEJM is also free to publish them. But let's admit what is going on here. The author has developed a sense that they are a victim of an unjust system that attacks and "kills" them. This of course is despite the fact that they have reached a level to where they are accomplished and respected enough to have an article published in NEJM. There is a circular reasoning here that some may consider a bit difficult to understand.
The NEJM certainly has the right to publish whatever it wants. To be hyperbolic, it is free to publish pornography however it doesn't, at least to my knowledge. But if it did, would it not be considered distasteful and inappropriate? Of course. Would it damage its perceived "reputation"? Undoubtedly. But stepping out of its purview of medical science into the political and social sciences seems to be an example of intellectual arrogance that borders on an attempt at intentional manipulation.
Lastly, I fear that the Arday example may be a harbinger of things to come. This world is changing and tolerating the false pretenses of those at the leadership level of our most respected institutions is bound to meet up with truth and reality. Misleading their followers, and the people in general, while avoiding the truth is a dangerous game and always culminates in tragedy.
While just a fable, what do we think happened to the emperor who proudly wore his "new clothes" during a parade in front of his people? His chamberlains dutifully continued to hold up his non existent train as the people laughed and denigrated him as he revealed his foolishness. I suspect the NEJM editors, along with many others, are these same chamberlains and hopefully can eventually see the truth. Something tells me not to hold my breath waiting for this.
The NEJM lost my respect years ago when they officially announced endorsements for presidential candidates under the guise of advocating for anticipatory health policies. The issues brought up by the author is par for the course.
"Her sentiment that the truth of the matter is unimportant conflicts with values fundamental to scholarship, science and medicine, values the Journal must endorse."
As others have said, facts do not care about your feelings. Lawyers call it lack of candor when the proper vetting or investigative process is not followed. Pretty word to say that you are part of the problem.
It is worth noting, IMO, that the once-proud NEJM has for decades engaged in some of the biomedical world’s sloppiest and least reliable peer review on its scientific pages as well. Overwhelmingly, those failures favor the Journal’s financial and ideological interests.
I find this most recent failure disturbing, as you note—but no longer surprising. Scientific rigor has become subordinate to advocacy at a journal that increasingly seems unable to distinguish between the two.
The NEJM has not applied appropriate editorial oversight to its articles on pediatric gender medicine.
For instance, the Cass Review final report, a 4 year rigorous Independent Review in the UK, with >1000 interviews with stakeholders, incorporating 7 new commissioned systematic reviews, independent qualitative research, underpinned the UK’s practice reversal in gender medicine (away from the US affirmative model). Consequences include a UK ban on puberty blockers and NHS age restrictions on hormones. It has yet to be accurately mentioned in the NEJM, much less to have an accurate article reporting on its findings and consequences.
NEJM did, however, publish an incorrect article claiming the Cass Review “transgresses medical law, policy and practice.”
(No. See “Gender medicine and the Cass Review: why medicine and the law make poor bedfellows” in the BMJ, for instance, published *before* the NEJM article.)
Nor have I found an article in NEJM that mentions the peer reviewed (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/gender-dysphoria-supplement.pdf) HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria, which included an umbrella review (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/gender-dysphoria-appendix.pdf) of systematic reviews on pediatric gender medicine. The result of the rigorous synthesis was that evidence of likely benefit was very low certainty for the gender-affirming medical interventions: puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. Very low certainty means “We have very little confidence in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect.”
HHS report peer reviewers included a former president of the Endocrine Society and evidence based medicine experts. The Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatrics declined their invitation and the APA critique somehow overlooked the entire umbrella review, criticizing the HHS report for omitting things which it actually contained. None of the peer reviews found the HHS findings and conclusions were unsupported.
Nonetheless, NEJM has published numerous articles framing the provision of these interventions as “essential”, with “lives are at risk”, backed by research “demonstrating that such care improves mental health outcomes.” Disagreement is presented as political, unscientific, bigoted, and harmful. Actions based upon or supported by the peer reviewed HHS report’s findings or the Cass Review, i.e. rigorous reviews of the full body of literature aligned with best medical practices (evidence-based medicine), are treated as harmful and crackpot.
