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SCIENCE + INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY
They Called the Cops on Their Own Editor-in-Chief
The American Diabetes Association removed five scientists from its New Orleans conference for distributing a peer-reviewed editorial. The editorial was published in the ADA's own journal. The scientists are now banned.
By Kim M. Braud | June 2026
It happened here. At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, on the morning of June 5, 2026, the American Diabetes Association called Louisiana State Police to remove five of its own scientists from its annual conference.
Their offense: handing out copies of a published editorial.
Not a flyer. Not a protest banner. A peer-reviewed editorial, already in print, in Diabetes Care — the ADA's own flagship journal.
The five researchers were escorted out by at least three police officers. Their conference badges were confiscated. Copies of the editorial were taken from their hands. Researchers who had traveled to New Orleans specifically to present at conference sessions were told they could not come back. They were banned from the remainder of a conference they had come to participate in as scientists.
The ADA called it a code of conduct violation.
They distributed a peer-reviewed editorial. In the organization's own journal. At the organization's own conference.
What the editorial actually said
The editorial, published in Diabetes Care, warned that the Trump administration's dismantling of the federal biomedical research apparatus poses a long-term threat to public health in America. It called for collective action.
It is not a fringe position. A February 2026 report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee documented that the NIH had terminated or frozen at least $561 million in research grants across the four leading causes of death in this country. Of that, $83 million was cut from 68 diabetes research grants specifically. Congress had already fully appropriated that money.
The editorial said out loud what the data already shows.
The man they ejected wrote the journal
Dr. Steven Kahn, director of the University of Washington Diabetes Research Center and editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, was among those removed.
He had flown to New Orleans to present at the conference. He had published the editorial in the journal he runs. He was handing out copies of his own work.
Police escorted him from the building.
Kahn later said he was not scared. He said he was willing to be arrested. He also said something that deserves to be repeated:
"I think all professional organizations are worried about their nonprofit status. And so bunches of them have been quieted, in my view. This cannot carry on." - Dr. Steven Kahn, editor-in-chief, Diabetes Care
When the editor-in-chief of your journal gets escorted from your conference for distributing his own published work, the chilling effect is no longer theoretical.
A chest bump and a warning
Dr. Aaron Kelly, a University of Minnesota pediatrician and another of those removed, said a police officer chest-bumped him multiple times during the confrontation. He later received an email from the ADA's executive team saying the organization had no choice but to remove him.
No choice.
That is the phrase a professional organization uses when it has already decided that its institutional survival matters more than the integrity of the scientists who built it.
The timing was not incidental
The incident unfolded minutes before the Trump-appointed NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was scheduled to deliver the keynote address. Bhattacharya canceled at the last minute. A senior NIH adviser addressed the crowd instead.
Whether the cancellation was related to the confrontation outside is not publicly confirmed. The timing, however, is not nothing.
Why Louisiana has more at stake than most
Louisiana consistently ranks among the states with the highest rates of diabetes in the country. The federal research dollars being cut are not abstractions here. They fund the science that informs treatment, shapes clinical guidelines, and eventually reaches patients in this state.
When $83 million is stripped from diabetes research, Louisiana patients absorb part of that cost. When the scientists doing that research are silenced, even by their own professional organizations, the cost compounds.
What the ADA should have done
Professional organizations exist to protect the integrity of their disciplines. The ADA publishes Diabetes Care. The ADA holds annual scientific sessions where that research is shared and debated. The ADA's own scientists wrote an editorial in the ADA's own journal.
The appropriate response to scientists distributing that editorial was nothing. There was nothing to respond to. It was already published. It was already part of the scientific record.
Instead, the ADA called the police.
That decision will be part of the record too.
What we should demand
The ADA owes a public accounting of what happened, who made the decision to call law enforcement, and under what interpretation of its code of conduct distributing a published editorial constitutes a violation.
The five researchers who were removed should have their bans rescinded immediately.
And every professional scientific organization in this country should be watching what happened in New Orleans, because if the answer to published science is removal by police, the chilling effect is no longer theoretical.
It walked into the Morial Convention Center on June 5, 2026. It was wearing a badge.
Kim M. Braud is a strategist, writer, and founder working in the areas of economic power, cultural narrative, and community leadership. With expansive experience across financial services, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit leadership, her writing explores who controls systems, who benefits from them, and who gets left out. Her work centers on economic mobility, institutional accountability, and the stories we inherit, and the ones we choose to dismantle.
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