Every 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. But that this the whole point of having a separate opinion section — so opinions have a place to go, and are not slipped into factual reporting. And many opinion pieces are submitted by others or solicited as a way to show a view that the newsroom doesn't or can't espouse.
Whether the EIC of SciAm overstepped with her own editorializing is probably not something we as outsiders can really say, given the complexities of running a newsroom. I would caution people against taking this superficial judgment too seriously.
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.
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.
The linked article itself is an opinion piece.
Reason does interesting stuff, sure, but no mistake it has a bias and that is a right centre libertarian view that loads factual content toward a predetermined conconclusion that individual free thinkers trump all.
As such they take part in a current conservative habit of demonising "Science" to undermine results that bear on, say, environmental health, climate change, on so on that might result in slowing down a libertarian vision of industry.
I still read their copy, I'm a broad ingestor of content, but no one should be blind to their lean either.
Are you saying the linked is meant to demonize science? The impression I got was that he was doing the exact opposite: saying that SciAm's editorial direction was harming the public perception of science, which could have far-reaching effects. I don't see that as an anti-science stance.
I agree people should be aware of the bias of their sources (all of them), but there's no reason for anyone to be mistaken about Reason. (Please forgive the wording, I couldn't think of better.)
Unlike many other sources, Reason doesn't pretend to be neutral. They admit:
"Reason is the nation's leading libertarian magazine."
I'm unsure that helps things? Maybe if some of the excerpts were jokes? The criticism of JEDI is particularly laughable. If sad. I say that as someone that finds the acronym cringe worthy.
So, yeah, I agree that the standards are lower in these sections. I question if they are non existent.
I loved Scientific American as it was in the 1970s-80s, and was saddened to see what happened to it after around 2000(?), but I can see how having an editor like Helmuth would be a rational choice for the owners. The purpose of a commercial magazine is to generate income, and as Fox/CNN/NYT/Guardian realized, being objectively informative is a sub-optimal approach. I do wonder how we can ever again have something like the old Scientific American.
I 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.
Probably because opinions are interesting to most people and people who read pop sci magazines want to read opinions that have more of a science/evidence bent then what they can get out of other magazines and/or newspapers.
It provides a valuable path to outside perspective? Generally you would expect some credentials and vetting in what opinion you post. But the idea seems fine? Good, even.
"Editorial bias" and "opinion article" aren't mutually exclusive.
Is there bias in what opinions SciAm chooses to print?
To 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.
Any examples? I'm in the same boat as you, and while I agree with the premise, I don't recall anything as egregious as the examples from the article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evoluti...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi...
From my own impression back then, it was less political but more subtly ideological. Truth be told, I have my own ideology as well. Some things that I remember were an article that used a trolley problem of throwing someone in the way to save five as the “obvious rational” choice; and how the covers would often try to link entanglement or dark matter to consciousness. It was numerous little things like that.
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, Scientific American just makes me sad. Crap I wouldn't bother reading.
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.
I agree. This editor may well have been a current-day culmination of a trend that started some time ago. I stopped my own print subscription to SciAm once the articles started to ostensibly push certain sociopolitical viewpoints in the guise of science journalism. This was well before the editor being discussed was editor enough so I never knew this person existed.
While this editor may have crossed some redlines, I am doubtful this change in represents a genuine philosophical shift at the magazine.
True. SciAm has been broken for a long time. The same can be said for most magazines, but SciAm being broken probably just hurts more for our crowd.
The funniest part was when she claimed the posts "do not reflect my beliefs". Her allies seem to know that isn't true. On BS there are plenty of congratulations for her willingness to say what so many others are thinking, etc.
1: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5193258/scientific-amer...
I 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).
Someone should scientifically investigate what causes many white people to go nuts about the existence of abstract “isms.” Like, Helmuth wouldn’t excoriate people in Indiana for being gluttonous, even though the state has a 38% obesity rate.
All people, not just white, go nuts about varying “isms.”
Yeah, but they literally believe a supernatural force with power over life and death wants them to do it. I assume Helmuth isn’t in that category.
I grew up believing that science was the search for truth and fact, and that it should be constantly challenged to further that. What has happened I think, is that there has been a great polarization of science as government and groups have used and twisted it to fit a political agenda. Which essentially stops that search for truth. Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled.
But only to a point, correct? Otherwise we end up in the current dialogue where flat earthers, moon landing deniers, and a large percentage of religious believers feel more platformed than ever. It's far too easy for the uninformed to challenge science simply because it challenges their non-scientific beliefs.
Trust 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.
Yikes, quite the scathing article and example of a the politicization of science.
“Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making process is most certainly political and subjective in nature.
The second point is critical. Relevant testimony from the former head of the NIH during the pandemic, Francis Collins: https://www.bladenjournal.com/opinion/72679/confession-of-a-...
> “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is.” “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”
I'm pretty happy Collins came to that conclusion and learned from it.
