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November 14, 2024 - 10:45pm
The embattled Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American is leaving her role after her anti-Trump social media posts gained national attention.
“I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief,” Laura Helmuth announced on Bluesky today. “I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I’d like to share a very small sample of the work I’ve been so proud to support.”
Following last week’s US election, Helmuth made several social media posts suggesting Americans who voted for Donald Trump were racist, sexist, and fascist. “I apologise to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists,” one since-deleted post read.
“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist,” another post read. “The moral arc of the universe isn’t going to bend itself.”
Under Helmuth’s leadership Scientific American, the longest continuously running magazine in the US, waded into politics to an unprecedented degree. Four years ago, it made a presidential endorsement in support of Joe Biden for the first time in its 175-year history. “Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science,” the endorsement read. Four years later, the outlet endorsed Kamala Harris with a similar statement, this time emphasising abortion in addition to climate change and Covid-19.
Helmuth’s tenure also saw the publication of articles that blurred the lines between scientific research and activism. A 2021 article, “From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter”, addressed what makes various social justice movements successful. “Social movements have likely existed for as long as oppressive human societies have, but only in the past few centuries has their praxis […] developed into a craft, to be learned and honed,” the article read. Several articles argued in favour of abortions, with one headline claiming: “Third-Trimester Abortions Are Moral and Necessary Health Care.”
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SubscribeThe number of progressives whose commitment to evidence based science evaporates when it comes to mutilating children in the name of trans affirmation is staggering.
This is the letter I wrote on the day of the tweets. I like to think the scalp is partially mine.
Dear Colleagues,
Re: Open letter to the Scientific American Editorial Board
Your chief editor’s comments on the election were beneath contempt. Aside from their being unhinged and deeply unreasonable, they also demonstrated that she has zero political judgement.
blob:https://unherd.com/4ec589ad-adba-45f6-9998-bbf32c53909c
More generally, when the scientific community is trying to forge both scientific consensus and then mobilize social and political consensus for climate change policies which will certainly be both painful and unequal in their impacts, this kind of self-righteous virtue signalling is just appalling. Does she not realize that Democrats abusing ordinary people in the fly-over states as ‘deplorable’ or ‘garbage’ or ‘Nazis’ is precisely WHY Trump got the landslide. Every high-profile Laura Helmuth was worth 10,000 votes for Trump.
And frankly, this time round he would have got my vote. When scientists claim not to understand the biological definition of ‘woman’ but call any questions about climate change ‘fascistic’, then any claim to special knowledge and expertise becomes as useful as a trumpet in a Quaker meeting.
People like LH have guaranteed that attitudes towards sustainability break down along a left/right cleavage. It’s now almost impossible to separate climate change from say the issue of abortion, or Israel/Gaza. And yet, you’re the ones who claim to need a massive consensual majority to effect ‘transformative change’. It’s not only offensive, but stupid. It is so stupid that its almost tempting to check her qualifications.
History, theology, philosophy and politics are a little outside her bailiwick, however Dr Helmuth would be well advised to be a little more circumspect with regard to the ‘moral arc of the universe’. Clearly such an ‘arc’ would imply some kind of Natural Law/Telos and probably the existence of the very God in whom those ‘racist/sexist /fascist’ Midwesterners have so much faith. This doesn’t square with her own obnoxious blend of scientific positivism and moral relativism.
But it is also true that iconoclastic rationalists convinced about their capacity to create an earthly heaven have invariably caused more suffering and death than pretty well anyone else in history. Laura is probably convinced that America won’t make progress until the last Republican president has been strangled with the guts of the last pro-life activist, but we have been here – many times. Eric Voegelin quipped that we shouldn’t attempt to ‘immanentize the eschaton’. Helmuth is the reason why this has always been such a bad idea.
This person is clearly convinced that the means justify the ends – and that the ‘ends’ are obvious to any sane/normal person, and that any objection is indicative of insanity/abnormality – and so of a category of person who doesn’t have any automatic right to respect. It’s a short step from this kind of self-righteous contempt to the gulag.
If you don’t sanction her and preferably fire her, then you’re basically just as bad – and a plague on the lot of you. You seem basically to be asking for universities to be defunded.
Are you asking for universities to be defunded?
I used to read Scientific American a couple decades ago, back when it mostly stuck to, you know, science. I stopped when they started to have an article almost every issue either shilling for green technology or climate change fearmongering, some of which sounded like they’d been written by the company spokesmen hawking said green technologies and/or contained assertions that no serious scientist would make.
