Odd. One would think that the editor of a (once) respected science magazine would not resort demonology to explain her own conduct. Indeed, one would think that such conduct would disqualify said editor from continuing in her position.

Laura Helmuth, a woke activist who has destroyed the credibility of Scientific American by politicizing its content, went bonkers after Trump defeated Kamala Harris and tweeted,

How professional! How trustworthy! How scientific! Who wouldn’t trust the analysis of a science magazine edited by someone who makes such declarations in public?

Her outburst was, let’s say, not received well, so Helmuth issued this abject apology embracing The Pazuzu Excuse,

This is approximately the same explanation Regan gave to her mother after she told Father Damien, “Your mother sucks cocks in HELL!” How does anyone post three tweets that don’t reflect what that individual believes? Demonic possession is the only possible answer, that or multiple personality disorder. The latter is definitely a handicap that an editor-in-chief of a major publication can’t overcome. and the former…well, believing in demons is about as contrary to science as it get. Even if we accept her unbelievable and dishonest explanation for the tweets, how could someone who supposedly knows something about science be shocked when a major party candidate in a Presidential election wins a contest widely believed by pollsters (at least they think their field is a science) wins? Is she shocked when it rains? Was she shocked when the Yankees lost the World Series?

This is a classic Pazuzu Excuse, right up there with Mel Gibson’s claim that he didn’t mean it when he ranted about how terrible Jews were in his DUI arrest. Speaking of Mel, a predominant theory about Helmuth’s—wait, that’s an awful lot like “Hell Mouth”! Oh-oh…is that she tweeted out her real feelings while drunk. Not Pazuzu, but that Ol’ Demon Liquor was at fault!

Getting smashed and hitting social media isn’t acceptable conduct for an editor-in-chief either, but at least plenty of famous scientists were drunks. I’ve never heard of a scientist who argued for demonic possession. The excellent website Why Evolution Is True comments,

The sentence that irked me the most is “I am committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity.” Indeed! The whole magazine has violated both tenets for years. It gave Michael Shermer a pink slip for simply questioning accepted (woke) wisdom in his column, and couldn’t wait to accuse E. O. Wilson of racism, nearly before his body had gone cold. The many biased and slanted columns do not bespeak Helmuth’s commitment to objectivity, and here’s one example that I mentioned yesterday.

After the magazine published its hit piece on E. O. Wilson, accusing him (as well as Mendel and others) of racism, thirty evolutionary biologists and I cobbled together a letter to Scientific American, rebutting the hit piece’s claims and defending Wilson and his legacy (you can see the letter here).  Helmuth rejected the letter. She also rejected my personal appeal to “consider an op-ed about how extreme Leftist progressivism is besmirching science itself by distorting the truth? (Example: arguments that sex is not bimodal in humans, but forms a continuum.) I could make a number of arguments like that about biology that, contra McLemore, have truth behind them.”

There is no reason for any publication about science to be partisan or political. I read Scientific American for years—I subscribed for a while—and it never revealed a political bias, or even touched on political issues. Obviously, if the management of the publication has tolerated Helmuth for this long, they want it to be a source of progressive propaganda. (Politics ruins everything.) She will probably get away with claiming that “the devil made her do it.”