An excerpt from an excellent article "Lyme Disease Guidelines Panelists Engage in Coordinated Propaganda Campaign :
www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33098-lyme-disease-guidelines-panelists-engage-in-coordinated-propaganda-campaignResearch published in scientific journals goes through a process called peer review to determine if the material meets the editorial and scientific standards of the publication. Peer review is part of the scientific process intended to weed out flawed research and highlight the best science.
In the case of chronic Lyme disease, reviewers with serious conflicts of interest are able to prevent articles that support the ILADS point of view from being published.
According to information compiled in the 2008 antitrust investigation, IDSA panelists and others who endorse the IDSA guidelines sit on the editorial boards of 20 major medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet Infectious Diseases, where they can use their positions to prevent publication of studies that challenge their views on chronic Lyme.
Several members of the current IDSA guidelines panel published a flurry of papers in advance of the upcoming guidelines review process, with the apparent intent of relying on their own articles as the "evidence" requisite to assure the guidelines are "evidence-based." However, many of these articles were published in IDSA's own journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, which further subverts the peer-review process.
An example is the July 2015 article "Poor Positive Predictive Value of Lyme Disease Serologic Testing in an Area of Low Disease Incidence," which includes current guidelines panelists Paul M. Lantos and Gary P. Wormser as co-authors.
Although unethical, this practice is not necessarily illegal. However, it shows that the peer-review system has the potential to suppress good science that conflicts with a reviewer's opinions.