Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Scientific American endorses Kamala Harris. Here's why that's a good thing
https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/09/17/sci...hing-49001

EXCERPTS: Several high-profile scientists blasted SciAm for once again endorsing the Democratic nominee for president.

“A science magazine should not be endorsing presidents,” evolutionary biologist Colin Wright tweeted. “This is why you have lost all credibility. And yes, I'd be equally critical if you had endorsed Trump.” Behavioral scientist Gad Saad was less gentle: “Authoritarian Leftist partisanship has hijacked everything: academia, science, journalism, medicine, business, law, entertainment, culture, Justice system, etc.”

[...] The unfortunate reality is that mainstream science–the existing cohort of academic journals, universities, popular publications, and regulatory agencies–is ideologically corrupt to the core. Scientific American’s endorsement of Harris is a clear indicator of this devolution, but there are many others worth highlighting...

[...] The takeaway, then, is quite simple: the science community should be as partisan as it likes. Keep endorsing political candidates. Keep pretending that biological sex “exists on a spectrum.” Insist that schools “Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science.” Tell the public that science is actually a platform to advance bizarre partisan causes. Say it loudly and say it proudly.

Just remember that your political campaigning could have serious consequences as the public's faith in you continues to decline... (MORE - missing details)
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It's not like this was unexpected, they've done it before. As Jerry Coyne and others have endlessly pointed out over the years, SciAm became a platform for critical-theory derived politics some time ago. And scientist activism is increasing in general. The public becoming more and more aware of this (and arguably unrelated invalid science issues plaguing the human sciences) is not necessarily a good thing, however. As whatever "trust" there formerly was in high standards/practices and impartial administrations and policies regulating science may never be recovered.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/08/nx-s1-491...ship-fears

"Political interference was well documented across the government during the Trump administration. At the Environmental Protection Agency, policymakers were barred from considering studies about the deadly effects of air pollution. At the Agriculture Department, information about the effects of climate change on crops was censored.

At one point, Trump personally misrepresented a hurricane forecast, suggesting that a major storm might hit an entirely different state than expected.

Many scientists found themselves targeted by political appointees. The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a legal aid group for scientists, saw a surge in requests for help from scientists during the Trump administration.

"We worked with scientists who were terminated from their positions because they spoke out about climate issues, who were reassigned because they work on climate, who were censored, whose research was manipulated," says Lauren Kurtz, the executive director of the fund. She says the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund received about 300 requests for assistance during the Trump administration.

"I think it was very hard to be a scientist in the Trump administration. A climate scientist for sure," Kurtz says.

Trump's campaign did not respond to questions from NPR.

In September 2019, President Donald Trump sits at a desk while holding a map of the southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean. The map shows the projected path of Hurricane Dorian, and the path has been altered by a black marker to include Alabama.

There are signs that such interference and censorship could be even more severe in a second Trump term. Former Trump officials and other conservative activists have already put out a road map, called Project 2025, for transforming the whole federal government. Its environmental proposals include eliminating the EPA office tasked with reducing pollution in minority communities, cutting back on monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change and getting rid of the main government office that does atmospheric research.

The Project 2025 authors describe the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which includes the National Weather Service and offices that support fisheries and monitor air quality — as a "colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry," and they propose gutting it.

The authors of Project 2025 declined to answer NPR's questions about the plan. A spokesperson responded only to say that Project 2025 was assembled by more than 100 conservative organizations that are "preparing to offer recommendations to the next conservative president. Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign."

Trump has distanced himself from the effort, writing on Truth Social: "I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

But the former president has also signaled that he agrees with many of the plan's proposals. He avoided questions about climate change during the June presidential debate and reiterated plans to pull the U.S. out of the landmark Paris climate agreement. In an interview with Fox News last month, Trump said, "One of the things that is so bad for us is the environmental agencies. They make it impossible to do anything."