Like so many others, it has succumbed to the financial siren call of pandering to its demographic base, which is college indoctrin…. er… educated professionals who can afford overpriced magazine subscriptions. Sad that it’s come to his, but predictable.
Similarly, I subscribed from about 1966 through 1974, but was disgusted by the constant anti-nuclear and other far left positions. Amazing how much farther it has descended into irrelevance.
Well at least they could argue their CND/IRA/USSR sympathies with a cogent and defendable (until tested) thesis. The pseudo marxists are identical to medievil Christians -heads down no nonsense mindless hatred, true beleivers only need apply: “Its true because its true” and “if you argue skin colour is not causative of character then you are racist” so there’s no possibility of debate – as the IDF accepts when it deals with the lefts’ proxies in gaza or Lebanon. The west just needs to follow the IDFs example and we’ll get there – eventually.
Yes same with the “no scientist” c 2010.. a load of woke race & gender baiting and warmist climate fakery – and then covid. “Nature”, Nat Geo and Smithsonian held on a bit longer but fell to pseudo-marxism in the last decade. Actual scientific methods of conjecture and refutation leave todays paradigm holders (& their chairs at Unis, R&D grants and big pension pots) having to defend what they must know to be false to keep the $s. The new paradigm often has to wait until the old guard retires – Darwin and Einstein were vicitms of this structural failure in their early careers. So ATM the west is back in a dark age science wise – but the good news is the BRICs and Umma are not – untrammeled by the false marxism of the rich white kids they can continue to stride the frontiers of knowledge – sure the western media can laugh at the inevitable failures BUT will conceal their successes from their captive herd. (the concept of todays Chinese Thorium reactors was known to my lecturers in 60s Unis) So they’ll steal a march on us until the grown-ups intervene – maybe Trump is the first grown up? as Churchill was with the left wing murder cults of 30s Germany and Russia? If the grown-ups succeed in restoring Mertonian norms we can benefit from wiser cultures who do not reject evidence unless it can be disproved. To do so means putting the pseudo scientists/pseudo marxists on the naughty step, or the scaffold depending on how much $s they took and how much harm they caused. The reason for such drastic action is this: No serious criminal ever responded to “pretty please sir please can you stop shooting, looting, raping, drug dealing etc etc?”. As we saw in the 1930s once you put “your truth” above evidence and someone elses life theres only one road left – death and destruction.
Why are all of you climate change deniers? Ninety-nine percent of climate scientists from multiple specialties agree it’s happening. The other one or so percent are paid by oil companies. Publications like the Heartland Institute are funded by American oil companies. Do the research. Furthermore, I would like to know who of you has a PhD in a climate change discipline and decades of experience. I’ll wait.
You sound like G Monbiot, who criticised a book about climate changes through the millennia, written by an emeritus professor of geology,as obviously funded by fossil fuel interests. Perhaps all geologists are actually secretly funded by BP, including Lyall. Still, it is interesting to read about ice ages over the last two million years. We are currently in a brief interregnum between ice ages.
That’s about when I dropped my decades long subscription – and for the same reason. It had become frankly partisan in issues in which it should have kept an open mind or kept it’s mouth shut altogether.
SA is a reg and the departure of this particular person won’t make a difference.
One lizard out of the swamp.
What’s very sad is that she doesn’t appear to have the slightest bit of self-consciousness about her hyperbolic political views and how completely inappropriate her remarks were for a publication claiming the mantle of science. Her “political activism” blinds her to the actual way in which science has traditionally pursued the truth. Sheesh!
Boggles the mind. The mantle of scientist has been sullied by these characters.
CBA to read any of her publicatoins but as Nature and New Scientist etc began to reject basic scientific principles i looked into the people writing their eds – mostly journalists with no scientific training, or “STEM” grads with post 2001 degrees who somehow missed out on the modules “theories of knoweldge” or “stats and methodologies” . So effectively they are Waheeds or Noviciates?? in Christian lingo? They have rote learned and remembered the Bible/Quran/Macauleys Laws of Deflection as the one true truth? Whilst we can’t falsify Macauley’s works within earths physics we know of conditions in space where they are unlikely to apply. I think we can falsify Christians – i’ve made wine for years and NO WAY can you use blood alone as an ingredient – sugar and yeast are required! We could possibly falsify the Quran if Soloman were around to test if he can in deed control the wind.
