Medline 'Oversight' - Orthomolecular Journal Not Indexed
The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine regularly publishes interesting articles, such as the one by Alan Gaby MD which discusses "safety limits" for vitamins and which I cited in a recent post titled "Risk Free Vitamins - How Safe is Safe Enough?".
One would think that Medline, the major internet-based reference work for medical scientific literature should list the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine as part of its database of public information. Yet, they refuse to list that journal, effectively slanting the scientific record against the use of micronutrients in health care. What to say? Another case of pro-pharma bias at the expense of people's health? Certainly there is a lack of transparency.
Andrew Saul of doctoryourself.com believes it is and asks anyone interested to contact the Medline editors asking that the Journal be included in the database...
JUST WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT, ANYWAY?
The Smithsonian Institution's United States National Tick Collection, with over one million tick specimens, makes it, quite understandably, the world's largest.
On the other hand, the world's largest medical library, the U. S. National Library of Medicine, does not see fit to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.
Why?
Is it really a matter of funds? The National Museum of American History is spending $18 million to "clean and conserve" the 1814 "Star Spangled Banner" flag that flew over Fort McHenry. (Smithsonian magazine, June 2004, p 59.)
That's eighteen MILLION dollars.
What, exactly, would be the cost to index one additional medical journal?
The U.S. government that lets the U.S. Forest Service sell the public's forests to private lumber corporations at a $2 billion annual loss to the taxpayer. This is, of course, the same government that gave the nuclear power industry over $40 billion since 1948, according to the Multinational Monitor (http://multinationalmonitor.org)
Medline is self-described as "the NLM's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,800 biomedical journals . . . The database contains over 12 million citations dating back to the mid-1960's."
Just how hard would it really be for the National Library of Medicine to electronically index one more scientific journal on Medline, for the public's benefit?
And doesn't the government owe the public full disclosure of all new nutritional research that can help people, including what is published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine? Politicized science and research cover-ups hurt citizens. The U. S. General Accounting Office has stated that over 500,000 Americans were "used as subjects in Cold War era radiation, biological and chemical experiments sponsored by the federal government," often without their consent. (Scripps Howard News Service, 29 Sept, 1994.) There is a terrible price to pay for secret agendas, selective science and information suppression.
Medline, which formerly only went back to 1966, now provides an additional two million citations from medical journals all the way back to 1951. While in itself good news, it also more than suggests that the national Library of Medicine has the funding, personnel and capability to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine without further ado. The availability of "Old Medline," as it is nicknamed, now means that references to hundreds of scientific papers by vitamin discoverer Roger J. Williams, niacin psychiatrist Abram Hoffer, Professor of Oral Medicine Emanuel Cheraskin, and twice Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling can now be electronically tapped from everywhere they published, for the last 55 years. . . with one conspicuous exception. Every word they ever wrote in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine remains excluded from indexed cyberspace.
One can not help but wonder why an author's work is significant if published in one journal, but not even worth mentioning if published in another.
The National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine's Medline and Old Medline collectively form one of the world's truly splendid research tools. Going back to 1951 is a good idea. Why stop there? What about 36 consecutive years' worth of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, as well as the current research it continues to publish even as you read this?
As public libraries should be free to rich and poor alike, so public access to scientific knowledge should not be screened or censored. Science is neither a guild nor a members-only club.
Or at least it shouldn't be any longer.
TELL IT TO THE BOSS
Many Newsletter readers have already written to Medline and received useless answers from government contractors.
Well then, let's write to the top man.
The Executive Editor of Medline is Mr. Sheldon Kotzin. His email address is
Please send him a polite email requesting that he please include the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in the MEDLINE database and index.Talking points:
* The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has been published for 36 consecutive years.
* It has an editorial review board of physicians and university researchers.
* The Journal has published papers by prominent scientists, including twice Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling.
* Electronic indexing makes health information readily accessible to libraries and to the public.
* Medline indexes over 4,800 journals, and has funds to reach all the way back to 1951.
*Why, exactly, is the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine excluded?
