{"id":320930,"date":"2025-12-31T08:24:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T08:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320930"},"modified":"2026-01-02T09:14:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T09:14:58","slug":"tinker-tailor-publisher-spy-how-robert-maxwell-created-the-academic-peer-review-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320930","title":{"rendered":"Tinker, tailor, publisher, spy: how Robert Maxwell created the academic peer review system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prof Gloria Moss & Dr Niall McCrae \u2013 Off-Guardian Dec 30, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Publication of research results, theoretical propositions and scholarly essays is not a free-for-all. As shown by the dogmatism around climate change and Covid-19, sceptics struggle to get papers in print. The gate-keeper is the peer-review system, which people take for granted as a screening process to ensure rigour in scientific literature.<\/p>\n

But it is not always been that way. Until at least the 1950s, the decision to publish was made by the editors of academic journals, who were typically eminent professors in their field.<\/p>\n

Peer review, by contrast, entails the editor sending an anonymised manuscript to independent reviewers, and although the editor makes a final decision, the reviews indicate whether the submission should be accepted, revised or rejected. This may seem fair and objective, but in reality peer review has become a means of knowledge control \u2013 and as we argue here, perhaps that was always the purpose.<\/p>\n

You may be surprised to know that the instigator of peer review was the media tycoon Robert Maxwell. In 1951, at the age of 28, the Czech emigree<\/em> purchased three-quarters of Butterworth Press for about half a million pounds at current value. He renamed it as Pergamon Press, with its core business in science, technology and medicine (STM) journals, all of which instilled peer review.<\/p>\n

According to Myer Kutz (2019), \u2018Maxwell, justifiably, was one of the key figures \u2014 if not the key figure \u2014 in the rise of the commercial STM journal publishing business in the years after World War II\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maxwell\u2019s company stole a march on other publishers and its influence was huge. By 1959 Pergamon was publishing 40 journals, surging to 150 by 1965. By 1996, one million peer reviewed articles had been published. Yet despite the increase in outlets, opportunities for writers with analyses or arguments contrary to the prevailing narrative are limited.<\/p>\n

Maxwell was instrumental to peer review becoming a regime to reinforce prevailing doctrines and power.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Elizabeth and Robert Maxwell at their 1945 wedding. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in 1940, Maxwell was a penniless 16 year-old of Jewish background, having left his native land for refuge in Britain. His linguistic talents attracted him to the British intelligence services. On an assignment in Paris in 1944 he met his Huguenot wife Elisabeth. After war ended in 1945 he spent two years in occupied Germany with the Foreign Office as head of the press section.<\/p>\n

Four years later, with no lucrative activity to his name, this young man found the money to buy an established British publishing house. According to Craig Whitney (New York Times,\u00a0<\/em>1991), Maxwell made Pergamon a thriving business with \u2018a bank loan and money borrowed from his wife\u2019s family and from relatives in America\u2019.<\/p>\n

But how was he able to acquire Butterworth Press, initially? A clue is given by a BBC video clip (2022) on Maxwell\u2019s links to intelligence networks. While operating as a KGB agent in Berlin, he presented himself to MI6 as having \u2018established connections with leading scientists all over the world\u2019. According to investigative journalist Tom Bower, \u2018unbelievably what he really wanted was for M16 to finance him to start a publishing company\u2019.<\/p>\n

This point is corroborated by Desmond Bristow, former M16 officer, who states that Maxwell asked the secret security service to finance his venture. Seven years after launching Pergamon Press, Maxwell moved into Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion in Oxford, which he leased from Oxford City Council.<\/p>\n

If it was the intelligence services (British and\/or Russian) that bankrolled Pergamon Press, their motive could have been to ensure control of knowledge following the tremendous advances of the Second World War (such as nuclear physics and weapons of mass destruction). Maxwell\u2019s choice of name for the publisher is interesting. The ancient site of Pergamon was allegedly the locus of Satan\u2019s throne (Revelation, 2:12), and a cynic might suggest that Maxwell\u2019s peer review system would turn science from Enlightenment to a new Dark Age.<\/p>\n

A ploy of Maxwell was to label his journals as global: instead of the parochial \u2018British Journal of\u2026\u2019 it was always \u2018International Journal of\u2026.\u2019 In 1991 Maxwell sold his academic publishing empire to the Dutch publisher Elsevier for \u00a3440 million. By then he had achieved his \u2013 and perhaps his secret sponsors\u2019 \u2013 goal of a globally controlled academic press.<\/p>\n