Those who get their information from NEJM on this topic are misinformed. This surely contributes to the current situation, where many caring and responsible physicians in the US, incorrectly believe benefit is demonstrated, harm is unlikely and that lives are at risk without these interventions. Most importantly, so do many patients and their families.
For all of NEJM’s apparent concern regarding the rights of those who identify as transgender, their (essential) right to accurate information about pediatric gender medicine, including numerous serious life-altering interventions, does not seem to be one of them.
As a trusted source for the medical community and the world more generally, their actions regarding these vulnerable minors not only have implications for the reputation of NEJM but for trust in medicine more generally.
NEJM is making editorial choices that are not in support of accuracy (key to medical best practice) in other important areas too. In ways that can harm patients in at least one area.
They are undermining themselves and the reputation of medicine, trust in medicine, more broadly.
Loved the article but you made some mistakes here "his contribution may undermine the reputation of the journal as a reliable source of evidence-based medical information"
The correction? "his contribution further undermine the already tainted reputation of the journal. Once a reliable source of evidence-based medical information that has become the mouthpiece of politically motivated Lunatic Leftists and Big Pharma"
"where Dr. Doll comes from that the allegations were certainly not worth ending one's life" Apparently the person who was central to the whole discussion disagreed.
Few days go by in my world, that I'm not grateful for old white guys.
I really don't care what Obama or anyone else says, History is Clear and white European people founded this county as it evolved to be the USA we know today. Nobody held Ben Carson back. How about Thomas Sowell? There are many brilliant people of all races and skin colors, the world over.
The recent 20 years or so, accelerated by the covid era isolation and censorship, have brought us DEI that can be life-threatening. Look what happened with air-traffic control. Brilliant idea, hire gamers to track stuff on a screen!
We cannot let our desire to be Ten times as "fair" to 15% of the population, let us run roughshod over the other groups who made everything the newbies demand more of, without paying their dues. It's a melting pot - now many put the ethnicity most likely to benefit them financially, on the job application. We need to stop this!
Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth.... He aged very well, despite all that.
It's time to quit demonizing old white guys and be thankful they gave us a huge leap ahead of most of the world.
Thank you Jeff Flier and other old white guys I've so often read here at Sensible Medicine.
I would say the NEJM has no business in publishing a Voices column, or anything opinion based. Opinion detracts from the foundation, or what should be, of the publication itself? It is mixed messaging. There is the error of the Dr. Kemi Doll piece and all others like it.
Thank you for your balanced, candid, thoughtful response. It really takes a particular strength to write such an intellectually honest piece, particularly in my opinion, in medicine. Certain pervasive ideologies have reigned - and in the face of critical thought, censorship of many types has resulted. Your voice, Jeff, returns us to values so essential to the field of medicine and beyond; an essential reminder to the Journal and beyond.
I am not an MD but I am an academic. Arday was a mentally ill fabulist and grifter, used by institutions to virtue signal. Cambridge University has a lot to answer for given the shoddiness and fraud of Arday's scholarship (I use that last term very loosely).
I don't see the point of NEJM wading into a topic so unrelated to clinical medical practice.
Thank You for your engaging piece Dr. Flier. I enjoyed reading it and though I am not Black (or even White) I do feel the points you raise are very valid, especially regarding editorial oversight in the Voices section.
However, given how charged the issue is especially since it involves a minority academic's suicide, I feel if the writer was asked to bring changes in the piece by the journal, it would have raised a thorny issue that the journal itself was censuring opinion pieces in the name of editorial oversight and stifling minority voices as a result and preventing freedom of expression.
I think there is one point that needs clarification, the sentence you quote and analyze "I don’t care whether any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true" is in partial as there is a second part in the piece "None of them were worth his career. And certainly not his life.". I agree that "She didn’t need to dismiss the importance of the truth of the allegations to convey her personal distress caused by Arday’s career-ending exposure, or her career concerns as a Black academic" but I can understand where Dr. Doll comes from that the allegations were certainly not worth ending one's life especially because of the smear campaign which followed.
