By Peter C. Gøtzsche at Brownstone dot org.

The Cochrane Collaboration publishes systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions. I was one of the founders but was expelled 25 years later, in September 2018, becoming the only person ever to be expelled.

Cochrane's actions were widely condemned in top journals, e.g. in Science, Nature, The Lancet, and in the BMJ whose Editor-in-Chief wrote that Cochrane should be committed to holding industry and academia to account, and that my expulsion reflected "a deep seated difference of opinion about how close to industry is too close."

The world's most cited medical researcher, Professor John Ioannidis from Stanford, published a scathing criticism of Cochrane's "character assassination" of me, wondering if Cochrane had silenced "a giant with major positive contributions to evidence-based medicine" because it had been hijacked.

I published two books about the affair and a book review noted: "This book carefully recounts this dark period in medical science where a once-trusted institution carried out one of the worst show trials ever conducted in academia. The CEO and his collaborators went about their task in a manner that mirrors how the drug industry operates."

Cochrane's downfall started in 2012, when British journalist Mark Wilson became the CEO. To the dismay of the Cochrane pioneers, he directed the prestigious Cochrane Titanic towards the iceberg that would sink us all, in the same way as he seems to have also destroyed his former workplace, Panos in London.

I tried to prevent this and was elected to the Governing Board in January 2017 with the most votes even though I was the only one of the 11 candidates who criticised the leadership in my election statement.

When I became a threat to Wilson, he plotted my demise. He was in total control of the Governing Board, and in a Kafkaesque process, he and the board's two co-chairs, Martin Burton and Marguerite Koster, broke all the essential rules for charities and for Cochrane and lied to defend their actions. Burton, who, like so many others, was afraid of Wilson, who was his boss, was the executioner.

Wilson's plot involved that Burton should compile a report to a lawyer hired by Cochrane, a so-called Counsel, about my alleged wrongdoings during my 25 years with Cochrane, and that the board should use Counsel's report to expel me.

But there was a problem. Counsel's report exonerated me. He saw no reason to discipline me, which is remarkable because Burton, in his report to Counsel, had lied blatantly. He even called it an "allegation" that several board members witnessed that Wilson totally lost his temper during a board meeting and became physically aggressive toward a board member.

The Secret Show Trial

I was given only 5 minutes to defend myself before I was asked to leave the board room. I was therefore unable to correct misunderstandings and falsehoods raised against me during the rest of the day.

However, I had ensured, according to our rules, that the meeting - which was planned to be top secret and unrecorded - was recorded, and a board member gave me a copy of his recordings, even though Wilson had asked everyone to delete them. They revealed that Burton and Koster had lied to convince the board to expel me.

Burton talked about long-term disruptive, outrageous, and wrong behaviour, failure to abide by the rules and behave collaboratively, and breaches of the Collaboration Agreement, all of which were untrue. He also hinted that I had harassed Cochrane staff sexually: "To carry on the Me-Too analogy…" and claimed that my "allegations," which were proven facts, about his own and Wilson's mismanagement of Cochrane had been demonstrated to be wrong."

Burton used "evidence" he had planted himself, - letters of complaint about me that curiously all arrived just after I had submitted my report to Counsel documenting Burton's maladministration of Cochrane and how he and a previous co-chair, Lisa Bero, had tampered wi...