Supplement maker sues critic for defamation, spurring removal of accepted abstract

A Frontiers journal has taken down the abstract of a “provisionally accepted” article about harms from an herbal supplement after the company that sells the products sued the first author for defamation. 

The author of the paper, Cyriac Abby Philips, a hepatologist at Rajagiri Hospital in Kerala, India, has over 266,000 followers on his X account “TheLiverDoc.” In 2020, another of Philips’ papers about harm from supplements was retracted and removed after the large supplement company Herbalife, whose products the paper impugned, put legal pressure on Elsevier. 

Himalaya Wellness, an herbal supplement company which says its products are based on Ayurvedic practices, last year sued Philips for defamation based on his posts on X about the company’s products. 

X suspended his account following a court order that also barred Philips from speaking about Himalaya or its products. After Philips appealed the order and said he would hide the X posts at issue, a higher court ordered the social media platform to restore his account, but the gag order remains in effect. 

Before Himalaya filed its lawsuit, Philips had submitted a paper to Frontiers in Pharmacology describing cases of liver damage linked to one of Himalaya’s products, Liv.52. The journal accepted the article in January and posted it online. 

Soon after, Philips received an email from a research integrity staffer at Frontiers, who wrote: 

It has come to our attention that there are ongoing court proceedings involving you and the Himalaya Wellness Company. Alongside this, we have received information suggesting a potential undisclosed financial relationship. As stated in COPE’s guidelines, it is required to highlight any perceived conflicts of interest in a statement. For more information, please see our guidelines here: https://www.frontiersin.org/guidelines/policies-and-publication-ethics#conflicts-of-interest

In order to comply with COPE guidelines, we kindly request your input regarding the potential financial conflict of interest. Additionally, considering the ongoing legal matters, we would like to ask whether it would be preferable for you to halt publication until court proceedings are over?

Philips responded that he had an advisory position with the pharmaceutical company Cipla Limited that lapsed in 2020, and had no other conflicts of interest to report. 

Regarding the legal proceedings, Philips wrote they were “irrelevant” to the publication: 

There is no active legal order from a Court of Law currently in place that precludes Frontiers Journal or the authors from publishing this scientifically accepted peer-reviewed manuscript since the currently ongoing legal proceedings are independent of this publication and the submission, peer-review and final acceptance of the manuscript is independent of current Court proceedings.

In June, the Frontiers staffer replied the publisher had decided to “place the publication of the article on hold until the legal proceedings in India have been resolved.” The email continued: 

To explain, based on the information that we have received, we have been advised that publication of the article could already be covered by the current court order, or that the claimant will most likely take measures to this effect. Therefore, until the legal proceedings have been resolved, we will proceed to withdraw your article temporarily from the publication process.

Once the legal proceedings have been concluded, we would of course be happy to reexamine the position. Please kindly keep us informed once the situation has been resolved.

Philips and his co-authors subsequently received an automated notification from the Frontiers in Pharmacology editorial office that their manuscript had been “withdrawn” and “is no longer under consideration for publication in this journal.” The publisher refunded the authors’ payment, and removed the abstract from its website. 

A spokesperson for Frontiers confirmed that the journal had “temporarily withdrawn the article from the publication process pending the outcome of the legal proceedings currently taking place in India.” 

The spokesperson continued: 

We have explained this in writing to Dr Philips, who agreed with our decision. We have also informed Dr Philips that we are happy to reexamine this position once the legal proceedings are concluded.

A representative from Himalaya told us “the matter is sub judice,” meaning under consideration in court and not supposed to be discussed publicly. “Based on a Court’s direction the paper was withdrawn.”

Philips was not available for comment. Arif Hussain Theruvath, a researcher at Rajagiri Hospital and an author on the paper, said Philips “is currently prohibited by Karnataka Civil Court’s injunction orders from speaking on Himalaya Wellness company or their products, especially Liv.52.” 

Theruvath, who provided documentation of Frontiers’ correspondence with the authors, told us: 

There was no reason for Frontiers to hold publication or halt further proceedings on a scientifically accepted publication on [in response to] a “soft threat” based on misleading civil suit from the Ayurveda product manufacturer who had no right to extend the gag order towards scientific publications, rather than only Dr. Philips’ social media posts. …

This has been a disappointing decision from a scientific integrity and moral context for science, and medical scientists – that law and legal can be twisted in any manner to silence important scientific findings that have great impact on public health.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].