I understand that given how thorny the issue has become, it is highly possible emotionally charged pieces will be published. However, the response shouldn't simply be a dispassionate analysis of such charged pieces and the role of the journal's editorial oversight in publishing opinion pieces, but also one should factor in the subtext and nuance of the piece and the circumstances in which this piece by Dr. Doll was published when analyzing the journal's role in all this.
I like your post overall and genuinely appreciate your thoughts. Hoping that you will continue to engage on this important issue.
May I comment on “ending one's life especially because of the smear campaign which followed”. We don’t know for sure what directly caused Prof Arday to end life. A reasonable hypothesis would be that his public standing as a celebrity-academic was built upon foundations that were in important ways fabricated. And once his University committed to an investigation, he saw personal, social and professional ruin. So others may not care about the allegations, but Prof Arday did. He resigned, he did not take a leave of absence to contest the allegations. And the role of the “smear campaign” as you put it, as directly leading to his death, is highly contestable, as I have set out above.
Thank You for your response. I feel there was a very unfair media trial that had arisen in Arday's case. And very frankly, the faux self righteousness is evident in how Arday's plagiarism case was noted with how other white folk accused of the same crime are treated. It was what Dr. Doll did rightfully note in her piece, the double standard is palpable. And your hypothesis, even if reasonable at best, still can't be proven as well the man at the center of it is dead.
I invite you to read this very wonderful piece in the Atlantic outlining the hypocrisy of all sides in Arday's case:
I’ve replied at length as I think these arguments on double standards vis a vis white academic plagiarists are being widely made, are at the heart of claims this is a story about racism, yet are poorly substantiated. Two aspects are not being addressed by this claim.
1. Unfounded or not, there are widely held suspicions that Humanities departments in universities in the US, Canada and the UK have allowed “woke” ideas to affect hiring decision quality. This turbocharged a right and centre-right media interest in Arday that a white academic plagiarist - all other things being equal - would not generate. Had Arday been white but, for example, Trans (and Cambridge University had repeatedly trumpeted the person as a world first in diversity) we could have expected a similar heightened media interest.
2. Double standards rely on comparators. To my knowledge, there are no comparable cases to this one in terms of the ability to fascinate. Let’s look at the detail.
Cases of plagiarism generally involve one scholar being found to have appropriated the work of another for banal motivations of career advancement. This is a problem, but not a terribly interesting one. The Arday case included shamanic prophecies, dismembered animal corpses, brain tumours, amnesia, medical miracles, claims of featuring in TV shows before his birth, millions of pounds raised for charity (then scaled back by Arday himself to a fraction), masked knife wielding assailants and world class endurance feats undertaken with a fractured leg. In terms of sheer sensationalism, this was compelling.
It also included academic posts not held; faked interview data; elite academic promotion despite the barest of academic records and a Phd with large amounts of copied sentences. Then we have the use of top libel lawyers and (twice) the police to deter enquiries about his academic work from two retired academics and a journalist.
Lastly a media celebrity-academic career - a BBC radio series, guest editor of the BBC radio flagship Today program, interviews with BBC star journalist Laura Kuenssberg, a “1.4 million” book memoir deal, TED talks, speaking gigs at business conferences and so on.
From a purely commercial point of view, it was a page turner, with readers returning to read the next installment. Those expecting the media and the public to treat this like any other academic plagiarism allegation are not being realistic. Those claiming a double standard need to point to an example of a white academic plagiarist with roughly equivalent human interest dimensions.
I agree for the most part with Dr Flier’s comments, except that he is engaged with criticism that is to heavily oriented towards political correctness. The straightforward criticism of the essay in question must truthfully address the opening statement - “They are trying to kill us.” This is not just ‘hyperbolic’, it is a demonstrably false and racist assertion that demands condemnation. That such statements can be published by a ‘medical professional/academic’ is scandalous and demonstrates how perverse our society has become.
