Wood House 76

First published on Wood House 76 Substack 27 October 2025 | Republished on Wood House 76 WordPress with edits.

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On 1 October 2025, Sasha Latypova published Journal Nature is planning a hit piece about me. This is my response to their ‘request for comment’ saying she received the following email:

Other popular COVID Substack writers said they received the email too, and published article-length reactions.

• Alex Berenson called it a “pathetic attempt to bring down the hammer” 
• Maryanne Demasi said it was “a prelude to a hit piece — filled with defamatory accusations and framed around a predetermined narrative.” 
• Peter McCullough said he expected “Leeming will slant his piece towards discrediting authors publishing on failed efficacy and safety issues with vaccines. He may even try to tarnish all of Substack, so it is important for our readership to understand that Substack has both those who are vaccine-risk-aware and those promoting vaccination as authors on the platform.” 
• Robert Malone said, “Nature publishing group is now preparing a hit piece on Substack for publishing mis- and dis-information about vaccines. And apparently seeking to use that as an opportunity to attempt to defame and delegitimize me.” (Malone characterized a separate inquiry from Celine Gounder at KFF Health News as an anticipated “hit piece”/”wrap-up smear” that will use “baseless allegations to stir up left-wing hatred, thereby putting my life in danger”.)
• Sayer Ji said of the inquiry, “behind its polite tone was an accusation: that I and other Substack writers are profiteers of misinformation who endanger public health.” 

Replying to Ji’s artcle, I said I saw no accusation in the email and that, by his own admission, he felt like a guilty verdict was being issued.

Leeming’s questions struck me as rather “vanilla” and straightforward, if not part of a staged effort. Sometimes (and I’m speaking from experience here) the wisest course with an inquiring journalist is to say nothing.

Had I received the email, I don’t think I would have shared anything publicly unless and until the “hit piece” was published and would have used a less is more approach in a direct reply:

1. I agree that Substack has become a popular place for those who hold anti-vaccine views.
2. I agree that anti-vaccine views are “generally considered to be outside of the scientific consensus”.
3. I’m not in a movement. I write independent of affiliation and have had 1-4 coauthors on 36 articles. Bio here. I can send CV if you’d need one.
4. Substack is a “press” (printing press). Content moderation is largely the job of the individual/corporate writers of each publication.
5. As a result of the staged pandemic of 2020, I am anti-vaccine.
6. Public health is not in the Constitution. I reject it as a construct and therefore cannot endanger it. Speech is either legal or illegal. None of my articles break any laws.
7. Earning money from producing goods and services is legal. Monetization of anything is relatively easy in America, if one produces a good or service people value.
8. I disagree with the claim about a lack of evidentiary support for positions that reject the need for and efficacy or safety of vaccines.

Nature hasn’t yet put out the anticipated article, which I sensed would be the case because the “coordinated responses” from Substack authors were fairly extensive and disproportionate to what the email actually said. The scenario feels contrived as a victory, with The Six couched as those whose writings and positions constitute a threat to scientific journals. That might be true, to a point, but it comes off as a very obvious attempt to move the Overton Window (sort of) while keeping core lies about a pandemic intact.

None of this is to defend Nature, or any scientific journal propped up by pharmaceutical corporations that has published and disseminated fraudulent stories and bad research which sustains the WHO et al’s narrative. On Wood House 76 and elsewhere, I’ve repeatedly drawn attention to Nature Medicine’s “Clinical and Virologic Characteristics of the First 12 Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States” by pointing out that the so-called “first known” instance of person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. was no such thing. 

So whose and what goals did this stunt achieve? Was a “hit piece” or article of any kind really going to be written? Is it coming soon and we should just be patient? I can’t be the only one who is tired of efforts that feel orchestrated, artificial, or at least not entirely authentic.

I might be less skeptical of the whole thing if all (or any) of the six “targeted” writers could acknowledge the possibility that they may have been leveraged by the some of the forces they are positioned as opposing — and to no real end.

Or, perhaps they do know, don’t mind, and consider it all a part of an eventual, ill-defined “greater good.”

UPDATE, 7 January 2026: In a recent interview, the Lies are Unbekoming Substack said to Sasha Latypova, “You’ve faced significant pushback, including what you describe as a planned hit piece from Nature magazine and ongoing attacks from certain figures in the vaccine-skeptic community whom you characterize as “chaos agents.” How do readers distinguish genuine independent researchers from controlled opposition?”

Latypova replied, “[The] Nature ‘journalist’ at least was pretty clear about his intentions, and I thank him for his honesty. The journal did not publish anything as far as I am aware. My guess is they realized they can’t win this because they cannot argue with my material based on facts, and my professional background makes me highly credible.”

I disagree with Latypova. The entire effort looks like a staged attempt on someone’s(s’) part to advance the baseless idea that Substack and Dissident Writers are superior to academic journals. As a PhD/trained academic myself, I don’t dispute that the peer review process is broken and politicized and that research interests are captured by funding sources. But dismantling journals isn’t the answer — and isn’t going to happen regardless. Besides, at least studies published in Nature disclose whence the money and conflicts of interest. That’s more than I can say for any number of individuals or various groups and publications that have arisen during the COVID Era.