Ms Helmuth is one of that most pitiful of species – she’s a ‘Hicklib’. So desperately shameful of her roots and so desperately desirous to fit in with the progressive in-crowd.
Always sad to see people who reject their roots out of some ideological difference. They usually regret it, because they’re never treated completely the same inside their new in-group and they can’t go back to their native group. Whether we like it or whether we don’t, where we’re born and the situation we’re born into has a profound effect on us that we can never truly escape. You’ll only ever truly be a native to one country, one region, one family, one community, and that’s worth something. Too many people are too quick to disavow their roots over some relatively minor disagreement burning their bridges and later realizing they can’t go back.
They weren’t anti-Trump comments.
They were anti-Americans comments.
They were anti-human comments. And also anti-reality. Good she has gone, let’s hope the rest of the corrupted media can lose their idiots-in-chief and even return to sanity.
No serious organised crim has ever given up their gains voluntary IME. They need to be forced to do so, using, well, force.
PS – Ms Helmut appears practically purple with rage!
What a truly disgusting individual. Note her comment about Indiana where she grew up and the people who live there – it’s only missing the words deplorables and garbage.
It tells us just how low we’ve sunk when someone like this can get to be editor of Scientific American. This was the absolute gold standard science magazine in the 1980s.
I don’t really get this deleting posts thing. It’s always done without apology or explanation. Either the views were seriously intended. Or the author’s opinion has changed. But they just delete them and try to have it both ways.
Let’s just hope the dominoes keep falling. And stay down.
Sorry, already in the 70’s it was in serious decline.
I disagree – right through the 80s it was very solid – then at some point in the 90s it seems like it fell off a cliff and shrunk to a much smaller magazine containing thin scientific gruel.
The worst thing about this is the fake apology, which is self-evidently untrue; “I respect and value people across the political spectrum. I am committed to civil communication.”
Could that have been written by AI in a moment of panic? It reads as thought it was.
“…because he rejects evidence and science”. I love how lefties always refer to THE science. What does that even mean? THE science of COVID vaccination, lock-downs and masks according to Saint Anthony (Fauci) et al. proved to be wrong in many aspects, so does THE science of man made Climate Warming. THE evidence is still sketchy and build on models and thank God we still have scientists, who are brave enough to speak out.
I’ve long wondered about that little word “the” and how it has been weaponised to bludgeon the opponent and win the argument. I find it jarring as it isn’t a form of words used by actual scientists in normal discourse. I googled on definite article and semiotics but found nothing helpful so left with the alternatives assembled below, none, all, any or many of which might explain it.
Inserting a “the” Is like adding a personification making it more friendly and harder to disagree with Wards off disagreement by semantically linking a particular corner of science with its total corpus. Hence if you deny this, you deny everything.The user actually believes that scientists do say “the science”, so using it conveys to the listener (who may also not know scientists don’t talk this way) the impression that they speak ex cathedra.The up-front “the” somehow solidifies or reifies the issue in the sense that other approaches or understandings (such as the listener’s presumed slack appreciation) lacks substance.Adding a “the” reduces the risk of being thought wrong or arguable. A bald assertion like “science says man’s activities cause global warming” leaves the user more vulnerable than “the science says man’s activities cause global warming” as there is a fall-back implied that the user is privy to special knowledge not shared by the listener To me, its use is a tacit admission that this isn’t kosher science. Apart from its reliance on a string of models with all that implies, it is framed in a confirmatory fashion where “consistent with” has the force of evidence of “proved that”.
David Lammy might take his lead from her.
Her departure from Scientific American
has the potential of allowing science to return to the Scientific American. When the lawsuits start, hopefully soon, against the practitioners and promoters of gender butchery, one hopes the obvious lies she willingly pushed are considered. Other than that, her tenure as aparatchik editor of SA can be considered the equivalent of a particularly unpleasant episode of bad digestion.
Laura proves it is better to be deplorable than despicable.
How did this woman ever become editor of Scientific American? Let’s hope someone with a proper scientific attitude replaces her.
Good riddance. Now replace her with someone who steers the publication back to being a scientific journal and not a mouthpiece of Woke ideology. And while we are housecleaning, lets scrub the whole DEI industrial complex out of universities.
The most important thing a true scientist can say is “we don’t know”.
But they rarely do. That’s not the way to get promotions, research grants, jobs on committees and lucrative roles in NGOs.
Trans lobbying is the perfect example.
The Royal Society’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’ since 1662 means ‘take nobody’s word for it’. Be skeptical.
