Scientific American breaks with 175-year tradition, endorses Joe Biden for US President

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 15, 2020

Culture, Intelligent Design, Science}

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The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.
The Editors, “Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden” atScientific American

From Phys.org:

The former vice president “comes prepared” with a multitude of plans to control COVID-19, they write.
His $2 trillion plan to create an emissions-free power sector by 2035 will help reduce carbon emissions, and he will restore the role of science in policymaking.
“These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future,” the editors say.

Hmmm. They can break with tradition in this way if they want, of course. But then they will no longer be able to say that their science is not tainted with (drenched in?) politics. Which is why, no matter what the crisis, no one did it in the past.

True, popular media endorse candidates. But then they don’t pretend to anything like the objectivity that science writing aspires to. The outcome, no matter who wins the U.S. election, will be reduced public trust in science. Scientific American could well find itself down there with “media” generally, in terms of public trust.

Note: Scientific American is owned by Springer Nature

See also: Will respect for science survive the polarization of our era? Alternatively, it may become possible to have a discussion about what, exactly, science is. For example, in the case of the ATP turbine, “Natural selection did it” has the same explicit explanatory value as “God did it.” But natural selection is somehow science and God is not. Why? How?

Comments

Yes, Sci-Am has been leaning left-liberal for many years now, and every year it seems to lean further that way. Yet I still read it for the general science. With the politicized articles (and you can tell which ones they are even before reading them), I get out my pen and underline, cross out, or annotate freely. About a decade ago I decided that all you need to get published in Sci-Am was to refer positively to "evolution" and "climate change" in some way in the same article. Thus, many articles have gratuitous (and usually meaningless) references to either or both of those memes. I also find the articles dumbed down over the decades, and I don't kid myself that my understanding has risen above them. I remember when they would show chemical formulae, equations, procedural explanations and detailed explanations, with alternative views. I also remember when the evidence they presented actually seemed to support the conclusions drawn, rather than the reining ideology du jour. Every year I ask myself, "should I renew my subscription or not?" Is there a general science magazine that I could switch to? One that is not politically biased? Suggestions?Fasteddious_{September 17, 2020
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Like the old Communist Chinese maxim, "We don't need doctors, we need communist doctors," I guess to work at Scientific American one has to pass their dogma and religion tests. So, Scientific American is now a leftist propaganda rag for Americans who want to feel "scientific" in their atheistic beliefs. I really don't care. Like Polistra, I stopped reading the rag in college when I figured out that a lot of what they printed was speculative or even wrong. And their charge against Donald Trump of mishandling the Covid emergency is not science, it's simply fiction. In fact, each U.S. state sets their own policies. So, where's their condemnation for how Covid was mishandled in New York? The truth is that regardless of what Donald Trump did or didn't do, it would still not have been acceptable. Remember when closing the borders to China was racist and xenophobic? Remember when Nancy Pelosi partied in Chinatown at that time in protest against restricting travel from China? Remember when cloth masks were said by doctors and epidemiologists to be ineffective? I do. I also remember when national emergencies, the justice system, and academia didn't have a political party affiliation. Now, everything has to be political. Frankly, I'm completely sick of the current political hysteria. Politics is boring and stupid, and I resent its intrusions into my life. I hope Scientifiction American goes out of business. -QQuerius_{September 16, 2020
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Belfast, I think my turning point with SciAm was when they cancelled Forrest Mims column for being a Christian. Must have been 35 years ago. TJguy-I'm with you about Weinstein. He cancelled Creationists, and then got cancelled by Marxists, and he doesn't see the thread connecting both events. But if one is going to resist Social Darwinism, what will replace it? If we "speak truth to power", how does it succeed in Communist China, in Iran, in Burma, when power holds all the strings? I think I have an answer, but it isn't a very popular one. It is the answer that was given to the Rabshekah upon orders of the king.Robert Sheldon_{September 16, 2020