One of the most sweeping proposals in the Project 2025 plan would make it easier to replace civil servants. If that happened, people in positions like the one Clement had — working on climate impacts in Alaska — could be fired en masse by a new Trump administration.

"There is anxiety with a second Trump term. They will be better prepared than the first term," says Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, the former acting assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Research and Development...."

Oh, boo hoo. If you're a partisan hack masquerading as an objective scientist, you reap what you sow.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/11/scien...upporters/

Excerpt below:

"A priestess in the cult of The Science™ apologized Friday for an expletive-laced rant against Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

One would think that the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, the supposedly prestigious science publication founded in 1845, would act sober and measured on social media, a way befitting someone who claims to be an arbiter of reason and objectivity — you know, The Science™.  No, I guess not. It turns out that Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief in question, is as much a partisan as your average MSNBC viewer.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because fuck them to the moon and back,” she wrote of the election on the social media platform Bluesky, Fox News reported.

Helmuth wrote in a separate post, “I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is full of fucking fascists,” according to Fox News.

The editor-in-chief later apologized for the scathing remarks, claiming she was “committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity.”

“I made a series of offensive and inappropriate posts on my personal Bluesky account on election night, and I am sorry,” Helmuth said in a statement. “I respect and value people across the political spectrum. These posts, which I have deleted, do not reflect my beliefs; they were a mistaken expression of shock and confusion about the election results.”

“These posts of course do not reflect the position of Scientific American or my colleagues. I am committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity,” she added.

nsNS

Laura Helmuth, the editor in chief of Scientific American and author of the expletive laden anti-Trump rants referred to in the post immediately above, has resigned.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-scien...s-fascists

Yazata,

I was hoping you could go on sciforums and admonish Write4U and the others for their lack of belief. I realise you may not be well-equipped in terms of intelligence to prove the existence of God, but at the very least you can instill fear in those of a more skeptical variety.

LOL! Ostro think Yaz believes in God.

Well, we always knew there was some reason why John Horgan was still on good terms with the magazine. In contrast to Michael Shermer getting booted out in 2019, and expressing his opinion a couple of weeks ago (at least partly fulfilled now).
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(Jerry Coyne) John Horgan defends Scientific American, its editor, and its colonization by progressive ideology
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/11/1...-ideology/

EXCERPTS: I’ve written a fair number of posts about science writer John Horgan over the years, and also pointed out posts in which others took Horgan to task for his miguided views or even lack of understanding of the science he wrote about. [...] First, Horgan here conflates the practice of science itself with the presentation of science in magazines like Scientific American. 

Yes, the actual doing of science should, as far as possible, be politically neutral, and so should articles published in scientific journals. (Sadly, the latter hope is now repeatedly violated.) The ideological erosion of biology, as Luana and I called our paper in Skeptical Inquirer, has led to the loss of trust in biology and in journals themselves; and the same is happening in all STEM fields. You wouldn’t think that math could go woke, for instance, but it has, and medical education has long been colonized by ideology, to the point where it endangers the health of Americans... (MORE - missing details)
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How Scientific American's departing editor helped degrade science
https://reason.com/2024/11/18/how-scient...e-science/

BLURB: When magazines like Scientific American are run by ideologues producing biased dreck, it only makes it more difficult to defend the institution of science itself...

EXCERPT: . . . Whether or not Helmuth's resignation was voluntary, it should go without saying that a few bad social media posts should not end someone's job. If that were the whole story here—an otherwise well-performing editor was ousted over a few bad posts—this would arguably be a case of "cancel culture," or whatever we're calling it these days.

But Helmuth's posts were symptoms of a much larger problem with her reign as editor. They accurately reflected the political agenda she brought with her when she came on as EiC at SciAm—a political agenda that has turned the once-respected magazine into a frequent laughingstock.

Sometimes, yes, SciAm still acts like the leading popular science magazine it used to be—a magazine, I should add, that I received in print form every month during my childhood.

But increasingly, during Helmuth's tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time... (MORE - missing details)