If a censorial conspiracy seems far-fetched, consider the case of the critical thinking journal\u00a0Medical Hypotheses<\/em>. Founded by British scholar David Horrobin in 1975, this journal published novel, radical ideas about health likely to be rejected by conventional journals. A single editor decided what to publish, with no review panel. In Patricia Kane\u2019s obituary in the\u00a0British Medical Journal<\/em>, Horrobin was described as \u2018one of the most original scientific minds of his generation\u2019.<\/p>\n

In 2009\u00a0Medical Hypotheses<\/em>\u00a0became a\u00a0cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em>. Bruce Charlton, who succeeded Horrobin as editor-in-chief, accepted a highly controversial article by a Berkeley virologist. Peter Duesberg contested the HIV basis of AIDS and argued that the South African government was right not to administer antiretroviral drugs to AIDS sufferers because the HIV\u2013AIDS link remained unproven. Publication caused furore in the scientific world. Scientists associated with the US National Institute of Health threatened to remove all subscriptions to Elsevier titles from the National Library of Medicine. Their demand was not only that Elsevier withdraw this article, but also to institute peer review at the journal.<\/p>\n

Elsevier agreed and dismissed Charlton. Mehar Manku, who replaced him, assured that the journal would now \u2018be careful not get into controversial subjects\u2019, the reverse of what Horrobin intended. Charlton later remarked: \u2013<\/p>\n

The journal which currently styles to itself\u00a0Medical Hypotheses<\/em>\u00a0is a dishonest fake and a travesty of the vision bequeathed by the founder Professor David Horrobin; and as such it ought to be closed down\u2014and on present trends it surely will be.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of British scientist Rupert Sheldrake, whose research on morphic resonance challenges core tenets of normal science. Sheldrake was subjected to intense hostility from John Maddox, chief editor of\u00a0Nature<\/em>, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world.<\/p>\n

In an infamous editorial in 1981, Maddox denounced Sheldrake\u2019s first book\u00a0A New Science of Life<\/em>\u00a0as an \u2018infuriating tract\u2019 and \u2018the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.\u2019 In 1999 Maddox reviewed Sheldrake\u2019s book\u00a0Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home,\u00a0<\/em>which presented compelling evidence of psychic powers in birds and animals:<\/p>\n

Rupert Sheldrake is steadfastly incorrigible in the particular sense that he persists in error. That is the chief import of his eighth and latest book. Its main message is that animals, especially dogs, use telepathy in routine communications. The interest of this case is that the author was a regular scientist with a Cambridge PhD in bio-chemistry until he chose pursuits that stand in relation to science as does alternative medicine to medicine proper.<\/p>\n

As the discerning reader will notice, Maddox plays the man rather than the ball, refusing in his\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0attack to engage with Sheldrake\u2019s evidence. This is not a scientific approach, but ideological censorship, with the personal vengeance of \u2018cancel culture\u2019. Such oppressive group-think is facilitated by the peer review system, and is not only applied to \u2018far out\u2019 theorists like Sheldrake.<\/p>\n

The most significant use of academic journals for propaganda is with the ecological agenda. The supposedly overwhelming consensus for anthropogenic climate change is a myth, as the oft-cited figure of 97% of scientists was derived from four studies, all of which were flawed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Like father, like daughter? Robert Maxwell pictured with his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell, currently imprisoned in the U.S. for her role in the Epstein files. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Science is not an opinion poll, and an appropriate rewording of the statement would be that 97% of scientists believe in whatever gets them funding. Peer review has been exploited by the pharmaceutical industry. Antidepressant drugs have been consistently endorsed in medical journals since Prozac was introduced in the 1980s, despite dubious safety and effectiveness. This favouring of Big Pharma products reached its zenith with Covid-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n

For the sake of humanity, we need to revert to an open and objective scientific enterprise. Like many purportedly progressive developments in society, peer review has brought more problems than it solves. That it was initiated by the rogue figure of Robert Maxwell, with secretive funding, suggests ulterior design.<\/p>\n

Originally published by Country Squire<\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n

—<\/p>\n

Niall McCrae<\/strong> is a social commentator and an officer of the Workers of England trade union. He was previously a senior lecturer in mental health at King\u2019s College London. His books include The Moon and Madness<\/em>\u00a0(2012), Echoes from the Corridors<\/em>\u00a0(with Peter Nolan, 2016), Moralitis: a Cultural Virus<\/em>\u00a0(with Robert Oulds, 2020) and Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm<\/em>\u00a0(2024).\u00a0 He writes regularly for The Light<\/em>\u00a0newspaper.<\/p>\n

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Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a suspected conman and spy established an intellectual screening process that shaped much of the intellectual and academic life of the 20th century and beyond<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":320932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,15,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History","category-mind_control"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320930"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320936,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320930\/revisions\/320936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/320932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=320930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=320930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}