*Courteously ask for action, and for a response.
I would very much appreciate it if you'd send me a copy of Mr. Kotzin's replies. My email is drsaul@doctoryourself.com .
MODERN MEDICINE NOW LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN USA
It is not every day that three medical doctors author a paper (with 153 references) to document the fact that nearly one MILLION Americans are killed by modern medicine EACH YEAR. This means that hospitals, pharmaceuticals and doctors are the number one cause of death in the United States. (Carolyn Dean MD, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD, Gary Null PhD. Death by medicine. 2003)
Dr. Abram Hoffer says: "I just read "Death by Medicine" on Andrew Saul's web site,
DoctorYourself.com. It is a very important document and must be distributed as widely as possible. I find the information in this report to be very valuable, very impressive, and frightening."
Read the full text article athttp://www.doctoryourself.com/deathmed.html
1 July 2004 - UPDATE ON MEDLINEA special thank-you to all the many Doctor Yourself Newsletter readers who took the time to write to the National Library of Medicine to request that the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine be included in MEDLINE's electronic index. MEDLINE is like a "Google" of medical publications. I believe everyone should have internet access to all health research, not just some of it.
The next question is, exactly who is deciding what you may or may not read?
Most letters that readers sent to MEDLINE's Executive Editor, Sheldon Kotzin, received a form reply from a clerical assistant, saying only that:
"Mr. Kotzin has received your recent email regarding the re-review of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine for inclusion in MEDLINE. The National Library of Medicine uses an advisory committee to recommend journals to be indexed in MEDLINE. This journal will be scheduled for review at the next advisory committee meeting."
We have reason to believe that the next advisory committee meeting and review is scheduled for October, 2004.
But there are genuine problems with this quickie form-letter response. First, it does not tell us exactly why the Journal was previously refused. It is merely a promise of a re-review, whatever that may consist of.
Second, who are the people on the mentioned advisory committee who actually perform the review? Who, exactly, are the persons empowered to decide for you what you may or may not access on MEDLINE, a taxpayer-supported service of the US Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health?
What are the names, and professional qualifications (and professional affiliations) of the "Literature Selection Technical Review Committee" members?
And, how are they selected, and who selects them?
Are these petty, pesky questions, or do interested citizens have a right to know?
Thinking it a good idea to try a direct follow-up with the top man, Medline Editor Mr. Kotzin, a number of people have already written back to kotzins@mail.nlm.nih.gov. They wished to know:
* What are the names of the members of the National Library of Medicine's journal-review advisory committee?
* What are the specific grounds, particular to the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, that have previously disqualified it from inclusion in Medline?
To date, NOT EVEN ONE Newsletter reader has reported any reply to these questions. Judging from my mailbox, which I check several times a day, no one has received ANY response whatsoever to these follow-up questions, or even an acknowledgement that their message was received.
Why? Is there some kind of secret?
It may be time to take this case to a higher level: the U.S. Congress.
I ask you to please email your Congressperson and Senators, respectfully requesting that they help you get real answers to your real questions.
It is easy to do, you know. Just go to http://www.congress.org (or http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/) and type in your zip code. Then, click the email link under your Senator's and Congressman's name, and select "Compose Your Own Letter." This is fast and, for sending email, free.
To speed things further, you can cut and paste the letter I today sent to my Senators and Congressman, editing as you see fit. For the email letter's "Subject," I typed in "Seek Response from Federal Agency."
Dear Hon. _________________
I would very much appreciate your assistance in obtaining answers to questions I have directed in writing to a Federal agency, but without success.
I am interested in finding out why the National Library of Medicine has not responded adequately to my inquiry as to why it has not chosen to index a particular medical journal. To me, this seems like a reasonable inquiry. Because I and many other citizens are interested in nutrition therapy, I think the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (which has been published for 36 consecutive years) should be included in the NLM's MEDLINE electronic index. However, it is not.
I wrote to MEDLINE, specifically to the Executive Editor, Mr. Sheldon Kotzin. All I received was a form reply, which I think is an unsatisfactory response.
