[Doctor Michael Gottlieb] called the nation’s most prestigious journal, the “New England Journal of Medicine,” and talked to an associate editor.
“I’ve got something here that’s bigger than Legionnaire’s,” he said. “What’s the shortest time between submission and publication?”
The editor explained it would take three months to send the story around to a panel of expert readers who would make sure that it was scientifically sound. There would be another delay between the time the review was finished and the publication date, he said. He didn’t need to tell Gottlieb about the ironclad rule that the journal, like virtually all major scientific publications, maintained about the secrecy of material about to be published. If there was any leak whatsoever to the popular press about the research, the journal would pull the story from its pages.
