I want to talk about something that few scientists seem willing to say out loud:
Science is no longer as objective as we pretend it is.
Over the past few years, I’ve watched a subtle but dangerous shift in how data is interpreted. We now live in an era of narrative science—where the goal is no longer discovery, but alignment. Where the findings must fit the story, rather than the story emerging from the findings.
The best example of this is hidden in plain sight, in one of the world’s leading journals: The Lancet.
The “Global Kidney Disease” Study That Looked Away
A recent Lancet publication titled “Global, Regional, and National Burden of Chronic Kidney Disease in Adults, 1990–2023” presents a sweeping 33-year analysis. On paper, it looks comprehensive—204 countries, millions of cases, three decades of data.
Mark, Patrick B., et al. “Global, regional, and national burden of chronic kidney disease in adults, 1990–2023, and its attributable risk factors: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023.” The Lancet (2025).
But here’s what struck me:
Nowhere did they seriously examine what happened between 2019 and 2023 — the pandemic years.
That omission is not a small oversight; it’s like publishing a post-war health analysis without acknowledging the war.
The world just went through the most dramatic health event in a century. Yet the paper glides across it as if it never happened. The only mention of COVID-19 appears twice — once buried in the results, and once in a disclaimer noting that “major world events, including conflicts and COVID-19, were not analysed.”
That’s astonishing.
Why This Matters
In 2023, The Lancet reported that 788 million adults now live with chronic kidney disease (CKD).
That’s more than double the number in 1990.
But when you plot the data, the story changes.
Between 2015 and 2019, CKD rose gradually — about 14 million new cases per year.
After 2019, that slope jumps to 23 million per year — a 40 percent acceleration.
That equates to an extra 34 million CKD cases beyond what the pre-pandemic trend would predict.
If millions with kidney disease died during COVID-19 — which they did — the numbers should have fallen, not risen.
Yet the curve bends upward. That means something new is driving kidney injury in the population.
And that’s exactly what real science should be asking:
Is this due to persistent post-COVID injury?
Is it linked to metabolic stress, immune dysfunction, or reinfection patterns?
Or could there be another, less comfortable factor that nobody wants to discuss?
Those are the questions honest scientists should pursue.
But The Lancet didn’t ask them. It smoothed the entire curve into a long, safe story of “lifestyle and hypertension.”
The Cost of Narrative Science
When editors and reviewers prefer safe stories over difficult questions, the public loses trust — and truth loses ground.
If a pandemic can reshape the global disease landscape and the world’s top journals can pretend otherwise, then we have stopped doing science.
We’ve started doing marketing.
It’s not a criticism of individual authors — I understand the pressures. To get published, one must often stay within the narrative boundaries set by funding bodies and editorial boards. But that’s precisely how narrative science thrives: through quiet conformity.
A Call for Intellectual Courage
True science doesn’t care about convenience or consensus.
It asks uncomfortable questions and follows data into places no one wants to look.
If chronic kidney disease truly accelerated after 2019 — and the data say it did — then our duty is to confront why.
Ignoring it doesn’t make the trend disappear; it only ensures that more people will suffer before we understand it.
In the end, this isn’t just about kidneys.
It’s about integrity.
If science can ignore the world’s largest health crisis and still claim objectivity, then we have to rebuild what it means to search for truth.
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