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They are in hot H2O.
Scientific American came under pressure this month after the 176-year-old college magazine ran an opinion piece titled “Health care workers call for support of Palestinians.”
The garish rant accused Israel of “vaccine apartheid” and “war crimes” among other alleged abuses. The article lashed out at the “Israeli settler colonial regime” and called on US healthcare and academic institutions to condemn the “long-standing oppression” against the Palestinians and to adopt the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against it. the country.
The article was written by Harvard University researchers Osaid HK Alser and Asmaa Rimawi; Seattle Children’s Hospital Dr. Sabreen Akhter; Mayo Clinic Dr Nusheen Ameenuddin, Harvard medical students Anand Chukka and Qaali Hussein; Arizona trauma surgeon Arin El-Taher; and Bryan Leyva, an ‘AfroLatinx researcher-activist from’ Dakota Territory ‘.
The opinionated screed was quickly retracted after the magazine received a letter from three Nobel Prize winners and 100 other scientists calling the article.
By publishing the cited article, the editors of Scientific Americans have abandoned proper editorial standards and ignored easily verified facts that contradict the one-sided invectives of the authors, ”the letter said.
The opinion piece accused Israel of “vaccine apartheid” and “war crimes”.
“While claiming to be a scientific statement on public health, the document addressed important historical and political questions in a superficial, inaccurate and damaging manner. In reality, the play is a call for activism which, in our opinion, is not supported by the facts.
The letter was signed by a number of influential New Yorkers, including Edward C. Halperin, Chancellor of New York Medical College.
I have been on editorial boards for so many years. You can have differences of opinion, and you can even dispute facts, but it is quite another thing to completely falsify a fact. So that’s what I objected to in the article, said Stanley J. Robboy of the Duke Cancer Institute, who co-wrote and sent the letter.
Among the biggest sticking points, the article failed to note that the 1993 Oslo Accords mandate the Palestinian Authority to provide health services to its people. The same agreement also prohibits Israel from providing care unless requested by the Palestinian Authority. The authors also noted that “the editors of the opinion piece do not attribute any agency to Hamas and do not attribute any responsibility to Hamas for the actions taken.” A sentence describing the Palestinian victims does not specify how many of them were in fact Hamas fighters.
President Bill Clinton welcomes the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords on September 13, 1993. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat shake hands in a ceremony public at the White House.Mark Reinstein / Alamy
The venerable magazine is owned by Anglo-German publishing house Springer Nature which did not respond to requests for comment.
It is not known how the article ended up being published. In an email to Robboy and Halperin, Scientific American editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth said the magazine “will revise [their] internal review process ”, but declined to provide details.
Just two days after the publication of the now retracted article, the magazine also published a similar opinion piece denouncing the “mental health crisis” in Gaza. The article targeted “recent Israeli bombings” but did not mention Hamas, the terrorist organization which rules the territory and precipitated the most recent violence.
Sunya Bhutta, editor of the magazine, tweeted the slogan: “From river to sea, Palestine will be free widely seen as a call for the destruction of Israel.” She also publicly supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
Palestinian medical staff work at the Palestinian Red Crescent Hospital in Hebron, West Bank, June 18, 2021. Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA
“Israel is an apartheid state and Zionism is white supremacy. #FreePalestine, ”she said in a May tweet. “Israel is the only ally of American white supremacy,” she added.
Helmuth told the Post that Bhutta was not involved in the story.
“After publication, it was decided that this opinion and this analytical article did not fall within our scope of coverage. Sunya Bhutta was not involved in this opinion piece and analysis. We support his right to express his views on social media, ”Helmuth said.
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