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At the frenetic pace of the Trump administration wins, it’s easy to lose sight of smaller but still important successes. The administration just terminated a contract, and let three others lapse, with Springer Nature.
Springer Nature is an academic publishing company which includes a consortium of science publications. Funding such a thing may seem innocuous, but Springer is a behemoth in the scientific publishing world and prone to error and politicized decision-making.
As Brian Flood reported at Fox News in late June, “The German-owned Springer Nature was forced to issue 2,923 retractions in 2024, according to Retraction Watch. The publishing giant has also been accused of significantly downplaying the COVID lab-leak theory and censoring content to appease the Chinese government. It also has a peer review process that critics believe is dominated by woke groupthink.”
TRUMP ADMIN ENDS CONTRACTS WITH PUBLISHING GIANT SPRINGER NATURE AMID BIAS, CHINA CONCERNS
Springer has long been considered a company dedicated to political goals and not scientific ones. Their journals had spent much of the pandemic downplaying the COVID-19 lab leak theory concluding in the journal Nature Medicine, as early as March 17, 2020, that, “since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” The paper was called “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and its goal was to remove all discussion of the lab leak theory.
A House Oversight committee, in July 2023, found that “Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins tracked the paper through the review and publication process. And finally, Dr. Collins expressed dismay when Proximal Origin did not successfully kill the lab leak theory. He subsequently asked Dr. Fauci if there was anything more they could do. The next day, Dr. Fauci directly cited Proximal Origin from the White House podium.”
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The committee concluded, “Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci used Proximal Origin to attempt to kill the lab leak theory. This is the anatomy of a cover-up.”
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In 2017, Springer “confirmed that it is restricting access to hundreds of articles that cover topics deemed sensitive to Chinese authorities.”
The censorship isn’t limited to Covid and China. Two years ago, Springer retracted a peer-reviewed paper on gender dysphoria after pressure from activists who did not approve of the findings. Michael Bailey, the author of the study, had never had an article retracted before. This is not science. This is a political point of view.
Springer Nature also charges scientists exorbitant amounts to publish their work. One study found that in just three years, Springer collected $589.7 million in “article processing charges.” The researcher on that study found the scientific publishing companies “reach between 30% and 40%, well above most industries.”
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This is not a company that should be receiving public funds and it’s exactly the sort of thing that would have gone unnoticed in previous Republican administrations. Why are we funding any private publishing company, much less a foreign one with a leftist political bent? The Trump administration’s laser focus on cost-cutting, but also on making the cuts specifically to politicized, bloated, entities like Springer is worth celebrating.
Transparency is also a focus of the administration. On July 1, National Institutes of Health head Jay Bhattacharya posted about a new NIH policy to release all research to the public as soon as it is published. “The American people should have immediate free access to the science that we so generously fund through the @NIH. Starting today, we do.”
The Trump administration cuts to Springer are around $20 million and, a source told Axios, billions more are being evaluated. It’s a strong start. Most Americans will be asking why we ever funded a company like this in the first place. President Donald Trump gets to say: we don’t anymore.
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