I don't expect public health officials to have a utilitarian function that maximizes global health considering second order effects. This should have been stated more clearly at the beginning of the epidemic.
While I agree with the fundamental point, I find that a kind of ironic choice of examples. I wonder what kind of person attaches so much value to keeping kids in school whether it's good for them or not.
Or masking kids when it's actively harmful to them?
I think most reasonable and quite frankly, honest, people understood now and then, that taking the kids out of school would fuck them up pretty bad.
When the actual science was suggesting we take care of the medically vulnerable and elderly. But hey, there’s an election to win!
"Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific spirit. The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of infallible priesthood then you've missed the whole point of science.
> The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom
The essence of science is the use of scientific method which have specific meaning and way of doing things. It relies on evidence based knowledge not on any distrust. It does not have to do with authority but you would question if your tools you are using is good (calibrated and not interfering with measurements in an unaccounted way ..etc) or if your methodology is flawed.
So when someone says "trust the science!" they mean "define your null hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, run said experiment, analyze the data for statistical significance and submit for peer review"?
Or do they really mean "trust the scientists"?
I think when someone say something you are confused or have doubts about what they mean, then you ask them what they mean. This sentence can be used to mean many things (including mocking up scientists ot trolling). So please next time you see or hear someone says that please ask them that.
If I would use it personally I will probably use it to mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the scientific community is using.
Somewhat disagree. Science requires trust. In fact, it's the process for building that trust up from nothing. Are you friend or foe? I'm going to assume one but watch you closely until I have enough evidence to trust you. Hurray, that's science!
I totally agree that the phrase is often misused to mean "trust my favorite authority figure" or "trust the status quo," which is distinctly unscientific. Good news though, if we're willing to actually do the work (the hard part) trust in science is what allows us to change the status quo!
No, the antithesis of the scientific spirit is to believe anything joe nobody posts on facebook or twitter that fits your worldview, regardless of (or perhaps especially due to) the presence of contradictory facts.
The essence of science, and what is meant by "trust the science", is to accept theories that fit the existing data until such time as new data contradicts them, while encouraging people to ruthlessly search for just such data which would falsify them.
Sadly, there are a lot of people whose only standard of proof for conspiracy theories is that it contradicts what experts claim.
> The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom.
This is not "the essence of science" by any means.
The motto of the Royal Society:
"The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' was adopted in its First Charter in 1662. is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment."
It's highly consistent with the statement above and in many ways is consistent with science as it is practiced.
"Science advances one funeral at a time" [0]
The Scientific Principle (hypothesis -> experiment -> conclusion and all that) does not pay any heed to authority and received wisdom. And it should not; the experiment results are all that matter.
Academia, the set of very human organisations that have grown to manage our implementation of the Scientfic Principle, are a long way from perfect and are heavily influenced by authority and received wisdom.
So yeah, I don't think it's the essence of science, but distrusting authority and received wisdom definitely required to practice good science.
[0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-adva...
The Scientific process does not have any authority except observed natural phenomena.
Anyone who unironically says “Trust the science” automatically tells me that they are probably not an informed person.
I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God'
> I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God'
Hopefully this is hyperbole. Any faith I have is separate from, for example, if I cancer, I am going to trust the science on the next steps of treatment.
> but it seems likely that her departure was precipitated by a bilious Bluesky rant she posted after Donald Trump was reelected.
> In it, she accused her generation, Generation X, of being "full of fucking fascists," complained about how sexist and racist her home state of Indiana was, and so on.
> "Fuck them to the moon and back," she said of the dumb high school bullies supposedly celebrating Trump's victory.
> 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.
Disagree. If you can't keep your profane, drunken rants to yourself, then you are definitely unfit for any sort of "neutral & respectable public intellectual" employment.
> 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.
Inherit the Wind uses the historical case of the Scopes Monkey Trial to discuss the contemporary McCarthyism, neither of which is particularly closely tied to white supremacy?
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, or the denial of evolution as a whole?
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
Surely you understand the difference between "Some X believe Y" and "Y is a form of X".
As usual, when a "Christian" wants to be un-Christian, they do it by mining the Old Testament.
Thank you for some historical context.
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.
It’s part of a larger trend of pushing Marxism, intersectionality, and hardcore feminism. The conservative media call them “woke” now just to have one word for the common behavior. Far from uncommon, the activists are quite open that their ideology should be forced on everyone in every space. Colleges, businesses, news, film, etc already have this stuff.
The ideology was historically very destructive. It’s conflict-oriented and discriminating by design. It is also dogmatic, puts unelected people in control, and allows no dissent. These ideologies need to disappear (voluntarily).
We have others that get much better results. We should go back to them and keep fixing their problems. Far as science, we should let it be actual science with exploration, discussion, and dissent. It’s also OK if you just live a good life without knowing most scientists’ or institutions’ ideologies.
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?