If one of us tried to publish "the errors of Fauci" or the "errors of NEJM during COVID" it would be rejected. I know because I asked.
If I, as a member of the general public, had written an opinion piece about the covid shots starting with, "They are trying to kill us," it would have been a lot closer to the truth. And 100% unlikely to get published.
This is correct, because the development of the Covid shot was not with the intention of killing people, but in fact was developed with the intention of preventing death from a highly communicable disease.
There is an old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. I do not dispute that the mRNA platform vaccines did save lives, but the blatant dishonesty regarding adverse events and efficacy of these vaccines has led to a general distrust of all vaccines.
you're right, killing people was a side effect that they don't seem to mind.
Fauci promoted the kind of research that may have contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and then secretly promoted the view that a lab leak was implausible. He shadow authored a paper to this effect and then referred to the paper as independent scientific evidence. This is scientific misconduct.
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes! Thank you for writing this. I agree with all you say, but am especially bothered by scientific medical journals (and societies) getting into social issues. It is appropriate for them to publish opinions critiquing studies, but IMO not regarding social issues. For me this decreases the reputation of the scientific validity and purpose overall.
I agree. Ideologues seem to have infiltrated both the AMA and the AAMC.
Seem to have? Ever since the AMA went all in on the Affordable care act without ever asking the rank and file members for their opinion. I dropped my membership and have never been tempted to pay for this representation any more.
Yeah because affordable health care is some kind of retrograde concept. 🙄
You might want to ask if healthcare is more affordable before or after the affordable care act overall. It expanded those who have insurance but I promise you it is far more expensive overall.
You'd have folks believing that vertical integration and private equity taking over hospitals has absolutely nothing to do with pushing profit margins and eliminating competition.
Believe me that is a huge issue, but as I tell my patients sometimes my solution is worse than your problem. What the government should do is to break up the insurance monopoly and pass laws to outlaw the vertical integration, but if you believe that government taking over healthcare will make it better and cheaper I can almost promise you it will not. I also believe the affordable care act is the biggest driver of where we are today it has driven the consolidation of insurance companies and hospitals. So I double down on my assertion that often government solutions are worse than the problem they are attempting to fix.
Dr. Flier, there is a sense of gratitude on my part for your courage in writing this, but there is also a sense of disappointment. As someone with such a lofty collection of titles and accomplishments, it is curious that it took the example of the Arday affair for you to speak up. The Arday story is a "slam dunk", so to speak, in terms of institutions egregiously going beyond their roles and attempting to manipulate and create a society that fits their world view. The fact that this ended tragically should clearly be a wake up call but this slow moving ideology of institutions using their previously earned gravitas in areas outside their expertise has been occurring for years.
The NEJM, while a past venerable publication, has lost any semblance of that in the general medical population. As a younger physician, I was stunned 20 years ago, to hear a speaker at a large annual conference denounce the NEJM as a "leftist rag". He was extremely accomplished and well respected. But his comment made me consider why he would say that. I then began to realize he was correct. An insidious streak of social commentary was becoming more and more prevalent to the point that medical science and societal and political opinion became equal in importance.
The author of this article to which you refer has strong feelings and as you say is entitled to them. The NEJM is also free to publish them. But let's admit what is going on here. The author has developed a sense that they are a victim of an unjust system that attacks and "kills" them. This of course is despite the fact that they have reached a level to where they are accomplished and respected enough to have an article published in NEJM. There is a circular reasoning here that some may consider a bit difficult to understand.
The NEJM certainly has the right to publish whatever it wants. To be hyperbolic, it is free to publish pornography however it doesn't, at least to my knowledge. But if it did, would it not be considered distasteful and inappropriate? Of course. Would it damage its perceived "reputation"? Undoubtedly. But stepping out of its purview of medical science into the political and social sciences seems to be an example of intellectual arrogance that borders on an attempt at intentional manipulation.
