The ethics rot of “Scientific American” came to a climax last week with the firing of longtime editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth after she went on a social media tirade against Trump voters and tried to blame it on the demon Pazuzu (well, not explicitly, but that was what her “apology” amounted to). During her tenure she had politicized the once respected science magazine, using it to advance her own social justice agenda which dovetailed nicely with that of the extreme progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Weaponizing science for political advantage is more totalitarianism on the hoof, and one might think that Helmuth’s demise might slow down or even begin to terminate this dangerous trend, once rampant on the Reactionary Right, now characteristic of the Doctrinaire Left. Nope.
Based on the latest from esteemed (not by me, but still…) science writer John Horgan, who modestly calls himself “The Science Writer”—he’s a science writer—the political roots of the field’s ethics rot is already embedded too deeply to extract. Horgan has strong credentials, as he’d be the first to tell you. He’s been writing for Scientific American since 1986 with an eight year break in the middle, and also authors pieces on science issues for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. He has written several books; he’s has been interviewed on PBS, MSNBC, NPR, AP, BBC, and other broadcast media. He’s lectured at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, McGill and the London School of Economics, among other institutions.
Yet Horgan still thinks that scientists are correct to be driven by political bias and to let it affect their work. His recent essay in the wake of Hormuth’s oh-so-well-deserved demise is a flashing neon warning that science, as an objective, fact-driven, intellectual pursuit for the good of mankind (aka “a profession”) is as dead as Darwin, or mighty close to it. Horgan’s website piece is titled, “Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader.” “Bold” is a terrific ambiguous cover word. In the case of Hormuth, it means courageous and reckless to the point of subverting her duties. From there, The Science Writer argues,
1. “On election night, Sci Am editor Laura Helmuth called Trump voters “racist and sexist” and “fucking fascists” on the social media platform BlueSky, a haven for Twitter/X refugees. Yeah, she lost her cool, but Helmuth’s labels apply to Trump if not to all who voted for him.”
Well all righty then! Glad we know where John stands. This supposed authority on “science” accepts Big Lies and campaign talking points as factual with no valid evidence whatsoever. If I didn’t have an ethics blog to maintain, that paragraph would stop me from reading.
2. “Trump spews insults and wins the election. Helmuth loses her job. Critics of cancel culture cheered Helmuth’s cancellation. I’m guessing we’ll see more of this sickening double standard in coming months and years.”
Fascinating. A lawyer could explain to John that double standards can only be declared when they exist in identical contexts. A President of the United States is responsible for national policies; “spewing insults” is bad form, but it does not indicate a crippling impediment to the tasks at hand. We expect leaders and politicians to have a point of view. For the editor of a science publication to make extreme political pronouncements is something entirely different….as Helmuth quite properly discovered.
3. “Sci Am presented scientific analyses of and took stands on racism, reproductive rights, trans rights, climate change, gun violence and covid vaccines. Critics deplored the magazine’s “transformation into another progressive mouthpiece,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. Biologist Jerry Coyne says a science magazine should remain ‘neutral on issues of politics, morals, and ideology.’ What??!! As Coyne knows, science, historically, has never been “neutral.” Powerful groups on the right and left have employed science to promote their interests and propagate lethal ideologies, from eugenics to Marxism. Science journalists can either challenge abuses of science or look the other way.”
I gather that they don’t know what rationalizations are where John hangs out. This is a pure “everybody does it” argument, aka. “Crap.”
4. “But if you just stick to uncontroversial science, and you decline to take a position on topics like climate change or reproductive rights, you aren’t ‘neutral.’ You are just looking the other way.”
Ah! The advocacy journalism excuse! A science magazine’s job is to explain the facts, discuss the applications, and explore the controversies with objective analysis of all sides.
5. “Will the next editor of Scientific American have the guts to challenge Trump and his minions? Will anyone?”
On the list of those who should be challenging “Trump and his minions” the editor of Scientific American is somewhere around the manager of the Detroit Tigers. “Will anyone?” Did John sleep though 2016-2020? It appears that Horgan is just swallowing whole, without sugar, Axis talking points and Big Lies without bother to critically challenge these assumptions and assertions. What kind of scientific method is that?
It’s bad science, biased thinking and intellectual dishonesty. This is how we got health officials saying that the Wuhan virus was too dangerous for people to go to weddings, but not dangerous enough to make Black Lives Matter protests a health hazard. It’s how Ethics Villain Anthony Fauci justified lying to the American people about masks, social distancing and the vaccine. It’s how the entire climate change policy area has been corrupted by half-truths and guesses presented as certainty for “the greater good.”
The Science Writer’s foray into politics only shows that he should stick to science. If only he could tell the difference any more….
Ethics Alarms 
The most fundamental principles of science is reason, logic, and intellectual rigor. It’s apparent from this screed that Horgan possesses none of these things.
Hence, he needs to keep the word “science” out of his mouth. He clearly doesn’t know how it works.
