Together with the omission of crucial documents, control of the narrative itself is another mechanism for creating fake history. This, ironically, is achieved by applying the academic principles of historical research which are meant to prevent junk history; the peer review process. Peer review involves a manuscript or research proposal being read and evaluated anonymously by scholars who are themselves part and parcel of the system. They may have considerable expertise in the period, subject matter, languages, and documents with which the author deals, but they have a list of criteria to which the aspiring historical author must bend the knee. And herein lies the finesse of the overall system which prevents true history emerging. Work which fails to display knowledge of existing work or fails to provide what they deem as valid evidence, will not be approved. It will be damned as weak, and appropriate revisions and resubmissions will be demanded.

In other words, the fake history of the approved ‘eminent’ Court Historian has to be included. Where valid documentary evidence has been destroyed, corrupted, removed, culled and so forth, then the author is limited to the scraps which have survived. Thus, at a stroke, the permanent withdrawal of primary source documents at Stanford and Hanslope achieves its aim. Researchers cannot move beyond the parameters created by those who actually determine what can or cannot be accepted as history. They have to play the peer review game to advance their careers. They are required to stay on the mainline train and regurgitate that which the elites want us to believe is true history. Those who deviate or question the process are not tolerated. The only route is the mainline track, laid down by the great universities from chairs of history funded and controlled by the corrupted system.

According to the American Historical Association, the peer review entails a manuscript or research proposal being read and evaluated by other scholars with expertise in the time period, subject matter, languages, and documents with which the author deals. As peers of the author in a specialised field, these reviewers provide analysis to the review boards of agencies on the scholarly significance of the article: Does the author display knowledge of existing work in the field? Does the research design, processes and methodologies, for example, conform with professional standards? Does the author advance an original argument and provide valid evidence to support the work? If particular areas are weak or absent in the presentation, the peer reviewers suggest revisions that will strengthen the project and call for resubmission before funding is awarded or a manuscript is accepted for publication. Scholars support the concept of carefully monitored peer review as the fairest way possible to ensure disinterested evaluation of research. The American Historical Association believes that such peer review will best serve the American people who fund the research. [1] Absorb that, please. ‘Will best serve the American people who fund the research.’ So private funding should be expected to serve the funders. If the state is the funder, it should serve the state. Believe us, it does.

The peer review process may appear the ideal means by which the quality and honesty of historical writing are ensured. And it is claimed that although it is not perfect, it is the best safeguard that academic standards in history have. Reality, however, is different. Well-known, establishment historians who support the status quo are more likely to be recruited as peer reviewers. In the field of war history especially, it is actually used as a means to sustain and promulgate the junk history it is supposed to weed out. The ‘competent, qualified and unbiased reviewers’ who ‘best serve the American people’ are, in practice, highly critical of articles that contradict their own mainstream narratives. They reject them outright. The fact that their narratives and meta-narratives serve the purposes of Money Power and other elites may be incidental, but is not coincidental, to their epistemological deficiencies. Only official ‘academic’ interpretations and narratives are permitted, and have displaced all other points of view in US and European universities. Naturally, these other points of view are not conducive to the elite interests and consequently are effectively outlawed. The mechanism of displacement is the very matter of peer-review. All ‘revisionist’ voices are starved to death. [2] We have demonstrated, time and again in our books, how central Oxford University remains the guardian of establishment history in Britain. Shades of an Orwellian dystopia darken the academic freedoms which have long been touted as the mark of an advanced liberal society.

Worryingly, similarities with corruption in academic history and academic medical/pharmaceutical research and reporting appear to be on the increase. Senior academic historians who have succumbed to the lure of status and position, and sold their integrity for financial rewards are to be found in many fields. The corruption of science-based medicine and academic history offers striking parallels. Like peer review in history, the process provides neither an assured filtering process for incorrect findings nor a guarantor of the researchers’ integrity. Professor Richard Horton, editor-in chief of the Lancet – recognised as one of the most highly respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world – stated recently that the case against science is straightforward: ‘much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.’ [3] History has been faked and science turned towards darkness. Alarm bells should be sounding across the universe. We continue to be lied to.

These ‘flagrant conflicts of interest’ are the root of the problem in both history and medicine, with a number of senior academics in both fields labouring not for the truth, but for lucrative bonuses paid by powerful paymasters with set agendas. Professor Horton added; ‘Scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world.’ Horton admits that medical journals themselves are not blameless: ‘Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours.’ [4] Exactly the same charge can be levelled against even the most prestigious of history journals.

In 2011 the British Medical Journal quoted Dr Marcia Angell, a long time editor of yet another highly regarded peer-reviewed medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine: ‘It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.” [5]

In the New York Review of Books, Dr Angell reviewed the work of whistle blowers in the medical field. She revealed that no one knows the total slush money provided by drug companies to influence results, but it’s estimated that the top nine U.S. drug companies alone pay out tens of billions of dollars a year. As a direct consequence, Big Pharma has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its products. ‘Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.’ He added that compromised physicians at the highest levels set the guidelines and treatment recommendations nationally. They sit on governmental advisory panels, head professional societies and speak at regular meetings and dinners that take place to teach clinicians about prescription drugs. [6] Morality is dead. Killed by the greed of the money power.

A recent survey found that about two thirds of academic medical centres hold equity interest in companies that sponsor research within the same institution. A study of medical school department chairs found that two thirds received departmental income from drug companies and three fifths received personal income. ‘Of the 170 contributors to the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.’ Billions were being spent on unnecessary, non-efficacious psychiatric medicines that might well be doing more harm than good, even to very young children. For example the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who also held the post of chief of paediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, was largely responsible for children as young as two years old being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs. The professor’s studies of the drugs were, as The New York Times summarised, ‘so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive.’ A U.S. Senator revealed that drug companies, including those that make the drugs the professor advocated for childhood bipolar disorder, had paid him $1.6 million in consultation and speaking fees. Two of his colleagues received similar amounts. [7]

But this was by no means limited to psychiatry. ‘In 2004, after the National Cholesterol Education Program called for sharply lowering the desired levels of “bad” cholesterol, it was revealed that eight of nine members of the panel writing the recommendations had financial ties to the makers of cholesterol-lowering drugs.’ It is also evident that many members of the standing committees of experts that advise the FDA on drug approvals also have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. [8]

Big pharmaceutical companies and the Money Power are, of course, closely related and their corruption of science based medicine and academic history bear striking similarities. They have extensive ties to senior faculty at prestigious universities where they fund departmental professorial chairs. They compromise physicians and historians at the highest level with lucrative bonuses, and highly remunerated lecture tours where they disseminate the ‘sculpted data’ which harmonises with the false accounts demanded by their paymasters. The peer review process in both specialities has been thoroughly comprised. It is clear that some senior individuals in the medical field have sold their honesty and integrity, just as have some senior academic historians, but overall the medical profession can be justifiably proud of the fact that honest doctors and medical journals are prepared to expose the corruption and name and shame those involved.

There is, alas, no such response to be found in the academic history profession where not one solitary voice has been raised against the corrupters or the corruption.

1. American Historical Association, Statement on Peer Review for Historical Research, (2005). https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/statements-standards-and-guidelines-of-the-discipline/statement-on-peer-review-for-historical-research
2. Dr. John O’Dowd, personal communication.
3. http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
4. Ibid.
5. http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d284
6. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.