Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Resigns After MAGA Meltdown Went Viral
We celebrate the opportunity this once respected science publication has to reconfigure itself and begin refocusing on rigorous science.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that shortly after President-Elect Donald Trump emerged as the winner on election night, Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth lost all sense of professional decorum and scientific objectivity and had herself a spectacular social media meltdown.
In a social media rant, Helmuth raged against Trump supporters, some of whom are likely to be science-curious potential readers of her publication. As a reminder, here is what it looked like:
@sciam why is this hateful bigot allowed to represent your magazine? pic.twitter.com/gwLmr2060S
— Jeffrey Philistine (@TejasGator) November 6, 2024
This is not a good look for someone supposed to have scientific objectivity or professional decorum. Many who read the screed called for her resignation.
Subsequently, Helmuth disavowed the remarks and locked her X.com account. But the damage was done, and now she has resigned.
Posting on Bluesky, an X rival, Helmuth said Thursday that she’s “decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief” without mentioning her previous comments.
In a series of now-deleted posts on the same platform, she called Trump voters the “meanest, dumbest, most bigoted” group and “fascists” following the former president’s reelection last week. Her comments went viral on X and were criticized on the increasingly right-wing platform.
Helmuth had apologized in a separate post, calling them “offensive and inappropriate” and that they don’t “reflect the position” of Scientific American.
No person has ever brought ignominy and disrepute upon a once-respected publication as quickly and decisively as this ridiculous woman. pic.twitter.com/BCNRcpCJs7
— i/o (@eyeslasho) November 14, 2024
This event is the latest episode in the magazine’s descent into woke madness. It included Scientific American endorsing Kamala Harris for president, marking only the second time for such an endorsement in its 179-year history.
Other low-lights from the magazine’s stack of articles:
- Scientific American colluding with other media to normalize “climate emergency” terminology, despite vast swaths of scientific evidence showing the Earth’s climate has continuously changed over 4 billion years.
- The magazine pushing “birth parent” terminology, which is utter nonsense in the face of real biology.
- The magazine offering a ridiculous take on football injuries…tying them to racism.
Previously, Helmuth had been slammed for peddling gender pseudoscience on Twitter, which was brilliantly debunked by Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright. Wright reviewed the exchange once her resignation was announced.
She once absurdly claimed that white-throated sparrows had 4 sexes. When I corrected her on this point, she blocked me. pic.twitter.com/oqaEKLAFxQ
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) November 14, 2024
The bosses at the publication seem undisturbed by this departure. In reporting this news, NPR digs at many of us who are delighted by this resignation.
In an emailed statement to NPR, Kimberly Lau, president of Scientific American, confirmed Helmuth’s resignation, stating, “Laura Helmuth has decided to move on from her position as editor in chief. We thank Laura for her four years leading Scientific American, during which time the magazine won major science communication awards and established a reimagined digital newsroom. We wish her well in the future.”
Conservatives on X, the social media platform where Helmuth’s comments gained traction, celebrated her departure as the downfall of another “woke” crusader.
No, we are not celebrating her downfall. We are celebrating the opportunity for this once-respected science publication to reconfigure itself and begin refocusing on rigorous science.
Laura Helmuth's outrageous behavior should disqualify her as an editor of *any* scientific publication, including @sciam. She clearly lacks the ability to set aside her biases, as all true scientists must. Resign, Laura, now that we know who you really are. https://t.co/eLEgSQDfGY
— Kurt Schulzke (@SchulzkeKurt) November 8, 2024
You can’t be woke and be a serious scientist. Hopefully, the executives at Scientific American will now appoint someone who understands the value of hard data, solid reasoning, and honest debate and discussion over theories.
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Comments
Maybe they could replace her with someone like Joy Reid. I think Reid has the rigorous training and disinterested detachment required by Scientific American.
These post don’t reflect my colleagues my a$$. Hold them all accountable. She is the tip of the iceberg. Time to clean house everywhere. It is spring time.
Scientific American was all in on global warming hysteria 30 years ago.
I predict this person will be replaced with someone even worse.
In the Reagan era, they were all in on arms control and bashing SDI or any new weapons system. Their heyday was from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s.
As I have written here before, SA has been on the decline for a very long time. Helmuth is really nothing new– simply the culmination of a long-term degradation of a once serious science magazine aimed at the educated public. Not really all that scholarly as the authors tended to avoid equations. Well known in the industry that equations will reduce readership. Americans are weak in the mathematics area, so equations, logarithms and the like scare them. It’s a challenge to write on a technical subject and avoid equations. I know first hand having had to write reports for managers and government bureaucrats. It can be done. Put the hard stuff in an appendix and use evocative language. Even technical books fall short. One of the best is Feynman’s Lectures, and an obscure book called “Wind Waves” by Blair Kinsman. His chapter on stochastic processes is about the best there is in explaining a difficult abstract subject.
