Andrew A. Skolnick is an American science and medical journalist and photographer. He was an associate news editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association.[1]
In 1972, Skolnick participated in a two-year professional photography certificate program at the Paier Art School. He received a B.A. from Charter Oak State College in 1978. He graduated in 1981 with an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.[2]
Skolnick was a scientific photographer at Yale University’s biology department from 1975 to 1977, a visiting lecturer teaching scientific photography at Yale from 1976-1977, a science editor for the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation from 1981 to 1985, the life sciences editor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign News Bureau from 1985 to 1987, and the associate science news editor at the American Medical Association (AMA) from 1987 until 1999, when he became an associate news editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). From 2004 to 2006, Skolnick served as the executive director of the Center for Inquiry's Commission on Scientific Medicine and Mental Health.
In 1992, Skolnick, JAMA's editor George Lundberg, and the AMA were sued for $194 million two Transcendental Meditation (TM) organizations then headed by Deepak Chopra. The suit alleged Skolnick's news report on TM's health care products and services marketed under the trademarked name Maharishi Ayurveda was libelous and that it tortuously interfered with their business interests.[3] In August 1992, in a noted decision, the trial court rejected the plaintiff’s motion to enjoin JAMA and Skolnick under the Illinois Deceptive Practices Act from publishing statements about them and Maharishi Ayurveda alleged to be defamatory. The court noted that the plaintiffs did not allege that the statements about them in the article were false or misleading. It held that "plaintiffs have little likelihood of prevailing on the merits of their disparagement claiml", and that JAMA’s and Skolnick’s alleged defamatory statements were protected as "fair comment and criticism" on an issue of public concern. [4] [5] [6] [7] Shortly thereafter, the case was dismissed without prejudice in March 1993.[8]
In 1996, he was invited to China for a semester to teach western journalism at Shanghai International Studies University, where he also served as language adviser and scrip editor for Shanghai Television International Broadcasting Service.[9]
In 1998, the Carter Center Mental Health Program awarded Skolnick with an inaugural Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism to investigate the treatment of jail and prison inmates with mental illness.[10] His investigation led to the publication of two news reports in JAMA and to a special series in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch titled "Death, Neglect and the Bottom Line." An article in August 2003 issue of Harpers magazine by Wil Hylton describes how Skolnick was quickly fired by the AMA when Correctional Medical Services, one of the for-profit health care companies criticized in the articles, threatened JAMA and the Post-Dispatch with litigation.[11] Unlike the AMA, the Post-Dispatch hired a law firm specializing in news media law to respond to the threat and nominated Skolnick and fellow reporters Kim Bell and Bill Allen for a Pulitzer Prize.[12]
Skolnick's reporting has received numerous awards from health, media, and humanitarian organizations, including World Hunger Year,[13] the National Association of Community Health Centers, the Carter Center Mental Health Program, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and other groups.[14] Skolnick, Bell, and Allen also received Amnesty International USA's "Spotlight on Media Award" and were honored by Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy as finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The following year, the American Medical Writers Association awarded Skolnick the John P. McGovern Medical for Preeminence in Medical Communication.[15]
According to Skolnick, some researchers feel that an alkaloid compound found in the Chinese herbal medicine Qian Ceng Ta could be more effective than some drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.[16] Skolnick has also written that the homeopathy industry has developed "from a historical curiosity into a $250-million-a-year scam".[17][18]