Nutrients Journal faces backlash as 1100 physicians, HCPs call for boycott

Washington: More than 1100 experts have decided to boycott the medical journal Nutrients and its publisher MDPI, according to a letter from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The boycott comes in light of the journal continuing to publish research and studies where animal experiments are used, even human alternatives are available.

“As a community of scientists and health care professionals, we have lost confidence in Nutrients and MDPI. We will not publish in Nutrients or other MDPI journals nor serve as reviewers until Nutrients implements a policy of publishing only studies using human participants or human data for nutrition research,” notes the letter sent to the editors of the journal, according to a press release.

Researchers and doctors have repeatedly asked the journal's editors to institute sound editorial practices when it comes to choosing the research it publishes. In fact, in 2022, more than 800 medical professionals and scientists contacted Nutrients, saying they’d lost confidence in the journal because its animal experiments violate its own ethical guidelines, which require the “replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible.”

Dr. Elizabeth Dean, a professor emeritus in the department of physical therapy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and former reviewer for Nutrients, signed the boycott letter as well. “When I became aware of the extensive animal use, especially where the objectives could have been achieved using human-based approaches, I decided to investigate further because I couldn’t compromise my own ethics,” she said in a press statement.

PCRM also gave an example of a recent study published in Nutrients, where 50 preterm piglets were used to research necrotizing enterocolitis in infants. Pigs were fed different infant formulas and human milk with and without an added probiotic, and had their gut microbiota analyzed. All of them were killed at the end of the experiment.

Numerous clinical trials in humans have already shown that probiotic supplements can significantly decrease this condition in infants, said Janine McCarthy, MPH, science policy program manager for the Physicians Committee. She added the experiment "violated the 3Rs principle of replacement, as well as Nutrients’ own ethical guidelines."

In 2018, the journal's senior leadership quit, citing a lack of commitment to scientific integrity.