Five diabetes scientists ejected from the American Diabetes Association’s flagship annual conference last Friday have received a personal, on-camera apology from the organisation’s own CEO — but only after several days of institutional stonewalling that left the research community furious and asking serious questions about scientific freedom in the current political climate.
- Five diabetes scientists ejected from the ADA annual meeting were escorted out by police for distributing a critical editorial.
- The diabetes scientists ejected included the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care and a former ADA president.
- ADA CEO Charles Henderson issued a personal video apology after days of statements attempting to justify the removal.
- Louisiana State Police confirmed they acted at the ADA’s request when removing the researchers from the New Orleans conference.
- Five diabetes scientists ejected from the ADA annual meeting were escorted out by police for distributing a critical editorial.
- The diabetes scientists ejected included the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care and a former ADA president.
- ADA CEO Charles Henderson issued a personal video apology after days of statements attempting to justify the removal.
- Louisiana State Police confirmed they acted at the ADA’s request when removing the researchers from the New Orleans conference.
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What Actually Happened in New Orleans
The ADA’s 2025 Scientific Sessions, held in New Orleans, should have been a routine gathering of the world’s leading diabetes researchers — the kind of event where breakthroughs get previewed, data gets debated, and careers get made. Instead, it’s now a case study in what happens when a scientific organisation tries to suppress its own community’s political speech. The diabetes scientists ejected that day had no warning their presence would be treated as a threat.
The five researchers weren’t staging a sit-in or disrupting a session. They were standing outside the conference’s opening ceremony, quietly handing out printed copies of an editorial that had already been peer-reviewed and published in Diabetes Care — the ADA’s own flagship journal. The editorial, published in April, criticises the Trump administration’s approach to biomedical research funding, arguing it’s causing real, lasting damage to the field.
Within minutes, police arrived. According to multiple accounts, the scientists were physically escorted from the premises. At least one was reportedly shoved. All five had their conference badges confiscated. They were warned they’d face arrest if they attempted to return. Louisiana State Police later confirmed to media that they were acting at the direct request of the ADA — meaning this wasn’t overzealous venue security acting on a misread situation. The organisation made a deliberate call. The fact that diabetes scientists ejected in this manner included some of the field’s most senior figures made the decision all the more striking.
Diabetes Scientists Ejected: Who They Were
This wasn’t a group of peripheral attendees or outside agitators. These were some of the most respected figures in diabetes research, and that’s a big part of why the backlash was so immediate and so intense.
Steven Kahn, professor of medicine at the University of Washington, is the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care — the very journal that published the editorial he was handing out. Desmond Schatz of the University of Florida is a former ADA President. Aaron Kelly is a paediatrics professor at the University of Minnesota with a focus on childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes. Justin Ryder comes from Northwestern University. Irl Hirsch, also at the University of Washington, is one of the country’s most prominent clinical diabetes specialists.
When an organisation physically removes its own journal’s editor-in-chief from its annual conference for distributing that journal’s content, something has gone seriously wrong. Seeing diabetes scientists ejected under these circumstances — escorted out by state police at the request of their own professional body — was, for many in the field, genuinely shocking. The optics were catastrophic from the moment the story broke.
The Bhattacharya Connection
The timing of the ejections wasn’t incidental. The scientists began distributing the editorial just before the conference’s opening address — a speech that had originally been scheduled to be delivered by Jay Bhattacharya, the current head of the National Institutes of Health under President Trump. Bhattacharya cancelled at the last minute, and senior NIH official Rick Woychik stepped in as a replacement.
Bhattacharya is a polarising figure in the scientific community. His appointment to lead the NIH raised eyebrows among many researchers, particularly given his high-profile role during the COVID-19 pandemic as a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a ‘focused protection’ approach rather than broad lockdowns. To have the ADA’s opening keynote delivered by the NIH director — and then to have diabetes scientists ejected for distributing criticism of that administration’s research policies — was, for many attendees, far too much of a political signal.
The editorial at the centre of the dispute pulls no punches. Published in Diabetes Care, it argues that the Trump administration’s actions are actively undermining the infrastructure of American biomedical science — slashing funding, hollowing out agencies, and creating a climate of fear that’s pushing researchers out of the field entirely. Whether you agree with those conclusions or not, it was a formally published, peer-reviewed position piece in a respected scientific journal. Distributing it at a conference is, by any normal measure, entirely standard academic behaviour.