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SciAm has been clinically insane for 50 years. Given a choice between evil and science, they ALWAYS pick evil. The last time they could be relied on for honest science was around 1967. Note: I am NOT saying that Trump is any better. All presidents are meaningless and identical puppets. The fact that SciAm thinks the puppets are DIFFERENT is the clearest sign of insanity.polistra_{September 15, 2020
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Scientific American broke with tradition years ago. I remember when it was a tough read for me.Significant source of my physics and chemistry education Then it began getting “glossy” speculating beyond the last data point so often that I couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction. I gave up reading it, I think, about 10 to 15 years ago.Belfast_{September 15, 2020
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Well, it's so obvious that whether they come out and say it or not, it doesn't make much difference. Big Science ALWAYS leans hard Left. Hmmm. But I thought science were supposed to be objective. I guess it is not "science" itself that is the problem. Rather it is the scientists who interpret the data through their own bias worldviews. From crev.info: https://crev.info/2020/08/fallen-is-big-science-ii/ Big Science Is Politically Biased This is not news; we have been demonstrating the anti-conservative, pro-Democrat bias of academia for years (e.g., 13 July 2020). What is new is the phenomenon of activism in the name of Big Science, being justified on the basis of evolutionary anthropology and psychology. This trend is a direct outcome of the unrest and violence occurring in US cities over “Black Lives Matter” and other radical groups demanding “anti-racism” activity. To what extent are scientists showing solidarity in order to appear politically correct or avoid being attacked? And what do these articles have to do with science anyway? Hit ’em where it hurts – how economic threats are a potent tool for changing people’s minds about the Confederate flag (The Conversation). Note: *this is not in any way meant as a rationalization for the Confederate symbols* – it is about totalitarian activism, where people are expected to conform or be canceled. “The Conversation” pretends to be a science site, yet it allows two academics from NC State and USC to advocate for the most effective ways to force social change – not only regarding flags and symbols, but about LGBTQ acceptance. They specifically target conservatives by name and argue that economic threats are a potent weapon for getting those who are not politically correct to succumb. Science meets politics (Science Magazine). This is a review of a new book by Samanth Subramanian about J.B.S. Haldane, a strong proponent of Darwinism in the first half of the 20th century. Haldane was also a communist radical at a time when it was precarious to be one, and yet reviewer P. William Hughes gives him apologetic coverage. One shouldn’t hold one’s breath waiting for a good review of any scientist who was skeptical of Darwinism or who believed in God. Notice how Haldane blended his beliefs in Marx and Darwin: Subramanian admonishes Haldane’s belated rejection of Lysenkoism, suggesting that he demurred because he was reluctant to criticize fellow communists. This criticism lands awkwardly, mostly because Haldane did disown Lysenko—although not as quickly as his anticommunist peers—and eventually left the CPGB, disillusioned by its rejection of “bourgeois genetics.” However, Haldane clearly admired Stalin and tried to reconcile Darwinian evolution with Soviet dialectical materialism (“diamat”) pseudoscience. Subramanian suggests that these mistakes were the predictable result of the political views that motivated Haldane’s best work. Ultimately, Subramanian’s depiction of Haldane is balanced and modern and should prove engaging to readers interested in the birth of genetics and in the intersection of science and political belief. Big Science Is Being Taken Hostage by Leftist Radicals An Open Letter: Scientists and Racial Justice (The Scientist). This article, an open letter signed already by hundreds of academics, sounds like it was written by antiracist prophet Ibram X. Kendi. It calls on scientists to admit their racism and confess their complicity in “system racism.” Readers unfamiliar with Kendi’s Critical Race theory and the influence he is having on the protests and riots can read a book review about his writings on National Review, and compare how the scientists are responding. A familiar tactic by Marxist revolutionaries is to control the narrative, eliminate free speech and free press, and break down the system. Big Science will succumb to the revolution, just like it did in Stalin’s Russia. Instead of being judged by evidence, science will be judged by