Judy Stein-Defender of the Faith
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For well over a year, Judy Stein has been trying to draw me into discussing my employer in hopes of twisting anything I say into a statement that would injure my employer and get me into trouble. Here is a perfect example of such an effort. It shows how low she will slink in her efforts to cause injury.
After pontificating about what goes on at JAMA for more than 2 years, Judy let it slip that she thought the journal did not take advertising. That slip showed that, despite her pretenses as a knowledgeable authority on JAMA, she never thumbed through a copy of the journal in her life. Her pretensions and ignorance exposed, Judy tried to spin her statement and only screwed herself deeper into the ground with this:

> > As it happens, I do know that some journals take advertising
> > and some don't.

Not some, but virtually all major science journals take advertising. (The only exception I can think of is the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which pays publishing costs by charging authors a fee to publish their manuscripts.) Judy doesn't know this because she doesn't get her information first hand. She's fed material to use on a.m.t. by supporters. Indeed, she probably never examined a copy of Science, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Lancet, or JAMA. She spins herself deeper:

> > I had *assumed* that JAMA, being so prestigious,
> > was one of the journals that doesn't take advertising in order to
> > maintain its editorial independence and ensure that its editorial
> > integrity is not sullied by conflict of interest.

To bolster her case, she even quoted from the New England Journal of Medicine, apparently without realizing that NEJM also accepts advertising. I tried to explain to her why it's important for science journals to have a source of income independent of the publisher:

> Journals that are supported by advertising usually have much
> more editorial independence than one that is solely subsidized by
> a publisher. They can (and often do) tick off advertisers without lasting
> consequence. But cross a publisher who pays for all the ink, wood
> pulp, and utilities and it's lights out.

Out of this general statement about editorial freedom of science journals that pay for themselves, Judy invents a whopper of a malicious lie that I "suggested that the AMA is unethical." She even put this scurrilous falsehood into the subject line of her posts.

She continued her defamatory assault:

> What are the special interests of the AMA, Andrew, that might
> cause it to attempt unethically to influence the editorial
> content of JAMA if the journal weren't supported by advertising?

I never said anything about the publisher of any journal being "unethical." That crooked comment is Judy's. And she used it in a nefarious way in hopes of injuring me and my employer. Her lie is clearly actionable.

Andrew A. Skolnick
http://nasw.org/users/ASkolnick
http://www.aaskolnick/photography/
I speak only for myself, not for any other individual or organization.

Another Baldfaced Lie from Judith Stein

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