Days of Spin Before the Apology
What made the situation worse — arguably worse than the ejection itself — was the ADA’s initial response. Rather than immediately acknowledging that something had gone wrong, the organisation’s communications team went into damage-control mode.
Asked by MedPage Today to explain the removal, an ADA spokesperson said the diabetes scientists ejected from the venue had demonstrated ‘behaviour not consistent with this code of conduct’ for the conference. That statement landed badly. Distributing a published journal article is not a code-of-conduct violation by any reasonable interpretation, and researchers across the field said so loudly and publicly over the days that followed.
The ADA issued several more statements over the weekend and into early this week, each one attempting to justify the decision with varying degrees of success. None of them worked. The backlash only grew. Scientists took to social media. Open letters circulated. The story made national news.
Henderson’s Apology — and What Comes Next
By Wednesday, ADA CEO Charles Henderson had apparently concluded that the spin wasn’t going to hold. He posted a video directly addressing the five researchers by name — Kahn, Schatz, Kelly, Ryder, and Hirsch — and offering a personal apology.
‘What transpired is not reflective of who I am, the values I hold, or the way I was raised,’ Henderson said. ‘I will work hard to bring our community back together to build on the progress we have collectively made for those affected by diabetes.’
It’s a meaningful statement, and it does stand in sharp contrast to the organisation’s earlier posture. But apologies issued after days of institutional denial have a different weight than those offered immediately. The question now isn’t whether Henderson is personally contrite — his video suggests he is — it’s what the ADA does institutionally to ensure nothing like this happens again.
There are real structural questions here. Who made the call to involve police? Who authorised the badge confiscations and the arrest threats? Did Henderson know what was happening in real time, or was this a decision made below his level? The apology doesn’t address any of that, and the diabetes research community is going to want answers. For the diabetes scientists ejected that day, a video statement — however sincere — cannot substitute for genuine institutional accountability.
A Bigger Warning for Scientific Organisations
This episode doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s playing out against a backdrop of intense pressure on scientific institutions across the United States — pressure to avoid antagonising the current administration, to protect funding relationships, to stay out of political crossfire. That pressure is real, and it’s shaping behaviour at universities, journals, and professional bodies in ways that are only beginning to become visible.
What the ADA case illustrates is the cost of getting that calculation wrong. When a professional scientific body is seen to be suppressing the speech of its own leading researchers — using state police to do it — the reputational damage can be severe and lasting. Trust, once broken in a tight-knit research community, is extraordinarily hard to rebuild.
The five diabetes scientists ejected in New Orleans weren’t trying to burn anything down. They were doing what scientists do: distributing evidence-based argument and inviting engagement. That the ADA initially treated that as a threat worth calling the police over says something troubling about the pressures now shaping institutional behaviour in American science. Henderson’s apology is a start. Whether the ADA follows it with genuine structural accountability — and whether other scientific organisations take note of what happened when diabetes scientists ejected under these circumstances became a national story — will be far more telling.
Source: Ars Technica – Space
Frequently Asked Questions
Why were the diabetes scientists ejected from the ADA annual meeting?
The five scientists were removed for handing out copies of an April editorial published in the ADA’s own journal, Diabetes Care, which sharply criticised the Trump administration’s impact on biomedical research. Police escorted them out within minutes of them beginning to distribute the editorial.
Who were the five scientists removed from the ADA conference?
They were Steven Kahn, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care; former ADA President Desmond Schatz; Aaron Kelly of the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder of Northwestern University; and Irl Hirsch, also of the University of Washington.
What did ADA CEO Charles Henderson say in his apology?
Henderson posted a video personally apologising to all five scientists, stating that ‘what transpired is not reflective of who I am, the values I hold, or the way I was raised.’ He pledged to work to reunite the diabetes research community.
Did the ADA initially defend its decision to remove the scientists?
Yes. In the days before the apology, the ADA’s media team told MedPage Today that the scientists were removed for behaviour ‘not consistent with this code of conduct,’ a justification that drew widespread outrage from the research community.
