The Fall of Scientific American
thenation.com34 points by littlexsparkee 2 days ago
34 points by littlexsparkee 2 days ago
This quote was when I know something was seriously wrong with the magazine I read assiduously as a child:
> Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.
(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m... - and I am not quoting out of context)
Get an issue of Scientific American from the past few years and compare with one from the early 90s. It will become obvious why Scientific American no longer has readers.
I used to subscribe to SciAm, just looked at their website after around 3 years, and the lead article is "Why partisan politics may be changing people's accents."
The Atlantic went the same way, but as more mainstream magazine, that's kind of okay. Not acceptable for SciAm.
Or activate reader mode. All the text is in the page. Using an extension to disable first party Javascript for that site will work too.
“It wouldn’t be the last conflict between Helmuth and Springer Nature. Helmuth, who joined the magazine in 2020, had pushed it to cover more politics, arguing that science cannot be disentangled from its social context. Scientific American had issued presidential endorsements for the first time under her leadership. In 2024, after Helmuth called Trump supporters “bigots” and “fascists” on social media on election night, the magazine again became the target of right-wing backlash. This time, facing pressure from Springer Nature, she resigned.”
So, an activist editor in chief focused on social justice nonsense and identity politics instead of on science, the resulting distraction ran it into the ground, and what used to be a respected institution is now struggling to recover from this disastrously poor leadership. A familiar story.
I used to enjoy SciAm. A few years ago I picked up an issue and was annoyed by several articles that used the mantle of “science” to push social, political and cultural issues. Articles about how mathematics is misogynistic and how some other field was racist or white supremacist, etc. The same bullshit as the rest of the media, frankly. So I put it down and haven’t read it again since. Too bad.
It's truly tragic you didn't take the opportunity in front of you to learn and grow and practice intellectual curiosity.
Instead you doubled down on remaining ignorant. Not even that, but you think it's worth bragging about on the internet!
You're boasting that you refused to even try to learn. That's the kind of thing I'd keep secret for the rest of my life, personally.
I'll try to explain things in simple terms. "Science" is done by people. How and why these people do things sometimes doesn't matter and sometimes matters a great deal.
For example, when scientific discoveries are rejected because of the skin color of the people involved. You know. Just as a random off the cuff example.
Come on, some things just aren't worth reading. Political content masquerading as science is at the top of that list.
>Instead you doubled down on remaining ignorant. Not even that, but you think it's worth bragging about on the internet!
All that condescension to hide the fact that you haven't made a point. Stop insulting people and point to something in the magazine you think is worth reading. Or have you not read it either?
Lowest denominator politics like this is what dominates social media and none of it improves anything. Choosing to focus on publishing objectively rigorous science is inherently speaking truth to power and does far more good than almost anything else. Of course, anyone can see the value science has as a way of providing objective understanding and wants to use it to justify their issue du jour.
> How and why these people do things sometimes doesn't matter and sometimes matters a great deal.
Somtimes it matters a great deal, yes. Sometimes. Not all the time. Not every time. Sometimes.
They buried the lede:
> Helmuth, who joined the magazine in 2020, had pushed it to cover more politics, arguing that science cannot be disentangled from its social context. Scientific American had issued presidential endorsements for the first time under her leadership. In 2024, after Helmuth called Trump supporters “bigots” and “fascists” on social media on election night, the magazine again became the target of right-wing backlash.
The magazine chose to go more political. When the political winds changed direction they found themselves on the wrong side of the new administration.
Remaining purely apolitical was an option for them.