Nature is supposedly the most respected science journal in the world. But its reputation is sinking because it has become so overtly political, as with its decision last summer to endorse Kamala Harris for president.
Now, in the mushiest softball Q&A one can imagine, the journal is boosting an anti-Israel protester and promoting her views on Israel’s war with Hamas. What’s the science hook? Well, there isn’t one beyond the protester’s being a doctoral student at MIT. From “Why this PhD candidate joined campus protests against the Israel–Hamas war”:
Jessica Metzger, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, researches non-equilibrium statistical physics — the study of how matter, especially living matter, behaves. Metzger traces her love of scientific exploration to her father, a planetary physicist, and hopes to find a job in academia. But earlier this year, she decided to participate in MIT campus protests against the Israel–Hamas war because, she says, she was horrified by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. In May, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court issued a statement saying it had evidence that both Hamas and Israeli leaders had committed war crimes.
Metzger’s goal was for MIT to cease cooperating with Israel on research projects. How that might deleteriously affect scientific progress isn’t discussed.
What about antisemitism? There, the article goes for balance:
Some Jewish student groups at MIT and other US universities have called the protests antisemitic because participants have allegedly made inflammatory remarks, and say their members feel unsafe on campus. By contrast, other Jewish students at MIT and elsewhere have taken part in the demonstrations, feeling compelled to protest against the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, and in favour of human rights. They say that they, in turn, feel unsafe and as if they have been targeted for speaking out against the Israeli government.
We learn that Metzger was suspended for a month and put on probation for a year. But she has no regrets. Maybe that’s because her hand-slap punishment has had only minor impact:
You’re now on probation for a year. What effect will that have?
It dampens my ability to participate in civil disobedience in the future. But they can’t stop us from expressing ourselves and campaigning for what we feel is right.Before this, I had not been engaging with anything outside my PhD work. This experience reminded me that there are other things that are important for me to think about as a scientist.
My adviser has been supportive. He’s Parisian and not unfamiliar with student protests. He thinks it’s good that people are protesting against really terrible things. . . .
The fact that this is the biggest upheaval that’s happened in my career so far honestly speaks to how lucky I am. All the protestors are keenly aware that early-career scientists in Gaza no longer have functioning universities.
Whose fault is that? And what relevance does her status “as a scientist” have to do with her anti-Israel views? Whether Israel’s conduct of the war is right or wrong is not a question that “science” can answer.
The Nature article makes no mention — not in the introductory text, not in the interviewer’s questions, not in Metzger’s answers — of the raped women, the murdered children, the tortured elderly, the mass hostage-taking, or the murder of hostages. Nor was Metzger asked to comment on Hamas’s charter declaring its goal as the destruction of Israel. What a travesty.
What any of this has to do with promoting science is beyond me. It’s politics and ideology, pure and simple. Perhaps that’s why the interview is not behind a paywall.
The editors of Nature are destroying a once venerable and important science journal. That’s bad for science, which is bad for the world. Shame.