WHEN LAURA HELMUTH was hired as editor-in-chief of Scientific American in the spring of 2020, anyone looking at her formal credentials would have thought her ideally suited for the job. She had earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, had been a staff writer and editor at Science and National Geographic, and for several years was The Washington Post's editor for coverage of health, science, and the environment.
But on Helmuth's watch, Scientific American —the nation's oldest mainstream science magazine, published continuously since James K. Polk was in the White House — has increasingly abandoned its commitment to rigorous science reporting and become just another outlet for progressive tendentiousness. Earlier this month, following an unhinged election night rant on social media, Helmuth announced that she was resigning from the magazine and would "take some time to think about what comes next."
 All is not well at the nation's oldest magazine devoted to science. |
It was a sad but suitable end to Helmuth's tenure at SciAm. During her reign, the publication deteriorated into a journal less concerned with careful science reporting than with playing the part, to quote the liberal journalist Jesse Singal (a former Globe opinion colleague), of "a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour" and contributing in the process to "the self-immolation of scientific authority — a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time."
I have great respect for conscientious and knowledgeable science writers, not least because of my admiration for my brother, an award-winning science writer and editor whose interest in keeping up with cutting-edge research is matched only by his passion for sharing what he learns with his readers. But Scientific American has been turning away from that kind of science writing. In recent years, it has taken to publishing preachy woke articles with headlines like "Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past," "The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity," and "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy."
What has appeared in Scientific American since 2020 has often been intended to further a far-left narrative on climate, race, and gender. In 2022, the magazine ran a piece claiming that until the 18th century "Western science recognized only one sex — the male — and considered the female body an inferior version of it." Never mind the many centuries of Western writing that extolled the uniqueness and perfection of women. As far as Helmuth's journal was concerned, no one before the late 1700s realized that the bodies of men and women were fundamentally different. Had the piece appeared on April Fool's Day, it would have been a fine parody. But it was published in August.
Among those lamenting the decline of Scientific American's scientific seriousness is Michael Shermer, a noted science writer and historian of science. For 18 years, Shermer contributed a monthly column, "Skeptic," to the magazine. But, as he explained in an interview with James Meigs for City Journal, as SciAm began in recent years "to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs," anything that challenged "certain orthodoxies" could no longer be questioned.
For a columnist who specialized in the close scrutiny of comfortable assumptions, that was a problem. Several of his essays were killed, like the one documenting that most abusive parents were not abused as children. "Shermer's editor at the magazine wasn't having it," Meigs wrote. "To the editor, Shermer's effort to correct a common misconception might be read as downplaying the seriousness of abuse."
Another column submitted by Shermer explored some of the ways in which discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished. Again he encountered an editorial veto, and was accused by the editor of saying that "everything is wonderful and everyone should stop whining." In still another essay, Meidgs recounted,
Shermer wrote that intersectional theory, which lumps individuals into aggregate identity groups based on race, sex, and other immutable characteristics, "is a perverse inversion" of Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. For Shermer's editors, apparently, this was the last straw. The column was killed and Shermer's contract terminated. Apparently, SciAm no longer had the ideological bandwidth to publish such a heterodox thinker.
Four years ago, for the first time in its long history, Scientific American endorsed a presidential candidate. "The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the US and its people," the editors wrote. "That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden." This past September, they again endorsed the candidate running against Trump, in an editorial that had little to say about science but applauded Kamala Harris for embracing liberal policy priorities ("Harris supports a tax increase on people who earn $400,000 or more a year.... Harris is a staunch supporter of reproductive rights.... Harris supports a program that temporarily removes guns from people deemed dangerous.")
It was not exactly a surprise, then, when Helmuth erupted on election night in a series of expletive-laden social-media posts describing Trump voters as "f---king fascists" and extending "solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f--k them to the moon and back." Her posts provoked a wave of outrage and Helmuth later apologized, saying they were caused by "shock and confusion about the election results" and giving her assurance that she is "committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity." A week later, she resigned.
It has been disheartening to watch as Scientific American — possessor of one of the most storied names in US journalism — allows its reputation to be tarnished by politics. Helmuth's departure gives the magazine an opportunity to "right the ship," as Singal wrote, by "hiring an editor who cares more about science than progressive political goals." Here's hoping Scientific America takes that good advice. For if the nation's oldest science journal cannot break its new addiction to politics, it will be no good to anyone.
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What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the op-ed page
From "Ed reform earns an F," Dec. 2, 1999:
True reform requires one thing above all: consequences for failure. In New York City, more than 21,000 public school students in grades 3, 6, and 8 were held back a grade this year because they couldn't do grade level work. In Massachusetts, by contrast, kids move up whether they perform at grade level or not. Those who bomb on the statewide tests suffer no penalty. (Neither do their teachers.) Then, when they get to 12th grade, they are told that doing poorly on a 10th-grade test is good enough for a diploma.
Where there is no price for failing, there is no incentive to succeed. Massachusetts thought it could fix incompetent public schools by flooding them with money. All it bought was more incompetence.
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The Last Line
"And when Diane got back to the farm, she told her mother all about it and ended her story with, 'Well, Ma, I never knew before that there are people in the world who have no turkey on Thanksgiving.'" — Langston Hughes, "Those Who Have No Turkey" (1921)
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Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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