My questions are:
What are the specific reasons that the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has been excluded from MEDLINE's index by a "Literature Selection Technical Review Committee"?
What are the names, qualifications, and professional affiliations of the members of the NLM/Medline "Literature Selection Technical Review Committee"?
Who appoints these members to the Committee?
What is the date of their next meeting, and will there be a public hearing?
The NLM says of itself, "The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the largest medical library in the world. The goal of the NLM is to collect, organize and make available biomedical literature to advance medical science and improve public health."
It seems odd to me that the world's largest medical library does not see fit to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. It seems even odder that the NLM/MEDLINE Executive Editor did not provide satisfactory answers to my questions. I think detailed, individual reasons for Medline's excluding a particular journal should be public information. I am a taxpayer. I have asked a senior member of a federal office for information and that information has so far been denied to me.Your reply would mean a great deal to me.
(end of suggested text)
PLEASE LET ME KNOW what your representatives and senators offer to do. I would welcome a copy of all responses that you receive emailed to drsaul@doctoryourself.com.
- - - - - - -
June 2005: MEDLINE BIAS: A REVIEW AND UPDATE(through Andrew Saul's doctoryourself newsletter)
With Medline, you can access abstracts of millions of medical papers, online, instantly and at no charge. Over half a million individual citations are added each year. The public loves Medline; nearly two million people use it every day. Medline is like a "Google" search engine for medical publications. This excellent, free service is brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Library of Medicine. In other words, by tax dollars. Generally it is money well spent, until you go searching for megavitamin therapy research papers. Then you will find that you can't find all of them. That is because of selective indexing.
While most medical journals are listed and accessible, the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, now read in nearly 40 countries, is not.
What are the consequences of such exclusion? In a nutshell, it prevents the public from using their computers to learn about all of the scientific research and clinical reports demonstrating the effectiveness of megavitamin (orthomolecular) therapy. It also greatly hampers professionals from seeing pro-vitamin studies. Have you ever wondered why so many doctors simply do not know about vitamin therapy? Well, wonder no longer.
LET'S LOOK AT THE SCORE
Exactly how is the decision made as to which studies people may or may not see?
I have in front of me the actual judging scoresheets for the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine's previous appraisals by the National Library of Medicine's Medline "Literature Selection Technical Review Committee." The Journal was previously reviewed in 1989, 1993, 2000 and again in 2002. Medline uses a point scale of zero to 5, with five being the highest recommendation for indexing, and zero being the lowest.
On February 2, 1989, the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine received a 0.0 rating.
On March 4, 1993, the Journal again received a 0.0 score. This, by the way, was after JOM had published no fewer than six papers by Linus Pauling.
One cannot escape the significance of these 1989 and 1993 National Library of Medicine reviews that found ABSOLUTELY NO VALUE WHATSOEVER to the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. After all, "0.0" is not merely a low mark. "0.0" represents an absolute dearth of merit. And "zero point zero" states it so flatly as to leave no room for alternate interpretations.
On June 8, 2000, JOM received a 1.5 rating. Out of five, not nearly high enough to qualify for indexing.
By then, the Journal had been published for 30 consecutive years.
The review of June 6, 2002 brought JOM a rating of 1. Out of five.
THE OCTOBER 2004 REVIEW
We now have the results of NLM's latest (October 2004) review of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.
In this most recent evaluation, Medline's review committee specifically indicated that the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine had "little importance to researchers"; "little importance to educators"; "little importance to students" and "no importance to administrators"; "no importance to policy makers"; and "no importance to allied health professionals."
JOM, therefore, received a "2" out of five, the best score yet.
In a letter dated 11 January 2005 from Medline executive editor Sheldon Kotzin, whose full title is Chief, Bibliographic Services Division, National Library of Medicine, Mr. Kotzin states:
"The Committee recently met and reviewed a number of journal titles including the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. The indexing priority assigned to the journal by the Committee was not high enough for the title to be indexed by the Library at this time."
Interestingly, Mr. Kotzin's very next sentence was,
"Please CANCEL any complimentary subscription being sent to my office." The emphasis was his own.
