Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, an English surgeon. Wakley named the journal after the lancet, a small surgical scalpel, and was motivated by what he saw as corruption, nepotism, and incompetence in London's medical establishment.
According to Journal Citation Reports, The Lancet had a 2024 impact factor of 88.5, ranking it first in the category "Medicine, General & Internal" above The New England Journal of Medicine. In Scopus rankings for 2023, it placed first out of 636 journals in General Medicine.
The Lancet retracted the 1998 paper on the 2nd of February 2010, after lead author Andrew Wakefield was found to have acted unethically in conducting the research. Editor-in-chief Richard Horton stated the paper had "fatal conflicts of interest" that Wakefield had not disclosed to the journal.
The Lancet has been owned by Elsevier since 1991, when it was acquired from Hodder & Stoughton. Richard Horton has served as editor-in-chief since 1995.
The Lancet accepts only 5% of articles submitted. Each submission is reviewed by the journal's staff within 72 hours, and accepted articles are published within four weeks.
On the 19th of February 2020, The Lancet published a letter signed by 27 scientists condemning theories about a non-natural COVID-19 origin as conspiracy theories. Emails later obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests showed that those involved had concealed their participation to create an impression of scientific unanimity. In September 2021 the journal published a letter from 16 specialists stating that research-related hypotheses about COVID-19's origins are not misinformation.