Increasingly, those who claim to be science’s greatest defenders do the sector wrong by becoming highly ideological and progressively partisan.
The science establishment continues to politicize “science” — and that ain’t good for science.
In July, Nature — supposedly the most respected science journal in the world — endorsed Kamala Harris. Now, following the ideological leader, so has Scientific American.
And what a sad joke the endorsement is. For example, the editorial repeats the lie that Trump told people to inject bleach to fight Covid. From the editorial:
Trump touted his pandemic efforts during his first debate with Harris, but in 2020 he encouraged resistance to basic public health measures, spread misinformation about treatments and suggested injections of bleach could cure the disease.
No. He. Did. Not.
The quote in question came when Trump was riffing about a conversation with Bill Bryan, then, leader of the Science and Technology Directorate at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Here is what Trump said (my emphasis) from the transcript of the briefing:
THE PRESIDENT: So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And. then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So, it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
Trump was floating a half-baked idea — which was not helpful. But he never told people to inject bleach or any other substance into their bodies. That was a lie created whole cloth by his political enemies and the media, and now the falsehood is deemed “fact” by ideological scientists like the editors of SA and Francis Collins, who regurgitated the same baloney in his new memoir as just excerpted in The Atlantic.
How can an editorial in a supposedly factually based scientific publication be trusted as dispositive when it pushes a lie that has repeatedly been debunked — even by Snopes? This alone should discredit SA as a reliable guide to voting.
The editorial also praises Harris as a “staunch supporter of reproductive rights.” But science can’t determine whether abortion or reproductive technologies are right or wrong. Those are not science questions. They are moral/philosophical/religious issues, demonstrating again that SA is ideologically rather than scientifically driven.
The editorial lauds Harris for supporting liberal gun-control policies and repeats the distortion that vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance said that school shootings are just a “fact of life,” Again, from the editorial:
Even after Trump was injured and a supporter was killed in an attempted assassination, the former president remained silent on gun safety. His running mate, J. D. Vance, said the increased number of school shootings was an unhappy “fact of life” and the solution was stronger school security.
Is Vance wrong? Here is the full quote:
I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we’ve got to bolster security at our schools.
If these psychos are gonna go after our kids, we’ve got to be prepared for it. We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in, and we’ve got to deal with it
Besides, gun policy isn’t a science question. It involves constitutional rights, balancing freedom with safety, and policy trade-offs.
SA hates Trump’s climate policies because he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris accords. The editorial also supports Harris’s proposal to allow start-up small businesses a $50,000 tax deduction — which may be commendable but certainly isn’t a scientific question.
Increasingly, those who claim to be science’s greatest defenders do the sector wrong by becoming highly ideological and progressively partisan — as they simultaneously complain that those on the starboard side of politics have lost trust in the science establishment. Add Scientific American to the list of self-harmers.