Go woke, go… birdwatching.
Garbage being cleared
“I respect and value people across the political spectrum. I am committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity and barefaced lying.” Fixed.
Exploration of the staff at all the once-reliable scientific and medical journals no doubt would turn up large numbers of these dunderheads. Fortunately, Twitter occasionally provides a forum in which they let us know how badly they’ve lost the plot.
Scientific American is neither.
Social(ist) Scientific (anti)American?
Please enjoy your birdwatching. Please don’t feel obligated to return anytime soon. Have fun.
Today’s so-called “science community” is far more about the Oberlin College and Emerson College faculty lounge than Sir Francis Bacon‘s 1620 book Novum Organum.
Just thinking about this – climate change and covid are fake but abortion is demonstrably real – how can this pseudo scientist not see that? So she seems to want to agree with Kant on the fake pseudo science and than Marx/Stalin on the fact of terminations? Thick or what? I think most of us agree terminations from rape, incest or severe physical or mental birth defects do have cogent justification. When the mother is one or more of addicted, severely ill or homeless again theres a valid argument. The argument is much less convincing when the termination is basically delayed contraception but ultimately we must each make our own call in the circumstances. I’d be interested to see what La Helmut could contribute to this debate?
Covid = fake means SARS-CoV2 had a testable CFR of between 0.5 and .001% depending on who and where. The disease exists BUT is so far down the league tables of ‘flus and SARS its no biggy.
“I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching)”
BIRDWATCHING??? Isn’t that a white-supremacist activity that harms and excludes the BIPOC community? Half the birds are named after Confederates and John James Audubon was basically Hitler. Lady, you’re SO cancelled….
Another inept no-load bites the dust. The irony is not that Trump supporters are fascists, but she is. How in the hell did she get to be the Editor in Chief of SA?
When the establishment requires the adoption of absurdity as the pathway to profit and status, why do we expect an establishment publication not to reflect this and a creature such as Helmuth to be at the helm? The tendency for a reputation to endure despite the obvious rot feeds the problem that absurdity is then taken more seriously than it should (see BBC).
How tragic that the US population has lost the esteem of someone as superior as the (former) editor of Sci Am. Why, if the moral arc of the universe bent correctly, a committee of Laura Helmuth & Co. could select a new US population to vote in elections .
And who actually put this woke clown in position ???
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
It’s just a Borg mentality. They are so convinced of how open minded they are but if you asked them to watch an episode of South Park, read an article on the Babylon Bee, watch a short or movie by Matt Walsh, see an interview with Ben Shapiro or really usr actually talk to someone who might disagree with them just a teensy bit on just a teensy thing then they lose their minds.
It’s the Woke Religion. Michael Schellenberger has written about it extensively. This is their belief system and having it not make sense is part of it. So he died, rose again, will come again and you need to eat his body and drink his blood but you are NOT one of those pagan religions? The confusion and in group/out group stuff that literally makes no sense is a feature not a bug of Wokeism.
I think my favorite all time Wokeism is that ex NYT editor who admitted that after Trump won in 2016 she had an Obama doll in her purse and she would take it out now and then to reassure herself that things would be ok again.
These people are not right in their minds but like Elon Musk says, it is a Woke Mind Virus. This is not a pinky toe virus this is a thing that is infecting all our institutions. It’s stunned at the moment but it is raring to go. To gin up new narratives and new falsehoods. They are the people who are likely most needing that this civilization continue and yet they are the ones working hardest to destroy it. They are like children who destroy their umbrella then ask why they are getting wet.
Good riddance!
Good.
Good riddance is all I can say. Maybe Scientific American will become readable again. “Make Scientific American Great Again”
She is the epitome of the Woking Class whose evil philosophy has taken over every facet and level of our existence. I hope the Trump Team kicks them all into the long grass – permanently. What a horrible, foul-mouthed female!
Good riddance to this unprofessional corrupter of science. Incidentally does anyone else remember when it was a sign of an educated adult not to use foul language in public?
Within the context of the article, assuming that it’s accurate, this statement attributed to Helmuth, really, really scares me:
“The moral arc of the universe isn’t going to bend itself.”
The inescapable implication here is that *she* is privy to that arc, and that she has both the power and the duty to do some bending.
I hate to pull up that old dead horse, Adolf Hitler, but anyone who had read about Hitler, his life, and his sense of destiny can see precisely the same thinking.
Megalomaniacal.