Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader
The resignation of Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American and a powerful social-justice warrior, makes me fear for science journalism. Photo from Wikipedia.
HOBOKEN, NOVEMBER 15, 2024. Well before Scientific American’s editor vented her despair over the election, social injustice warriors were bashing the magazine for its political views. Critics include anti-woke bros Jordan Peterson, Charles “The Bell Curve” Murray, Pinker wannabe Michael Shermer, Dawkins wannabe Jerry Coyne and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal and City Journal.
On election night, Sci Am editor Laura Helmuth called Trump voters “racist and sexist” and “fucking fascists” on the social media platform BlueSky, a haven for Twitter/X refugees. Yeah, she lost her temper, but Helmuth’s labels apply to Trump if not to all who voted for him.
Although Helmuth apologized for her remarks, Elon Musk (perhaps miffed that Scientific American recently knocked him) and others called for her head. Yesterday Helmuth announced she was stepping down.
Trump spews insults and wins the election. Helmuth loses her job. Critics of cancel culture cheered Helmuth’s cancellation. I’m guessing we’ll see more of this sickening double standard in coming months and years.
I’m writing this column, first, to express my admiration for Helmuth. She is not only a fearless, intrepid editor, who is passionate about science (she has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience). She is also—and I’ve heard this from her colleagues and experienced it first-hand--a kind, considerate person. That’s a heroic feat in this mean-spirited age.
I’d also like to address the complaint that Helmuth’s approach to science was too political and partisan. Yes, under Helmuth, Scientific American has had a clear progressive outlook, ordinarily associated with the Democratic party. The magazine endorsed Joe Biden four years ago, shortly after Helmuth took over, and Kamala Harris this year.
Sci Am took stands on issues like racism, abortion, trans rights, climate change, gun violence and covid vaccines. Critics deplored the magazine’s “transformation into another progressive mouthpiece,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. Biologist Jerry Coyne says a science magazine should remain “neutral on issues of politics, morals, and ideology.”
What??!! As Coyne knows, science, historically, has never been “neutral.” Powerful groups on the right and left have employed science to promote their interests and propagate lethal ideologies, from eugenics to Marxism. Science journalists can either challenge abuses of science or look the other way.
I became a staff writer at Scientific American in 1986, when Jonathan Piel was editor. The magazine bashed the Reagan administration’s plan to build a space-based shield against nuclear weapons. I wrote articles linking behavioral genetics to eugenics and evolutionary psychology to social Darwinism. I got letters that began: “Dear Unscientific Unamerican.” My point: the magazine has never been “neutral,” it has always had a political edge.
Under Piel, as well as successors John Rennie, Mariette DiChristina and Helmuth, the magazine published plenty of articles with no political ramifications. But if you just stick to uncontroversial science, and you decline to take a position on topics like climate change or reproductive rights, you aren’t “neutral.” You are just looking the other way.
Robert Kennedy, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health, has linked vaccines to autism, and he has conjectured that the covid virus was engineered to attack Caucasians and African Americans and spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Trump says some Mexican immigrants have “bad genes” that make them killers, and as recently as 2022 he called climate change a “hoax.”
Will the next editor of Scientific American have the guts to challenge the pseudoscientific claims of Trump and his minions? Will anyone?
Further Reading:
I Am One of Those Evil Woke Professors
Advice to Aspiring Science Writers: Remember Marx
Dear Student Protesters, Please Oppose All War
Dear Feminists, Please Help End War!
Thanksgiving and Scientists’ Slander of Native Americans