Lastly, I fear that the Arday example may be a harbinger of things to come. This world is changing and tolerating the false pretenses of those at the leadership level of our most respected institutions is bound to meet up with truth and reality. Misleading their followers, and the people in general, while avoiding the truth is a dangerous game and always culminates in tragedy.
While just a fable, what do we think happened to the emperor who proudly wore his "new clothes" during a parade in front of his people? His chamberlains dutifully continued to hold up his non existent train as the people laughed and denigrated him as he revealed his foolishness. I suspect the NEJM editors, along with many others, are these same chamberlains and hopefully can eventually see the truth. Something tells me not to hold my breath waiting for this.
The NEJM lost my respect years ago when they officially announced endorsements for presidential candidates under the guise of advocating for anticipatory health policies. The issues brought up by the author is par for the course.
I like “advocating for anticipatory health policies”
"Her sentiment that the truth of the matter is unimportant conflicts with values fundamental to scholarship, science and medicine, values the Journal must endorse."
Exactly.
As others have said, facts do not care about your feelings. Lawyers call it lack of candor when the proper vetting or investigative process is not followed. Pretty word to say that you are part of the problem.
Interesting and well argued, sir, thank you.
It is worth noting, IMO, that the once-proud NEJM has for decades engaged in some of the biomedical world’s sloppiest and least reliable peer review on its scientific pages as well. Overwhelmingly, those failures favor the Journal’s financial and ideological interests.
I find this most recent failure disturbing, as you note—but no longer surprising. Scientific rigor has become subordinate to advocacy at a journal that increasingly seems unable to distinguish between the two.
The NEJM has not applied appropriate editorial oversight to its articles on pediatric gender medicine.
For instance, the Cass Review final report, a 4 year rigorous Independent Review in the UK, with >1000 interviews with stakeholders, incorporating 7 new commissioned systematic reviews, independent qualitative research, underpinned the UK’s practice reversal in gender medicine (away from the US affirmative model). Consequences include a UK ban on puberty blockers and NHS age restrictions on hormones. It has yet to be accurately mentioned in the NEJM, much less to have an accurate article reporting on its findings and consequences.
NEJM did, however, publish an incorrect article claiming the Cass Review “transgresses medical law, policy and practice.”
(No. See “Gender medicine and the Cass Review: why medicine and the law make poor bedfellows” in the BMJ, for instance, published *before* the NEJM article.)
Nor have I found an article in NEJM that mentions the peer reviewed (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/gender-dysphoria-supplement.pdf) HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria, which included an umbrella review (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/gender-dysphoria-appendix.pdf) of systematic reviews on pediatric gender medicine. The result of the rigorous synthesis was that evidence of likely benefit was very low certainty for the gender-affirming medical interventions: puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. Very low certainty means “We have very little confidence in the effect estimate: The true effect is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect.”
HHS report peer reviewers included a former president of the Endocrine Society and evidence based medicine experts. The Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatrics declined their invitation and the APA critique somehow overlooked the entire umbrella review, criticizing the HHS report for omitting things which it actually contained. None of the peer reviews found the HHS findings and conclusions were unsupported.
Nonetheless, NEJM has published numerous articles framing the provision of these interventions as “essential”, with “lives are at risk”, backed by research “demonstrating that such care improves mental health outcomes.” Disagreement is presented as political, unscientific, bigoted, and harmful. Actions based upon or supported by the peer reviewed HHS report’s findings or the Cass Review, i.e. rigorous reviews of the full body of literature aligned with best medical practices (evidence-based medicine), are treated as harmful and crackpot.
Those who get their information from NEJM on this topic are misinformed. This surely contributes to the current situation, where many caring and responsible physicians in the US, incorrectly believe benefit is demonstrated, harm is unlikely and that lives are at risk without these interventions. Most importantly, so do many patients and their families.
For all of NEJM’s apparent concern regarding the rights of those who identify as transgender, their (essential) right to accurate information about pediatric gender medicine, including numerous serious life-altering interventions, does not seem to be one of them.
