Scientific American is doubling down its recent break with a 175-year-old tradition of not getting into the political dogfight, endorsing candidate Joe Biden for US Prez. Now, they’re mourning the late U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Ginsberg as follows:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights and one of the Supreme Court’s most liberal justices, died on Friday. Her absence from the bench could accelerate a trend underway to get cases to the Supreme Court toward invalidating the Affordable Care Act and rolling back reproductive rights for women. It also could affect how the court comes down on pending challenges to the Trump administration’s environmental agenda. For more on her legacy, read our lead story and a few other pieces featured in today’s roundup.
Sunya Bhutta, Senior Editor, Audience Engagement, “Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death is one more terrible blow in a year of loss” at Scientific American
Huh? First, Mme Justice Ginsberg was eighty-seven years of age and suffered with pancreatic cancer. It is remarkable and commendable that she lived as long as she did; not at all a surprise that she died. Why is her death a “terrible blow” as opposed to a foreseen near-term event?
Are these people at Scientific American still in contact with the natural world?
Also, today “reproductive rights for women” usually means ramping up live baby dismemberment. Is any interruption in the live dismemberments the main reason that Mme Justice Ginsberg’s death was a “terrible blow” to some?
Another article in the same news download promises to tell us “How Ginsburg’s Death Threatens the Affordable Care Act and Reproductive Rights” (by Julie Rover for Kaiser Health News). One wonders, can these not find younger champions who are eager to support the death by dismemberment of children? One hopes they can’t!
But in the meantime, remember this:
No matter what else happens, any time anyone anywhere at Scientific American starts banging the drum for “science,” just remind them: You lost that distinction when you signed on to these campaigns. You are now mere partisan hacks, using science in the pursuit of your goals — some are worthy but many are unspeakable.
Say it loud. They may bite and sting but they’ll never live it down.
See also: Scientific American breaks with 175-year tradition, endorses Joe Biden for US President. 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. 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.
and
The irony! Scientific American is holding forth on an algorithm that might solve “political paralysis” Why should we now believe that SciAm’s account of Brett Hennig’s “alternative democracy” ideas is presented to us for any reason other than to sell SciAm’s chosen political candidate for US prez? The thing about sudden partisanship is that you can buy it but you can’t sell it. It’s almost like the folk at Scientific American don’t really get that.