So who will replace Helmuth? Be prepared for someone even worse as the rot in SA and other publications has become pervasive. Today we are in a worse state than even the old Soviet Union in the Lysenko era. Stalin left the mathematicians alone. Not us. Even the American Mathematical Society has brought in racism accusations. Let’s see what happens over the next several years. I’m not optimistic.
“Water Waves” N.F.Barber 1969 is probably the best, high school level covers it all. A.M.Yaglom “An Introduction to the Theory of Stationary Random Functions” (1962) was what I used for that.
J. E. Gordon’s “The New Science of Strong Materials.” If there is one book which explains everything. I think of it every time I look up at the 12×18 Doug Fir beam that spans the mochahut.
I have that too, and yes it’s excellent. Material science is a key area for modern technology. It’s often the limiting factor in engineering. To wit: wind turbines. Betz’s law reveals that that no wind turbine can capture more than 59.3% of the kinetic energy of the incoming wind. Real world turbines operate close to that limit, so to get more energy you need to make the blades bigger. But strength of material limits that. Thus the whole wind energy entetprise depends on material science.
The Yagloms (A.M. and I.M.) were excellent writers who could make a subject simple and appealing without trivializing it. Every talented high school student should read their series on geometric transformations.
I have A. M. Yaglom, and it’s excellent. One in the Prentice Hall Series of Russian math books translated by Richard Silverman. I met Silverman’s son by accident on bus many years ago and we had a great conversation. His father was followed by the FBI, and harassed. I used Silverman’s books in grad school, so they contributed to US national defense. Hear that FBI! Silverman’s translations were crafted for the American reader with appropriate English language references– a tremendous benefit for someone who does not read Russian and have access to Russian libraries. If I were teaching a course in Stochastic processes I would have the students first read Chapter 7 in Kinsman as an intro. Then read “An Introduction to Stochastic Modeling by Taylor and Karlin. Side note. Karlin’s other books are not good to learn from. His daughter took his course and complained to daddy. So he wrote up some excellent notes for her which eventually became the Taylor-Karlin book. So Karlin was capable of writing clearly, but didn’t at first.
It is sad but not surprising that the AMS has gone woke. I recently dropped out of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) for similar reasons. The last straw was when their CEO openly stated that nominations for their once-prestigious awards should take DEI “factors” into account. So instead of recognizing excellence, they will go by skin color and what kind of sex you have. No thanks!
She has misspelled her name…it should be “Helminth”. Apropos.
Revisionist Science…. Neoscientific Method. Scientific Globalist.
She has decided to become a social media influencer for Thunderbird wine. – A bit of Gallo’s humor-
The two brothers than made man high…..
If there are no readers it ceases to exist, hence the transformation to People magazine where scientists display their latest attire.
The thing about being a scientist is that one generally has an expertise in one field that is beyond reproach. So when I read an article in my field that is flat-out wrong, I then assume that perhaps the other articles in other fields are flat-out wrong too. To me, National Geographic crossed that line as well years ago.
I posted awhile back about the book “Bretz’s Flood” and how there was an active campaign by forces in the USGS to denounce his findings. I use it as an example to counter climate change enthusiasts, who state “there is no way one could get all of the scientists to support something that isn’t true.” Not on could you, but it has been done, and by one of the .gov agencies who is cheerleading climate change at the moment.
Iraq’s parliament just voted to legalize child rape down to age 9.
And American women are focused on … what?
Remarkable stuff
What a world.
Maybe Scientific American next editor can do a special edition devoted to:
the various positive and negative effects of getting legally raped regularly from age 9 and up
and the various positive or negative effects of being required by law to cover up face hair body etc
and the various positive and negative effects of being strangled to death by one’s family members – for flirting with a different religion suitor, or for converting
or the positive and negative effects of surviving or not surviving the dawn surprise attack massacres of October 7, 2023.
For someone of sufficient age and interests, the phrase “Helmuth speaking for Boskone” will resonate. 🙂
I subscribed to SA for over 50 years. But when I saw the article trashing EO Wilson (whom I knew in grad school), written by an author who didn’t even have the background to criticize his work, I canceled my subscription.
In case you hadn’t noticed, many years ago nearly all the SA articles were written by real scientists covering their fields. Now, nearly all the articles are written by “award-winning science journalists.” The writers are ill-equipped to judge what is real and important vs what is improbable hype.
Looking at her rant it is endemic of the woke culture general. Mentally damaged people who have never really grown up. What sane adult at her age is STILL raging about high school?
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