As a trusted source for the medical community and the world more generally, their actions regarding these vulnerable minors not only have implications for the reputation of NEJM but for trust in medicine more generally.
Huh?
NEJM is making editorial choices that are not in support of accuracy (key to medical best practice) in other important areas too. In ways that can harm patients in at least one area.
They are undermining themselves and the reputation of medicine, trust in medicine, more broadly.
Profound! H. Robert Silverstein, MD, FACC
First... do no harm.
Loved the article but you made some mistakes here "his contribution may undermine the reputation of the journal as a reliable source of evidence-based medical information"
The correction? "his contribution further undermine the already tainted reputation of the journal. Once a reliable source of evidence-based medical information that has become the mouthpiece of politically motivated Lunatic Leftists and Big Pharma"
There....much better.
"where Dr. Doll comes from that the allegations were certainly not worth ending one's life" Apparently the person who was central to the whole discussion disagreed.
Few days go by in my world, that I'm not grateful for old white guys.
I really don't care what Obama or anyone else says, History is Clear and white European people founded this county as it evolved to be the USA we know today. Nobody held Ben Carson back. How about Thomas Sowell? There are many brilliant people of all races and skin colors, the world over.
The recent 20 years or so, accelerated by the covid era isolation and censorship, have brought us DEI that can be life-threatening. Look what happened with air-traffic control. Brilliant idea, hire gamers to track stuff on a screen!
We cannot let our desire to be Ten times as "fair" to 15% of the population, let us run roughshod over the other groups who made everything the newbies demand more of, without paying their dues. It's a melting pot - now many put the ethnicity most likely to benefit them financially, on the job application. We need to stop this!
Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth.... He aged very well, despite all that.
It's time to quit demonizing old white guys and be thankful they gave us a huge leap ahead of most of the world.
Thank you Jeff Flier and other old white guys I've so often read here at Sensible Medicine.
As far as I know Pasteur was a white guy. I am glad that sterilization is still taught in the medical profession.
I would say the NEJM has no business in publishing a Voices column, or anything opinion based. Opinion detracts from the foundation, or what should be, of the publication itself? It is mixed messaging. There is the error of the Dr. Kemi Doll piece and all others like it.
Thank you for your balanced, candid, thoughtful response. It really takes a particular strength to write such an intellectually honest piece, particularly in my opinion, in medicine. Certain pervasive ideologies have reigned - and in the face of critical thought, censorship of many types has resulted. Your voice, Jeff, returns us to values so essential to the field of medicine and beyond; an essential reminder to the Journal and beyond.
I am not an MD but I am an academic. Arday was a mentally ill fabulist and grifter, used by institutions to virtue signal. Cambridge University has a lot to answer for given the shoddiness and fraud of Arday's scholarship (I use that last term very loosely).
I don't see the point of NEJM wading into a topic so unrelated to clinical medical practice.
Thank You for your engaging piece Dr. Flier. I enjoyed reading it and though I am not Black (or even White) I do feel the points you raise are very valid, especially regarding editorial oversight in the Voices section.
However, given how charged the issue is especially since it involves a minority academic's suicide, I feel if the writer was asked to bring changes in the piece by the journal, it would have raised a thorny issue that the journal itself was censuring opinion pieces in the name of editorial oversight and stifling minority voices as a result and preventing freedom of expression.
I think there is one point that needs clarification, the sentence you quote and analyze "I don’t care whether any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true" is in partial as there is a second part in the piece "None of them were worth his career. And certainly not his life.". I agree that "She didn’t need to dismiss the importance of the truth of the allegations to convey her personal distress caused by Arday’s career-ending exposure, or her career concerns as a Black academic" but I can understand where Dr. Doll comes from that the allegations were certainly not worth ending one's life especially because of the smear campaign which followed.
I understand that given how thorny the issue has become, it is highly possible emotionally charged pieces will be published. However, the response shouldn't simply be a dispassionate analysis of such charged pieces and the role of the journal's editorial oversight in publishing opinion pieces, but also one should factor in the subtext and nuance of the piece and the circumstances in which this piece by Dr. Doll was published when analyzing the journal's role in all this.