In one email to a Doctor Yourself Newsletter reader, Mr. Kotzin wrote: "No one would argue against a well-informed user; however, human and budgetary resources will not allow us to index every one of the 22,000 journals to which we subscribe."
Taking the sum of all evidence, I believe that statement is neither fair nor accurate.
On-line indexing and availability are all the more important now that, after 125 years of publication, the NLM's Index Medicus is no longer available in print. Electronic, on-line Medline has taken over.
And 38 years of nutrition research is missing from it.
Perhaps all this is not surprising. Medline has steadfastly refused to index the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine for almost four decades. Let it now be said: The emperor has no clothes. The National Library of Medicine/Medline is biased.
(Excerpted with permission from Saul AW. Medline bias. [Editorial] J Orthomolecular Med. 2005, 20:1, p 10-16.)
See also:Censorship of Vitamin Therapy Research by the U.S. National Library of Medicine
The National Library of Medicine has replied to questions about its non-indexing of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine... saying it doesn't give a damn.
A message from Dr Andrew Saul - call for action. This was received in January 2006, so you the reader of this may be in time to make a difference, if you feel you can help:
It is time to take action to make all nutritional research, not just some of it, accessible to the public.I ask you to please join me in an email campaign to Mr. Sheldon Kotzin, Executive Editor of the U. S. National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE. Medline is the world's largest index for all health-related scientific research. It appears to have a bias against high-dose vitamin nutritional medical journals.
Many of my readers have already written to Medline and received useless pat-on-the-head answers from low-level government contractors.
Now, after reading all my readers' emails, I would like you to please write to the top man. Executive Editor of Medline Mr. Sheldon Kotzin's personal email address is kotzins@mail.nlm.nih.gov.
Please send him a polite email requesting that he please include the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in the MEDLINE electronic database and index.
In addition to referring to what I wrote above, here are some talking points you can use in your letter:
*The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has been published for 38 consecutive years.
* It has an editorial review board of physicians and university researchers.
* The Journal has published papers by prominent scientists, including twice Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling.
* MEDLINE's electronic indexing makes health information readily accessible to libraries and to the public over the Internet.
* Medline indexes over 4,800 journals, and has funds to reach all the way back to 1951.
* Why, exactly, is the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine excluded from MEDLINE? It is not enough to say that JOM is excluded because a review committee said so in secret.
* Why are not the taxpayers' views, requests and input considered? MEDLINE is paid for by the taxpayers (operated by the NLM, part of the National Institutes of Health).
* Courteously ask Mr. Kotzin for action, and ask for a response.
* Do not accept a form letter response from an assistant, or from a secretary, or from a contractor. You pay Mr. Kotzin's salary. Let him answer you personally.
Again, his personal email is kotzins@mail.nlm.nih.gov
Then, I would very much appreciate it if you'd send me a copy of Mr. Kotzin's replies. My email is drsaul@doctoryourself.com .
(For more talking points and background facts, please look at http://www.doctoryourself.com/medline.html)
Thank you for your willingness to make a difference!
Best wishes,
A. Saul- - -
JOURNAL OF ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE NOW ONLINE
The archives of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine are now posted online. Past issues from 1967 through 2002 are available for downloading, at no charge.The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has led the way in presenting, in advance of other medical journals, new health concerns and treatments including niacin therapy for schizophrenia and coronary disease; vitamin C for cancer; and the nutritional treatment of behavioral disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse. The JOM was also the first medical journal to publish papers on the nutritional treatment of allergies, autism, and AIDS. JOM published pioneering research on candiasis in 1978, mercury amalgam toxicity in 1982, and chronic fatigue syndrome in 1988. The Journal has published over 100 papers on nutritional medicine and cancer, and over 400 articles on schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses. JOM is peer-reviewed.
Curiously, after over 40 years of continuous publication, JOM is still not indexed on MEDLINE.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday June 22 2004
updated on Friday June 26 2009URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/06/22/medline_oversight_orthomolecular_journal_not_indexed.htm
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