A video from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 2026 conference made headlines over the weekend, but it wasn’t about a scientific advance. The ADA conference organizers had the police escort five researchers out of the meeting for handing out an editorial that was published in one of their journals, Diabetes Care. The event gained attention on social media where scientists from different disciplines expressed their thoughts on the topic.

Reflecting on this incident in an interview, Justin Ryder, an obesity and diabetes researcher at Northwestern University and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who was one of the ejected attendees, said, “I have great concerns. Censorship in any form, but particularly at a scientific meeting of, I would, say some of the most well-known and respected people in the field, is quite disturbing.”

Steven Kahn, a diabetes researcher at the University of Washington and the editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, was one of the editorial authors and another scientist escorted out of the ADA conference. The article addressed how recent actions taken by the federal administration will negatively impact research and public health outcomes, specifically diabetes and patient care. The authors concluded by calling on scientists and clinicians across disease fields to speak out about how these changes are affecting science.

The authors learned that the ADA organizers had invited Jayanta Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, to give an opening talk focused in part on federal funding; another NIH spokesperson attended the talk in Bhattacharya’s place. “We were planning to hand out [copies of the editorial] just quietly as an alternative viewpoint on the whole thing from what was going to be put forward by an NIH official,” Kahn said. They recruited several other researchers who shared the opinion around the dangers of many of the federal changes to research for distribution.

Ryder said he was “more than willing to stand up for science” and help his colleagues. “I didn't see anything wrong with what they were proposing to do, because it's distributing an editorial published in [the ADA’s] journal,” he said.

The ADA said that the researchers violated their code of conduct from the meeting. “Our conference code of conduct expects that all participants will conduct themselves in a professional and respectful manner,” a representative for the ADA told The Scientist in a request for comment. “These attendees were escorted out by our onsite event security because they demonstrated behavior not consistent with this code of conduct. They were respectfully given the opportunity to cease this behavior and chose not to, which is why they were escorted out.” The representative clarified that state police were onsite to provide event security.

The organization also released a statement explaining that, as a nonprofit organization, the group maintains a nonpartisan environment, which was the basis for their decision to remove the involved scientists.

Ryder said that that account was misleading. “We were told very forcefully by security personnel that we were not allowed to [pass out the editorial] and that [the] ADA did not want us passing those out. There was no ‘Please stop doing this.’ There was no ‘Hey let's talk about this.’”

He added that the officers tried to pull the papers out of his hands, at which time he told the officer that he was exercising his freedom of speech and continued passing out copies of the editorial. “It was at this time that the security personnel and police became much more aggressive shoving me and removed me from the hall,” he said. The group, which included Kahn, was told that they could no longer attend the conference. The researchers went to the front of the event site and continued to hand out the editorial until security returned, stating that they were trespassing and would be arrested if they did not leave.

Ryder added that he and his colleagues were never told what part of the code of conduct that they violated, adding that the meeting organizers did not communicate with them directly before or during the incident. Kahn said that he learned that the ADA sent an email out Saturday night to its members and conference attendees that indicated that the researchers were expelled because they had not gotten permission to hand out the editorial in advance. “Nobody told us,” he said. “There's no professional member who's a scientist like me, who knew that those were the rules.”

“I was very surprised that these actions were taken,” said Craig Kaplan, a biologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Kaplan was not at the meeting but learned about it when the video was posted online. While he acknowledged that distributing the articles before a talk from an NIH official could be viewed as “provocative,” he said that the editorial touched on many important issues that concern researchers.

Kaplan added that the actions from the ADA also appeared to be in opposition with their stated mission of diabetes advocacy. The decision to remove community members for raising important issues, he said, stirs concern among researchers including himself that their organizations, in efforts to protect their nonprofit status, will not support them if they do express their dissent.

Kaplan said that this is particularly frightening. “If being in the good graces of the current administration means you can't express your scientific opinion, then your organization has been corrupted.”

Kahn echoed this concern with his own feelings. "I feel that an organization I have belonged to for nearly four decades, and which I believed represented my views on the value of biomedical research to improve the lives of people with diabetes, has effectively disregarded my First Amendment rights. Who would have ever thought this would happen in an association representing biomedical scientists?"

Ryder said that he heard similar comments from colleagues who reached out to him to offer their support and thanks for the group’s actions. Kahn said that he learned that several attendees spoke in support of the researchers, and one individual said publicly he believed that the ADA owed them an apology.

Justin Blumenstiel, a geneticist at the University of Kansas who also saw the news of the incident on Friday afternoon, said that this is an apparent attempt by the organization to avoid potential consequences from these activities before they could transpire.

Blumenstiel added that free inquiry in science has allowed the US to become a strong scientific force. “I'm very worried that we're going to lose our status as a leader in science in the United States. And anyone who speaks out on that, I want them to have a strong voice.”

The ADA’s conference code of conduct, which their statements suggest the researchers breached, prohibits harassment and protesting. “I do not see [why] handing out an article would be considered a form of protest that would be sufficient to violate a policy,” Blumenstiel said. “I would make an argument [that] asking the police to remove these people could be a form of harassing behavior towards the scientists themselves.”

Ryder said that someone from the ADA contacted him and his colleagues on Saturday night to schedule a meeting with the association’s chief executive officer and chief medical and scientific officer. The representative also invited the group to return to the meeting, but Ryder said that the ADA did not offer an apology; all five impacted researchers declined to return to the conference.

Ryder said that he told the representative that he would meet with the ADA leadership if they issued a public apology to him and his colleagues. Kahn added, “The five of us feel that we're willing to meet with ADA, they just have to meet with all five of us [together], they can't meet with us one on one, because it's a ‘he said, she said’ story, and that we expect them to apologize because whatever information they have put out in the public domain is just false.”

As of the time of publication, no apology has been offered. But, in response to the ADA’s statement, the chair of the conference scientific sessions, diabetes researcher Mark Atkinson at the University of Florida, and the ADA’s president-elect, endocrinologist Jennifer Green at Duke, resigned.

Ryder called the decision to remove prominent community members without trying to first deescalate the situation disrespectful. “It shows a lack of quality leadership from the American Diabetes Association that starts at the top. And they need to take responsibility for harming the integrity of science and harming the integrity of their organization,” he said.

Indeed, Blumenstiel hopes that ADA members asked for an inquiry into this incident to understand what led to the decision to remove such prominent figures in the community to make sure such things don’t happen again.

He also hopes that this incident serves as an educational opportunity to illustrate the importance of protecting science and free inquiry. “This is an example of a direction that we cannot go down, in which people voicing their opinions at these conferences are removed by the police. And I'm hoping that organizers of conferences going forward be attentive to this concern,” he said.

Kahn agreed. “Every scientific conference should allow the clear exchange of ideas,” he said. “This has taught me one thing, that we've got to make more about the fact of what has been happening to research funding, and we need to get that voice out there, and the public aware, and Congress aware of what the administration is trying to do to stifle research, and also to stifle people speaking up.”

Ryder said that, with the scientific community facing many challenges, “It's important that we all continue to speak up and speak out about these really direct, disastrous, and harmful federal policies that are impacting science.”

*The researchers interviewed in this story spoke on their own behalf. The views and opinions expressed here do not reflect those of their institutions. *

Update: On Wednesday, June 10, the chief executive officer of the ADA, Charles Henderson apologized in a video statement. He also announced that ADA will conduct an internal review of the event, the findings of which will be shared publicly.

• Kahn S, et al. Misguided brushes of a pen continue to dismantle and destroy biomedical research in the United States: We can no longer afford complacency and fear. We must all act now! Diabetes Care. 2026;49(6):901-905.