When I was a kid, I’d go into town with my Mom to the library, and while there I always wandered over to the magazine rack. Our little small-town library had a limited range of publications, but one I always looked over was “Scientific American.” In those days – early to mid-’70s – that august magazine still had honest, science-based reporting. I remember devouring articles about dinosaurs, Ice Age life, and much more.
That was then. This is now. These days “Scientific American” is getting into politics. X users are weighing in:
Number of voters who will change their vote because @sciam endorses a candidate: zero.
Number of people who lose trust in the scientific establishment and scale back their support for government funding of science? FAFO
Please excuse my profanity by acronym. https://t.co/YezBLFz7EE
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) September 16, 2024
You would never guess from this headline that these two presidential endorsements in 179 years are in the last two elections, back to back
It’s like me saying in my six decades on earth only twice have I been arrested for drunk driving
Last night and the night before last https://t.co/mCHTUqErhY
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) September 17, 2024
It’s important to note that, while “Scientific American” is telling the truth when they say they have only once before endorsed a presidential candidate, that once before was in 2020 when they endorsed Joe Biden.
The world of science is supposed to be objective and impartial; issuing an editorial opinion on politics, I don’t care in which direction, is not what a science journal should be doing.
In recent years, “Scientific American” has gone all-in for climate change fear-mongering, among other leftist causes. They haven’t done serious, objective science reporting in some time – oh, the occasional science article slips in once in a while, but their editorial policy is increasingly political. And, honestly, science journalism has been going downhill for some time.
Take the Discovery channel, a cable network that originally had some decent science programming on such things as biology, paleontology, astronomy, and so forth. Nowadays? It’s all Bigfoot, “reality” television, and… moonshiners? Really?
There are still a few decent sources for science-based programming. The BBC isn’t a science-based organization and still indulges in some perfectly ridiculous programming – as do most general-audience networks – but they do have a few excellent science-based shows, the recent “Prehistoric Planet” among them. There is an internet-based channel called Curiosity Stream that has some great content on science-based subjects, from prehistoric life to speculation on space travel. Good science programming is out there if you’re willing to look for it.
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Even so, it’s sad what “Scientific American” has fallen to. This is a publication founded in 1845. Abraham Lincoln may very well have read it, especially one 1860 issue that reported on a ship-buoying system the young Lincoln had invented and patented. Theodore Roosevelt had a keen interest in the natural world and very likely turned to “Scientific American” to scratch that itch.
But now, they’ve gone political. Now, they’ve gone all in for scare-mongering, and now they have endorsed a presidential candidate who is ill-informed, undisciplined, politically somewhere to the left of Lavrentiy Beria, and frankly not very bright. And that’s too bad.
O, how the mighty have fallen.
