How a prestigious scientific journal surrendered to the left.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. 

The piece begins with revealing what happened to Chapman University Adjunct Professor and editor-in-chief of Skeptic Michael Shermer. As it turns out, after Scientific American directed Shermer away from certain topics, he eventually ended up having his contract with the magazine canceled for having the audacity to submit article discussing how discrimination against gays and other minority groups has dropped significantly.

Shermer believes that the new style of science journalism “is being defined by this postmodern worldview, the idea that all facts are relative or culturally determined.” Of course, if scientific facts are just products of a particular cultural milieu, he says, “then everything is a narrative that has to reflect some political side.” Without an agreed-upon framework to separate valid from invalid claims—without science, in other words—people fall back on their hunches and in-group biases, the “my-side bias.”

Traditionally, science reporting was mostly descriptive—writers strove to explain new discoveries in a particular field. The new style of science journalism takes the form of advocacy—writers seek to nudge readers toward a politically approved opinion.

City-Journal also describes not only did Scientific American include terrible coverage about COVID-19 and the pandemic, but the magazine’s lack of objectivity. The publication’s staff has gone so far as to suppress articles posting the hypothesis that the virus emerged resulting from being leaked from a laboratory it may have been developed in.

Furthermore, it isn’t just the Associated Press who is churning out climate alarmist propaganda bankrolled by leftist nonprofits. City-Journal reveals not only the publication’s pushing transgenderism (including making the case for using puberty blocker therapies), but also how Scientific American propagandizes for climate doom-and-gloom.

As Shermer observed, many science journalists see their role not as neutral reporters but as advocates for noble causes. This is especially true in reporting about the climate. Many publications now have reporters on a permanent “climate beat,” and several nonprofit organizations offer grants to help fund climate coverage.

Climate science is an important field, worthy of thoughtful, balanced coverage. Unfortunately, too many climate reporters seem especially prone to common fallacies, including base-rate neglect, and to hyping tenuous data.

More and more, news and scientific publications are being undermined by the left’s woke onslaught. The reason why this happened to Scientific American results from the potential of someone who works for SA or in a scientific field can have their life destroyed for being accused of racism or sexism, including if it involves transgendered individuals. It is the young, radical members of institutions have a large influence in the direction of organizations they become active in and later dominate.

“Scientists, science publishers, and science journalists simply haven’t learned how to say no to emotionally unhinged activists,” evolutionary psychologist [Geoffrey] Miller says. “They’re prone to emotional blackmail, and they tend to be very naive about the political goals of activists who claim that scientific finding X or Y will ‘impose harm’ on some group.”

It is mainly when credible concepts or hypotheses are proposed based on recorded, apriori knowledge that can be the basis of good policies. However, when scientists or academics self-censor, the draw back is that vital information is not made available. This, in turn, makes the dissemination of untrue statements if not misinformation a lot easier. The left undoubtedly understands this.

When woke activists started pushing transgendered women in female sports, women pushed back forcing the transgendered athletes out. Scientists will have to do the same to the leftist activists that have hijacked their fields and journals, like Scientific American. Hopefully they will and the scientists succeed.