I like your post overall and genuinely appreciate your thoughts. Hoping that you will continue to engage on this important issue.
May I comment on “ending one's life especially because of the smear campaign which followed”. We don’t know for sure what directly caused Prof Arday to end life. A reasonable hypothesis would be that his public standing as a celebrity-academic was built upon foundations that were in important ways fabricated. And once his University committed to an investigation, he saw personal, social and professional ruin. So others may not care about the allegations, but Prof Arday did. He resigned, he did not take a leave of absence to contest the allegations. And the role of the “smear campaign” as you put it, as directly leading to his death, is highly contestable, as I have set out above.
Thank You for your response. I feel there was a very unfair media trial that had arisen in Arday's case. And very frankly, the faux self righteousness is evident in how Arday's plagiarism case was noted with how other white folk accused of the same crime are treated. It was what Dr. Doll did rightfully note in her piece, the double standard is palpable. And your hypothesis, even if reasonable at best, still can't be proven as well the man at the center of it is dead.
I invite you to read this very wonderful piece in the Atlantic outlining the hypocrisy of all sides in Arday's case:
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/08/jason-arday-cambridge-professor-death/688304/
I’ve replied at length as I think these arguments on double standards vis a vis white academic plagiarists are being widely made, are at the heart of claims this is a story about racism, yet are poorly substantiated. Two aspects are not being addressed by this claim.
1. Unfounded or not, there are widely held suspicions that Humanities departments in universities in the US, Canada and the UK have allowed “woke” ideas to affect hiring decision quality. This turbocharged a right and centre-right media interest in Arday that a white academic plagiarist - all other things being equal - would not generate. Had Arday been white but, for example, Trans (and Cambridge University had repeatedly trumpeted the person as a world first in diversity) we could have expected a similar heightened media interest.
2. Double standards rely on comparators. To my knowledge, there are no comparable cases to this one in terms of the ability to fascinate. Let’s look at the detail.
Cases of plagiarism generally involve one scholar being found to have appropriated the work of another for banal motivations of career advancement. This is a problem, but not a terribly interesting one. The Arday case included shamanic prophecies, dismembered animal corpses, brain tumours, amnesia, medical miracles, claims of featuring in TV shows before his birth, millions of pounds raised for charity (then scaled back by Arday himself to a fraction), masked knife wielding assailants and world class endurance feats undertaken with a fractured leg. In terms of sheer sensationalism, this was compelling.
It also included academic posts not held; faked interview data; elite academic promotion despite the barest of academic records and a Phd with large amounts of copied sentences. Then we have the use of top libel lawyers and (twice) the police to deter enquiries about his academic work from two retired academics and a journalist.
Lastly a media celebrity-academic career - a BBC radio series, guest editor of the BBC radio flagship Today program, interviews with BBC star journalist Laura Kuenssberg, a “1.4 million” book memoir deal, TED talks, speaking gigs at business conferences and so on.
From a purely commercial point of view, it was a page turner, with readers returning to read the next installment. Those expecting the media and the public to treat this like any other academic plagiarism allegation are not being realistic. Those claiming a double standard need to point to an example of a white academic plagiarist with roughly equivalent human interest dimensions.
Why is the discovery, reporting, and discussion of fraud “thorny” ??
Because there is frankly a racist undertone in the discussion which we shouldn't close our eyes to.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/08/jason-arday-cambridge-professor-death/688304/
I agree for the most part with Dr Flier’s comments, except that he is engaged with criticism that is to heavily oriented towards political correctness. The straightforward criticism of the essay in question must truthfully address the opening statement - “They are trying to kill us.” This is not just ‘hyperbolic’, it is a demonstrably false and racist assertion that demands condemnation. That such statements can be published by a ‘medical professional/academic’ is scandalous and demonstrates how perverse our society has become.
Thank you Dr. Flier for this much needed piece. And for your other writings in the last several years.