So, an activist editor in chief focused on social justice nonsense and identity politics instead of on science, the resulting distraction ran it into the ground, and what used to be a respected institution is now struggling to recover from this disastrously poor leadership. A familiar story.
I used to enjoy SciAm. A few years ago I picked up an issue and was annoyed by several articles that used the mantle of “science” to push social, political and cultural issues. Articles about how mathematics is misogynistic and how some other field was racist or white supremacist, etc. The same bullshit as the rest of the media, frankly. So I put it down and haven’t read it again since. Too bad.
Instead you doubled down on remaining ignorant. Not even that, but you think it's worth bragging about on the internet!
You're boasting that you refused to even try to learn. That's the kind of thing I'd keep secret for the rest of my life, personally.
I'll try to explain things in simple terms. "Science" is done by people. How and why these people do things sometimes doesn't matter and sometimes matters a great deal.
For example, when scientific discoveries are rejected because of the skin color of the people involved. You know. Just as a random off the cuff example.
> Helmuth, who joined the magazine in 2020, had pushed it to cover more politics, arguing that science cannot be disentangled from its social context. Scientific American had issued presidential endorsements for the first time under her leadership. In 2024, after Helmuth called Trump supporters “bigots” and “fascists” on social media on election night, the magazine again became the target of right-wing backlash.
The magazine chose to go more political. When the political winds changed direction they found themselves on the wrong side of the new administration.
Remaining purely apolitical was an option for them.
mitchbob•13h ago