It isn’t just science writers, it is science itself. When the CDC’s own study found that masks didn’t slow or stop the spread of viral diseases like coronaviruses in 2020, the CDC had it retracted. Our tax dollars paid $10 million for a transgender proponent to study the effectiveness of puberty blockers on the mental health of the subjects. She was unable to find a way to make the findings show any positive results. Because of this, she has decided to not release the findings. This isn’t the only puberty blocker study that this has happened to. Francis Collins got Nature to reverse their findings from ‘leaked from a lab’ to ‘natural origins’ in their 2020 paper. Our drug studies are paid by the pharmaceutical companies. Almost the entire FDA is paid by drug companies for ‘studies’. They all vote to waive each other’s conflict of interest every year. Anthony Fauci had to get his studies reviewed for ethics violations by…his wife. How much of our drug studies are so poorly done that they are meaningless? In the 1990’s it was estimated at 50%. Today, the number is much higher.
Scientific fraud is rampant.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpQobaBCSYk
Science is also failing. All of our funding of string theory has come full circle and proved the starting condition. Basically, 60+ years of math development to explain string theory has gone from “We can explain the universe, but without gravity” to “We can explain a universe that isn’t ours with gravity and then transform it mathematically to one similar to the universe we live in, but without gravity”. We aren’t making discoveries that are valuable. We are doing mostly junk science, science that doesn’t matter. The stuff that does matter is ‘improve this’-type of work. We aren’t gaining new understandings of things.
I think a big part of the problem is that we have too many researchers. With too many researchers, the funding is spread out, the great minds are isolated. The people who make really creative discoveries are often very, very bright and surrounded by other similarly bright people. It was mentioned in a discussion I saw recently that in the 1990’s the average college student was 1 standard deviation above the general population in IQ and Ph.D. students were 2 standard deviations above. Today, college students are at or slightly below the average IQ and the Ph.D. candidates are only 1 standard deviation above 100. This is a huge problem. From what I have seen, the really productive scientists are at least 4-5 standard deviations above the mean. Those people need to bounce their ideas off other people with IQ’s in the 160+ range to find flaws and new ideas. A bunch of 115 IQ people are never going to do anything, no matter how much money you give them.
Another part is because we have abandoned reality. Most of the string theory stuff was all mathematical. It wasn’t “I found something new, let’s understand it and explain it.” Now, the research is all “I found something new in my mathematics, let’s spend $500 million to see if it is real.” The old biases against manual labor has reared its ugly head and experimental science is seen as ‘dirty’ and undesirable. They have spent so much time in their math that they can’t see that mathematics isn’t necessarily reality. They think that if they can describe it mathematically, it must really exist.
“Today, college students are at or slightly below the average IQ and the Ph.D. candidates are only 1 standard deviation above 100. This is a huge problem.”
“In 100 Years We Have Gone From Teaching Latin And Greek In High School To Teaching Remedial English In College.” J. Sobran
PWS
Tremendous, Michael. Thank you. I remember thinking in 1970: “History of Science? What’s that? An actual college major? My college girlfriend took a few courses and then after graduating with a Bachelor’s in English, got a job editing The American Scientist. Hmm.
I wonder whether Elon Musk will have any success disrupting the situation you describe.
Well, getting rid of the Dept. of Ed. is a good start. Then, we need to adopt a system where the money follows the child. You choose which school you send your child to and the state sends the $X each child gets for education to that school. The parents decide which school survives and which schools die.
“Sci Am presented scientific analyses of and took stands on racism, reproductive rights, trans rights, climate change, gun violence and covid vaccines.
Racism does not exist in the forum of objective science. Reproduction, the biological phenomenum, itself is studied scientifically, however reproductive rights is not. Gun violence is a socio-political issue.
Climate change is not objectively being studied by true scientist with true science methodlolgy. Conlusions have been made according to polls. Polls are not predicated on real science, they are merely expressions of one’s emotional opinion.
The covid vaccine is an example of misapplied scientific methodology. The studies of its efficacy were never scientifcially scrutinized.
From Reason: https://reason.com/2024/11/18/how-scientific-americans-departing-editor-helped-degrade-science/?utm_medium=reason_email&utm_source=new_at_reason&utm_campaign=reason_brand&utm_content=Pentagon%20Fails%207th%20Audit%20in%20a%20Row%20but%20Hopes%20To%20Pass%20by%202028&utm_term=&time=November%2018th,%202024&mpid=954241&mpweb=2534-5001-954241
Why is it that people are always banging on about Ike’s Farewell Address, warning about the dangers of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex but few if any of them have read on a few paragraphs to:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Not bad for a guy of whom the Democrats said that he spent his two terms playing golf.
Terrific point, Peter.
When scientists became powerful, powerful people wanted to become scientists. You can tell when this happened, because the pay went up. Scientists used to make some money, middle-class money. The best made lower-upper class money. But now, you have people making major money. Look at Fauci and the FDA. The money they are getting for their research is obscene. Researchers in academia are allowed to pay themselves up to 10% of their grant money (typically) for their summer work. Researchers in government regulatory agencies are allowed to work for the companies that they regulate and double or triple their salaries.
If you stopped the money, you would go back to more of a meritocracy because there wouldn’t be enough money for the powerful people. People that work for government agencies should not be allowed to have ANY outside income. They also should be banned for working in the industry they regulate for 10 years (on each end).