The Nature Journal(ism) Experiment

A coordinated response that's hard to cheer

On 1 October 2025, Sasha Latypova published Journal Nature is planning a hit piece about me This is my response to response to their ‘request for comment’ saying she received the following email:

I’m an editor for Nature magazine, working on a story about how Substack has become a popular place for those involved in the anti-vaccine movement and other areas generally considered to be outside of the scientific consensus. You’re mentioned as one of the writers within that movement.

The general thrust of the piece is that Substack has become immensely popular in this area because it lacks content moderation and allows relatively easy monetisation (as well as of course providing a robust newsletter platform). Could you speak to that?

More specifically those we spoke to allege:

• Substack writers including yourself endanger public health through the promotion of anti-vaccine information that isn’t rooted in accepted, peer-reviewed science.

• You and other Substackers are profiting from disseminating this information through Substack’s monetisation mechanisms.

• In general, anti-vaccine stances are supported by a small body of evidence compared to the larger weight of evidence for vaccination.

We describe you as a former pharmaceutical and medical device R&D executive.

Would you be able to respond to these points by Wednesday 8th October, to ensure timely reflection of your responses in the piece?

Do let me know if any questions and thanks for your time.

Best wishes

Jack

Jack Leeming

Chief careers editor, Nature

I later realized that some other popular COVID Substack writers said they received the email too, and published article-length responses.

• Alex Berenson called it a “pathetic attempt to bring down the hammer”

• Maryanne Demasi said it was “a prelude to a hit piece — filled with defamatory accusations and framed around a predetermined narrative.”

• Peter McCullough said he expected “Leeming will slant his piece towards discrediting authors publishing on failed efficacy and safety issues with vaccines. He may even try to tarnish all of Substack, so it is important for our readership to understand that Substack has both those who are vaccine-risk-aware and those promoting vaccination as authors on the platform.”

• Robert Malone said, “Nature publishing group is now preparing a hit piece on Substack for publishing mis- and dis-information about vaccines. And apparently seeking to use that as an opportunity to attempt to defame and delegitimize me.”

  Malone characterized a separate inquiry from Celine Gounder at KFF Health News as an anticipated “hit piece”/”wrap-up smear” that will use “baseless allegations to stir up left-wing hatred, thereby putting my life in danger”.

• Sayer Ji said of the inquiry, “behind its polite tone was an accusation: that I and other Substack writers are profiteers of misinformation who endanger public health.”

I replied to Ji’s article, saying, “I see no accusation in the email that was sent to you and others. By your own admission, you FELT like a guilty verdict was being issued.”

Maybe I’m alone, but Leeming’s questions strike me rather “vanilla” and straightforward, if not part of a staged effort.

Sometimes (and I’m speaking from experience here) the wisest course with an inquiring journalist is to say nothing. If I had received the email, I think I might have used a less is more approach — and not shared anything publicly unless and until the “hit piece” were published:

1. I agree that Substack has become a popular place for those who hold anti-vaccine views.

2. I agree that anti-vaccine views are “generally considered to be outside of the scientific consensus”.

3.. I’m not in a movement. I write independent of affiliation and have had 1-4 coauthors on 36 of the articles published on Wood House 76. I can send CV if you’d need one. Bio here woodhouse76.com/about

4. Substack is a “press” (printing press). Content moderation is largely the job of the individual/corporate writers of each publication.

5. As a result of the staged pandemic of 2020, I am anti-vaccine.

6. Public health is not in the Constitution. I reject it as a construct and therefore cannot endanger it. Speech is either legal or illegal. None of my articles break any laws.

7. Earning money from producing goods and services is legal. Monetization of anything is relatively easy in America, if one produces a good or service people value.

8. I disagree with the claim about a lack of evidentiary support for positions that reject the need for and efficacy or safety of vaccines.

As far as I know, Nature hasn’t yet put out the anticipated article, which I sensed would be the case because the “coordinated responses” from Substack authors were fairly extensive and disproportionate to what the email actually said. This makes the scenario feel contrived as a victory, with The Six couched as those whose writings and positions constitute a threat to scientific journals. That might be true, to a point, but this feels like a very obvious attempt to move the Overton Window (sort of) while keeping core lies about a pandemic intact.

None of this is to defend Nature, or any scientific journal propped up by pharmaceutical corporations that has published and disseminated fraudulent stories and bad research that props up the WHO et al’s narrative. On Wood House 76 and elsewhere, I’ve repeatedly drawn attention specifically to Nature Medicine’s “Clinical and Virologic Characteristics of the First 12 Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States” by pointing out that the so-called “first known” instance of person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. was no such thing.

But I can’t be the only one who is tired of efforts that feel orchestrated, artificial, or at least not entirely authentic.

Was an article really going to be written? Whose and what goals did this achieve? Is it coming soon and we should just be patient?

I confess I might be less skeptical of the whole thing if all (or any) of the six writers could acknowledge the possibility that they may have been leveraged by the some of the forces they are positioned as opposing — and to no real end.

Or, perhaps they do know, don’t mind, and consider it all a part of an eventual, ill-defined “greater good.”