Trial By Error: Furor Over Wired’s “Mind-Body” Article Continues

By David Tuller, DrPH

The furor over the Wired epic about mind-body treatments for Long Covid simmers on. “The Truth About Long Covid,” published on June 1st, proposed that these sorts of interventions might cure people, but that angry patient have censored science and blocked research progress. The piece generated fierce pushback—not least from popular New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, who called it “empirically poor” and engaged in heated exchanges on X with the author. (The author, Alan Levinovitz, is a professor of religion at James Madison University in Virginia.)

Last week, David Putrino, a neuroscientist and director of rehabilitation innovation at Mt Sinai Health System in New York, and a prominent investigator into possible biomedical mechanisms driving Long Covid, posted a call on social media for retraction of the article. His call appeared in response to an open letter to Wired posted by Scott Hugo, a housing rights attorney with Long Covid from Oakland, California. 

In his own letter, Hugo wrote: “I have endured the ravages of Long COVID for over two years; I am writing this plea to retract “The Painful Truth About Long COVID” [bold in the original] because of the damage it has already done to longhaulers (and the broader chronic illness community) and the damage it will continue to do if Wired continues to promote and support it.” He called the article “misleading” and “inaccurate.” (Hugo sent his letter to Wired privately and posted it publicly after having failed to receive a response.)

More recently, Hugo posted a second letter—this one addressed to Wired’s staff rather than its leadership team.

Beyond Hugo’s effort, a petition on change.org calling for retraction has garnered more than 2,000 signatories.

Also last week, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a progressive news watchdog organization, published an article called “Media Won’t Stop Psychologizing Long Covid,” by writer and investigative journalist Justine Barron. The article highlighted the trend of high-profile stories in major outlets that question whether Long Covid is really a biomedical disorder and promote so-called “biopsychosocial” interventions, with the Wired version just the latest iteration.

Here’s what Putrino wrote in his statement on the article:

“It is irregular for me to call for a media piece to retracted, but when faced with such an obviously biased and poor piece of journalism that is being platformed by bad actors that are harming the #LongCOVID community, it becomes necessary. 

“Unfortunately, WIRED has chosen to allow an article through their editorial process that is both factually inaccurate and written by a non-expert with a known bias and history of platforming a psychosomatic framing of LongCOVID. 

“In addition, he has since displayed shocking behavior online: gaslighting and mocking severely ill people who pushed back against the misinformation he is peddling in his article. The author claims that the backlash he has received from the article proves his point, but even this is a calculated and bad-faith position. For instance, were I to write an article claiming that “smoking cigarettes cures emphysema, but I’m not allowed to talk about it” would WIRED publish it? This is not hyperbole – this accurately represents the framing of the article and the subsequent posturing of the author when faced with critique. 

“I have to believe that as a science-based news outlet, WIRED is better than this. Please listen to the community of patients, scientists and clinicians who are calling for the retraction of this inaccurate piece of work.”

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Wired mischaracterizes mistake as a misspelling

I don’t expect much from Wired here. What has happened so far does not convince me that Wired, whatever its reputation, is “better than this,” as Putrino stated. I assume some of the country’s leading Long Covid advocates and advocacy groups have reached out to Wired privately to discuss the article, as would be common in such situations. Assuming that has happened, there have been no apparent impacts to date.

Wired has already failed to respond to what is clearly a serious violation of journalism ethics and practice. The story criticized an unnamed law professor for damaging scientific research, failed to follow basic journalism practices to seek her response, and then provided enough details about her for anyone to surface her name within seconds–in effect “outing” her to public scrutiny. In a tone-deaf series of responses on X, Levinovitz dismissed criticism of his actions as “wild” and “absurd.” (I wrote about this situation here.)

The violations of practice and ethics are glaringly clear to anyone who has taken Journalism 101–or anyone with common sense. Wired certainly understands that Levinovitz and the editorial team screwed up here. But they have ignored the two e-mails I sent raising questions about this matter. 

Even the way Wired has handled corrections has been revealing, to the magazine’s detriment. Since publication, Wired been fixed the article in two places: replacing the word “encephalitis” with “encephalomyelitis,” and changing my title at Berkeley from “lecturer” to “senior fellow.” 

Wired corrected both errors soon after they were brought to the publication’s attention following the article’s appearance on June 1st. That’s commendable. But they did not post a notice about the corrections until June 9th. That unexplained delay is not commendable. Standard practice is to publish a correction notice when a correction is published. That lets readers know that the publication is committed to transparency as well as accuracy. 

In the delayed notice, Wired mischaracterized what had happened. The notice stated that the magazine had “corrected the spelling of ME/CFS.” That is nonsense—“encephalitis” is not a misspelling of “encephalomyelitis.” These are two separate albeit related words that mean two different things. Here are some actual misspellings of “encephalitis”—“encphalitis,” “ncephalitis,” “encephalits,” etc. 

So this was not a misspelling—it was a self-evident mis-naming. The entire article focused on Long Covid and ME/CFS, yet Levinovitz and Wired managed to mangle the name of one of these two illnesses. Trying to pass it off as a bunch of errant typos is inappropriate. It is also an insult to readers’ intelligence. To put it bluntly: It’s a lie. Wired obviously knows this was not a case of misspelling.

If Wired can’t even be honest in acknowledging and making corrections, it would be foolish to expect honesty in how they deal with larger issues about the piece.