It’s a complicated story, so it’s worth recapping what’s happened so far, followed by the most relevant details from the newly published articles.
The New Orleans Five controversy
The five scientists fired were Steven Kahn, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care and co-author of the editorial. Also included were former ADA president Desmond Schatz of the University of Florida, Aaron Kelly, professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder of Northwestern University; and Irl Hirsch, also of the University of Washington. Maureen Gannon of Vanderbilt University Medical Center was also removed from the conference.
The scientists were distributing the editorial outside of the conference’s keynote address, which was originally scheduled to be delivered by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health under Trump. Bhattacharya canceled at the last minute and senior NIH official Rick Woychik took his place.
Within minutes of delivering the editorial, police reportedly escorted the scientists out of the conference in New Orleans. Police reportedly pushed at least one scientist, took away all of their conference credentials, and threatened to arrest them if they tried to return. Louisiana State Police later told the media who acted at the request of the ADA. The ADA subsequently excluded the five scientists from the rest of the conference.
Kahn had been appointed to chair a symposium. John Buse of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill took his place and explained the situation to attendees in comments critical of the ADA’s actions. “The applause was deafening, not for the speech, but for Steven and his defense of science.” bus wrote in his preprint article, which included a draft of those comments.
The backlash against ADA’s actions spread quickly on Twitter/X and BlueSky and increased sharply the number of page views of the April editorial. Several ADA Leaders have resignedand a burning letter signed by more than 40 ADA officials criticized the decision as “outrageous” and the justifications as “unconvincing” and “fatuous nonsense,” stating that the community was “overwhelmingly disgusted by the way this unfortunate event occurred and was excused and justified by Association leaders.” Officials demanded “an immediate and unconditional public apology” as well as a review of the incident. an open letter to the ADA, titled “Shame on You,” also asked for an apology. It has gathered more than 7,500 signatures at the time of this publication.
