Further to “Scientific American blogger gets fired for stating facts about Feynman, with context,” where we suggested that people remember this when they next hear Scientific American’s bold advocacy of the multiverse and Darwinian evolution: Darwinian evolution indeed.
Commenter Querius wondered, “Didn’t they fire a popular columnist some years back when they found out he was a [gasp!] Christian?”
Yes indeed, That would be Forrest Mims, accounted by Discover in a 2009 list to be one of the 50 best brains in science. There was a minor controversy at the mag over his pro-design views but the mag decided to stand behind their choice. As we said at the time:
Science motors along on facts, so political correctness is not one of the branches of science.
As a scholar pointed out to me years, ago, political correctness is typically the refuge of third- and fourth-rate academics. It can reduce a discipline that was once a source of knowledge and understanding of our world to dense, frightened babble. The further the mag stays away from it, the better.
Mims, probably best known for his electronics work, is also a keen environmentalist and supporter of amateur science as a support to professional science. Forrest also offered a link to this video account of the “Scientific American” affair (in which he was refused a column years ago – though that seems to have been patched up, as he has written for them since).
Mims wrote in to that news item last night, to say,
Scientific American has forgotten the lesson it learned about the “public relations nightmares” (their phrase) that can occur when they dump a writer with an opposing view. (In my case they at least published several of my letters to the editor and even a news story about some of my research for NASA in Brazil after I was dismissed as a columnist.) Today’s staff has continued the ruination of the legacy of a once great magazine. The staff would do well to carefully review the history of Scientific American. Perhaps in doing so they will come to respect the Christian views and writings of Rufus Porter, the magazine’s founder. Porter was an authentic scientist and writer who knew both his Creator and his responsibilities to his audience. He was definitely not a journalism school widget trained in political correctness.
Note: A Nicholas Wade connection? Given the overall strangeness of science writer Nicholas Wade’s largely unopposed efforts to revive Darwinian racism in Troublesome Inheritance, it is tempting to speculate that Jogalekar’s cautious praise in Scientific American for at least discussing his ideas was a catalyst. The bosses might not want to draw more attention to that biohazard. So they pretend to fire Jogalekar over some transparently stupid kerfuffle instead, preventing him from using the occasion of his dismissal to attract more attention to the smouldering stinkpot.
Also, others are now warned away from even discussing it.
From UD News to SciAM editors: How about less multiverse, more diverse?
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