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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
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Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#42Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill…
The examples given in the article are quite egregious, and the authors of those pieces are not notable.
SciAm nonetheless made the decision that those particular opinions should be published under their banner, and it’s not clear on what basis that decision was made other than editorial discretion.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#43[flagged]
Please explain to me the Marxism angle. Seriously, show me. Demonstrate for me. Apparently the prime minister of my country is a Marxist but as far as I can tell we're living in a neoliberal paradise where capital gets to freely influence government policy. Nobody has had their property confiscated by the government, nobody had been sent to a gulag, free enterprise is still a thing, where is the Marxism? Where is it? Under your pillow?
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#44> For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"? Yes, because I read Inherit the Wind in middle school.
Pretty sure "scientific racism" owes more to pop versions of evolutionary theory than it does to a near-Eastern religion that endows all people with immortal souls, spreads the faith in all languages following Pentacost, tells parables about Samaritans, and makes a point of adding Galatians to its sacred book.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#45Trust in institutions is at an all time low. The last thing we need is for these institutions to veer away from their goals to push a political agenda. Good riddance to her.
I used to love Popular Science but these magazines all died 20 years ago. Science reporting was the first type of journalism to go, much easier to write clickbait about current events. Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last election which was a wtf moment.
> Remember Scientific American already endorsed Biden last election which was a wtf moment.
In his first term the Trump administration tried to massively cut scientific and medical research, tried to change the rules for the board of outside scientists that review EPA decisions for scientific soundness to not allow academic scientists so that it would only consist of scientists working for the industries that the EPA regulates, tried to make it so that most peer reviewed medical research that showed products causing health problems could not be considered by the EPA when deciding if a chemical should be banned, tried to massively increase taxes on graduate students in STEM fields, wanted to stop NASA from doing Earth science, and let's not forget repeatedly claiming climate change is a hoax. I'm sure I'm forgetting several more.
I don't expect my technical publications to have an opinion on things politicians do that have nothing to do with the fields they cover, but when politicians start doing things directly concerning those fields I don't see how it is a WTF moment for them to comment.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugh. I'm sorry, but could you please explain yourself? I also read Inherit the Wind in middle school, and my understanding is that it fictionalized the (true) story of the "Scopes/Monkey Trial", which was an ideological conflict between science and religion. It's been over 50 years, and maybe I'm so pure that I disregarded any racial context, but I don't remember any. How does "White Supremacy" come into the story, o…
As a whole? White supremacists hate the idea that they could have had non-white ancestors. Belief in a white Adam & Eve is much more in line with their world view. Non-whites were created by "the Curse of Ham". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham
As usual, when a "Christian" wants to be un-Christian, they do it by mining the Old Testament.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#47To be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it got more obvious over time, but I don’t see its recent tone categorically different.
SciAm was transformative to my life, I think. My father brought home a stack of them, maybe a couple year's worth, for me when I was twelve or so. I read them over and over again during my teens, slowly puzzling understanding out of the articles that were initially so far beyond me. Learned more from that stack of magazines than some years of high school. But that was in the 80s. For the last couple of decades, Scien…
In the early 70's I loved The Amateur Scientist, "conducted" by C. L. Stong. Great articles, with real technical details, giving you a real chance to build real equipment. To pick one article at random, from February 1972: "A Simple Laser Interferometer, an Inexpensive Infrared Viewer and Simulated Chromatograms". Very, very cool.
There's nothing like that out there now.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#48I clicked on the links of the articles linked to by the author as "egregious" examples of Helmuth's editorial bias, and they're both clearly labeled _OPINION_. (Opinion articles are not scientific articles because they are __opinion__.) May need to choose some better examples if the author wants to support his point.
Why does a scientific magazine have an Opinion section in the first place? Has it always? I would guess the number of Opinion pieces has gone up dramatically in the last decade.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#49I really don't care if she went on a political rant on BlueSky. What I do care about is that SA has become a click-baity site without much depth. I don't know if she's responsible for that, though (I doubt that she alone made that happen).
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#50Every piece called out here is clearly labeled "opinion" - did they even read the normal news and analysis sections? Countless newspapers and outlets and actual scientific journals have opinion/editorial sections that are generally very well firewalled from the factual content. You could collect the worst hot takes from a few years of nearly any site with a dedicated opinion page and pretend that it has gone downhill…
If an editor of a science magazine chose to publish op-eds about how 5G causes cancer and then went on a Twitter rant along those lines that impugns her credibility and judgment as a whole. Similarly here.