Another Medical Publisher Is Obsessed with Race

Why does Wiley Publishing care so much about scholars’ skin color? That’s the question based on the prominent medical research publisher’s new “DE&I Statement.” It’s similar to the race fixation at the publisher of The Lancet, which we previously covered. It appears Wiley is moving toward selecting scholars, reviewers, and staff based on race – discrimination that is sure to hold back medical research.

Wiley makes clear from the start that it’s drinking from the woke Kool-Aid:

“Wiley is committed to implementing sustainable and positive change to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion through the editorial processes and policies of its publications. This includes encouraging diversity, equity, and inclusivity within our editorial teams, reviewers, and authors as appropriate and consistent with local regulations.”

Wiley is implementing these concepts by adopting the diversity data collection standards created by the “Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing.” It will now ask scholars and reviewers to answer a host of questions about their identity, including:

• How would you identify yourself in terms of race?
• What are your ethnic origins or ancestry?
• With which gender do you most identify?

The standards are explicitly designed to “ensure inclusion and diversity are integrated into publishing activities and strategic planning.” In practice, that likely means Wiley will solicit research from scholars based in part on their skin color, not just the quality of their research, with a similar race focus dictating who reviews submissions. The name for that is discrimination.

Let’s be clear: Putting race at the center of medical scholarship hurts medical scholarship. Wiley should be focused on finding the best research, researchers, and reviewers, regardless of what they look like or where they come from. Anything less is insulting to medical scholars – and injurious to medical progress.