whether it supports or opposes the Revolution. That is how Stalin fell for the fake agricultural and genetic science of the charlatan Trofim Lysenko, who sold his theories as anti-capitalist. Millions died of starvation as a result. Few are the voices that are protesting the requirement for re-education classes in critical race theory, which are infiltrating colleges, universities, and labs (see what is happening at Sandia National Laboratory, reported by WND). It is also coming to public schools across the nation in the form of an antiracist book, White Fragility. The entire academic world is becoming indoctrinated in these views, which are overtly racist—judging people by the color of their skin. Science was meant to be colorblind. Whoever finds a fact about nature contributes to human knowledge; skin color should have nothing to do with it. The founders of Black Lives Matter are admitted Marxists. They will take Big Science all the way down if they gain power, exercising totalitarian control over scientists, but as the next article shows, hundreds of scientists are already falling for their strategic, deceptive, revolutionary plan. Systemic racism has consequences for all life in cities (University of Washington). Big Science is pretending to raise a fist in solidarity to the anti-racism movement (the notion that you are already guilty of racism just by being born in a “racist society”). But Big Science is caught in a trap: if Big Science doesn’t stand up to the new totalitarianism voiced by Michelle Ma in this press release, it will implode and become a shell of its former self, morphing into a tool for leftist radicals. The main purpose of the paper is to show the scientific community that fundamental practices in science are based on systems that support white supremacy and perpetuate systemic racism, the authors said. They hope their colleagues in science fields will begin to dig into the history of the various laws and practices that built present-day inequalities — such as redlining and Jim Crow laws — and then start to reevaluate how they run their labs and conduct their research. “I hope this paper will shine the light and create a paradigm shift in science,” Schell said. “That means fundamentally changing how researchers do their science, which questions they ask, and realizing that their usual set of questions might be incomplete.” Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both evolutionary biologists who were “cancelled” by leftist radicals at Evergreen University (see their story told in the documentary No Safe Spaces), have been speaking out on their “Dark Horse Podcast” about the risk to scientists and academics who won’t show courage to stand up to radicals. In episode 41, they show recent clips of people in outdoor restaurants being confronted by shouting radicals demanding they raise a fist of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Those who refuse are shouted at even more, filmed with their faces prominent in order to be broadcast on the internet so they can be doxed (exposed) and shamed or canceled. Other patrons sitting nearby drop their heads and raise a fist so as not to be harassed. Even if one agrees with the positions of the radicals about racism, Weinstein says, no one should be forced to submit under threat. Bret and Heather know what they are talking about. Radicals forced them out of their university positions, and their colleagues refused to stand up for them, even though the two later won a judgment against the university for the way they were unfairly treated. And yet Weinstein and Hdeying attribute the latest social movements to evolutionary game theory! This undermines any appeal to moral duty. This should be so obvious, but it completely escapes them. They were treated badly, and (we agree) have a right to feel indignant over what was done to them. And yet if it is all an evolutionary game, it’s not about right or wrong, but only about who wins the fitness test by blind natural selection. If the radicals win, who are they going to complain to, and what will be the charges? An evolutionary judge would have to say, “Tough; that’s the way it goes.” Big Science has become a toy of the radical left. We lament its downfall, remembering its roots so strongly embedded in the Judeo-Christian worldview of the west, and illustrated by so many God-fearing creation-affirming founders of science. But this kind of fall will ensue to everyone who rejects their Creator. In Romans 1:18-32, Paul emphasized the fact that creation is clear from the things that are made. He warned the world that rejection of the creator leads to absurdity. And so we see highly intelligent people professing to be wise, but acting like fools. Once again, we reiterate that Big Science refers to the power centers and institutions that claim to “speak for science.” Any individual scientist who does good work with honesty, humility and integrity gets our respect.tjguy_{September 15, 2020
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