Trump admin ends contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature amid bias, China concerns

The Trump administration has stopped key funding for Springer Nature, the retraction-plagued, controversial publishing behemoth of more than 3,000 scientific and medical journals. 

Springer Nature publications have long earned subscription revenue from academic and government institutions, but the Trump administration has terminated one key contract and allowed three others to expire, a Trump administration official told Fox News Digital. 

National Institutes of Health (NIH) and cancer research pacts were deemed "mission essential" and therefore will remain intact, Fox News Digital has learned. 

The Trump administration has cracked down on organizations with perceived political bias, business practices that the president believes misuse U.S. taxpayer dollars and foreign control. 

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The Trump administration has cracked down on organizations with perceived political bias and business practices that they feel misuse U.S. taxpayer dollars. (Getty Images)

The German-owned Springer Nature was forced to issue 2,923 retractions in 2024, according to Retraction Watch. The publishing giant has also been accused of significantly downplaying the COVID lab-leak theory and censoring content to appease the Chinese government. It also has a "peer review" process that critics believe is dominated by woke groupthink.

The brand’s popular "Nature Medicine" journal was cited frequently in a 2023 congressional report from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic titled, "The Proximal Origin of a Cover-up." 

Nature Medicine republished in March 2020 a report from a month earlier in Virological titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" that concluded the virus was "not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."

"This is one of the single most impactful and influential scientific papers in history, and it expressed conclusions that were not based on sound science nor in fact, but instead on assumptions," the congressional report’s executive summary stated. 

The Select Subcommittee report even suggested former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed for the publication of the entry that sought to dispel the Wuhan lab-leak theory. Fauci has denied any role in the article and said while he favored the natural-origin theory for the virus, he always had an open mind about the lab leak.

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Reuters)

In 2017, Springer Nature was "caught blocking access to academic research in China," CNN reported at the time. 

A spokesperson for Springer Nature brushed off concerns when asked for comment about the Trump administration terminating a contract and allowing others to expire. 

"We are proud of our track record in communicating U.S. research to the rest of the world for over a century and continue to have good relationships with U.S. federal agencies," a spokesperson for Springer Nature told Fox News Digital. 

"We don’t comment on individual contracts, but across our global business there is no material change to our customers or their spend," the spokesperson continued. "We remain confident about the strength of the service we provide." 

Springer Nature did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about political bias, allegedly appeasing China, or use of taxpayer funds. 

SPRINGER NATURE BLOCKS ACCESS TO ARTICLES IN CHINA

The Springer Nature publishing building in Berling, Germany.  (Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The funding termination was first reported by Axios. 

Axios also reported that the Justice Department formally sent a letter asking a Springer publication about "its editorial practices and accusing the publishing house of acting as a partisan in scientific debates, as well as wrongfully advocating for positions," citing a source with knowledge of the matter.

Springer Nature also publishes Scientific American, which endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election. It was only the second time in 179 years that the publication endorsed a candidate for president. 

"Before making this endorsement, we evaluated Harris’s record as a U.S. senator and as vice president under Joe Biden, as well as policy proposals she’s made as a presidential candidate. Her opponent, Donald Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, also has a record—a disastrous one," Scientific American editors wrote. 

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Guests pose for a group photo after signing a strategic partnership framework agreement between Springer Nature and World Publishing Corporation WPC at the 30th Beijing International Book Fair in Beijing, capital of China, June 21, 2024.  (Jia Zhao/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Springer Nature also practices diversity, equity, and including (DEI) policies, according to its website. The company’s website has a "diversity commitment" section that details the publisher’s commitment to "promoting practices that support diversity and inclusion in science communication and publishing." 

"As a guiding principle, we aim to foster equity, diversity and inclusion within our internal practices and in published content, embody these values in all our editorial activities and to support and promote these values in the research community," the website states. 

Springer Nature lists its priorities as increasing gender diversity among commissioned authors, and peer reviewer population and editorial board members, while promising to maintain a "no men-only" policy at its conferences. 

Nature magazine also has "a language sensitivity guide," billed as a "resource of appropriate language to use when writing about topics such as ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, disability and health" to ensure "appropriately diverse representation" in its pages. 

"We are currently developing our commitment on other aspects of diversity, prioritizing ethnic and racial diversity," the website states. 

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The logo of Springer Nature at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange during its listing in Frankfurt, Germany, on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024.

At the height of the George Floyd protests in June 2020, the company committed to ending "anti-Black practices in research." The following month it published an editorial recognizing "the existence of systemic racism in medicine" and calling for it to stop. 

Along the way, Springer Nature issued 2,923 retractions in 2024, according to Retraction Watch. Springer Nature noted that the majority were from articles published before 2023.

"61.5% (1797 articles) of retractions were for papers published before January 2023 as part of our commitment to cleaning up the academic record. 38.5% (1126) of retractions were for articles published after January 2023," it stated.

It also published 482,000 articles in 2024, so there were many that checked out, and Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky doesn’t believe the correction issue is as alarming as it seems. 

"Springer Nature, like all major scientific publishers, has had to retract thousands of papers over the past several years because paper mills and other bad actors have taken advantage of poor quality control," Oransky told Fox News Digital. 

Springer Nature retracted articles for "compromised peer review process," "inappropriate or irrelevant references," and "citation behavior" that resulted in the publisher no longer having "confidence in the results and conclusions" that were published. 

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, flanked by then-Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki, speaks at a briefing in 2021. (AP)

Last year, Springer Nature found itself in the news when Laura Helmuth, the top editor at its "Scientific American" journal, referred to Americans who voted for Trump as the "meanest, dumbest, most bigoted" group and "f---ing fascists."

As Trump pulled ahead on Election Day, Helmuth repeatedly attacked the candidate's supporters on Bluesky, a social media platform that is popular with liberals. 

"Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f--- them to the moon and back," Helmuth wrote, while another post said, "I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of f---ing fascists."

Helmuth eventually apologized and deleted the comments. She resigned a few days later. 

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Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.