After Trump won the election, Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, went ballistic on BlueSky (Twitter for progressives). She issued the three posts below, decrying her generation for being “fucking fascists” and telling some of her high-school classmates to “fuck them to the moon and back” (note to editor: “moon” is usually capitalized).
I have to say that this sounds a bit like Helmuth was a bit tipsy, but I won’t blame alcohol for this. After all, if you’re drunk, you’d better stay away from social media! I wrote about these “tweets”, and about Scientific American‘s “progressive” editorial slant, in a piece I posted yesterday. (This is part of a long series of posts I’ve done about her and the magazine.)
At any rate, after what must have been a bunch of pushback, and perhaps realizing that her job was in jeopardy, Helmuth issued an abject response yesterday, to wit:
After making a series of fiercely ideological and political statements on social media in the wake of Trump’s win and being pilloried for doing so, @SciAm editor in chief Laura Helmuth is now back pedaling. She claims she is committed to editorial objectivity. pic.twitter.com/qwTsaiyKLE
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) November 7, 2024
Well, I’m trying to be more charitable these days, striving to put myself in my opponents’ shoes and imputing to them the best motives I can think of, but I couldn’t do it this time. And that’s because Helmuth has left a paper trail during her editorship—a paper trail of progressive leftism and wokeness that has demonized many people (including Mendel!) as racists and bigots. Thus I’m not convinced by her assertion that she “respects and values people across the political spectrum.” No, she seems to despise people on the right, and that’s what came out in her first set of tweets above.
Further, what is the “mistake” here? She’s is the editor of a major magazine, for crying out loud, and should know how to control herself. “Shock and confusion” doesn’t, at least to me, excuse her behavior. “Shock,” perhaps, but what is she “confused” about?
Her statement that her unhinged tweets “do not reflect the position of Scientific American or my colleagues,” really means, of course, “Please don’t fire me! I’ll be a good girl from now on,” I doubt, however, that her bosses at Springer really care about her eroding reputation. They probably care more about the bottom line, and I have no idea how the magazine is doing.
The sentence that irked me the most is “I am committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity.” Indeed! The whole magazine has violated both tenets for years. It gave Michael Shermer a pink slip for simply questioning accepted (woke) wisdom in his column, and couldn’t wait to accuse E. O. Wilson of racism, nearly before his body had gone cold. The many biased and slanted columns do not bespeak Helmuth’s commitment to objectivity, and here’s one example that I mentioned yesterday.
After the magazine published its hit piece on E. O. Wilson, accusing him (as well as Mendel and others) of racism, thirty evolutionary biologists and I cobbled together a letter to Scientific American, rebutting the hit piece’s claims and defending Wilson and his legacy (you can see the letter here). Helmuth rejected the letter. She also rejected my personal appeal to “consider an op-ed about how extreme Leftist progressivism is besmirching science itself by distorting the truth? (Example: arguments that sex is not bimodal in humans, but forms a continuum.) I could make a number of arguments like that about biology that, contra McLemore, have truth behind them.” That letter didn’t fly, but Luana Maroja and I turned the idea into a paper for Skeptical Inquirer.
So much for Helmuth’s editorial objectivity!
Unfortunately, the readers are almost unanimously unimpressed by the apology. Go see for yourself, but I’ll put up a few screenshots of responses:
I commented that I can forgive a drunk rage write episode. After all, Hemingway said something like ‘Write drunk, edit sober’. But I grasp every point PCC(E) has made – ex-ten-sive-ly – and bravo to that.
So perhaps a great writing career is simply held back by the EIC job – fly free, Laura, fly free!
“I apologize to older Sci Am readers that I apologized to younger voters about the fucking fascists.
I’m now taking my apology right back.”
Should be fired. She is sick and should not be leading the magazine that I’ve been reading and contributing to for 40 years.
‘I’m sorry and these are not my beliefs.’
Yes, they are. What does a moment of candor mean if not this? Now you’re lying and gaslighting us. Cancel her ass. She shouldn’t be editor of SciAm if she can’t even maintain a shred of objectivity or lacks enough good judgment and self-restraint not to rage-Tweet into the public domain.
I’d like to think that all of this is enough to get her fired so that the magazine might be saved, but at this time in our society counting on sense, reason, and integrity is in itself irrational. It’s all just part of the greater tragicomedy that is playing out.
Oh damnit yes siree-Bob!
Her election night “tired and emotional” tweet is paled by her destruction of SciAm, lo these many years. Her far left Khmer Rouge commie-pukedom. I stopped reading it when it was so obviously translated directly from the North Korean.
Gimme a break.
Trump’s victory was various levels of terrible but a blow back against woke will be welcome. Of course…. it won’t work that way – reds never learn.
D.A.
NYC
An editor that writes like this in public simply cannot be the voice or face of Scientific American. She has embarrassed everyone who works for the magazine, and I can’t imagine that the columnists who write for the Scientific American really want their own reputations tarnished by her behavior. Employees, columnists, and potential authors should run for the exit as soon as possible. I expect that they will do so. Her resignation would seem to be in order.
I think that PCC(E) is correct. She is (desperately) trying to save her job.
Free speech wins again – we get to see someone’s actual feelings, and as a result the market will determine how things go with her career and the magazine.
In media training I’ve done for consumer products, we are taught not to disparage potential customers as they represent, well, customers. We build our brand as being a product for all people who need to use it regardless of political leanings, and believe me, given our profit margin we need every customer we can get.
SciAm has meticulously built a brand based on support for Democrats and progressive viewpoints, so her rant was just one more brick in the wall of brand that she’s built with at least tacit support from the ownership group. It sure won’t cause readers who believe that the magazine was right for publicly endorsing Harris to suddenly cancel their subscriptions. I’m not sure why she apologized unless someone higher up thought it was to far beyond the normal “EO Wilson is a racist” discourse. Or maybe they still sell a lot of magazines in Indiana.
Lastly: there was something X’d out last week snarkily showing “sciency” Harris in an interview talked about being a libra and how it affected her TV viewing. SciAm is now covering for her in their podcast “Medieval Elites Cared about Their Zodiac Signs, Too” https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/astrology-was-an-important-science-for-medieval-people/
See – it’s science!
Wilson’s Wikipedia page contains the following unsourced statement:
Examinations of his letters after his death revealed that he had supported the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose work on race and intelligence is widely regarded by the scientific community as deeply flawed and racist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson
If I recall the necessary nuance, his support was in the sense that even controversial opinions should be permitted publication. Let science sort it out.
If there was less push-back, or no push-back, she would not feel sorry and apologize.
Per Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”
“I feel a bit of a stiffness coming on.”
Minor point, but in AP style (and, apparently, the style SciAm is following), the “m” in “moon” is lower-case.
I subscribed to SA for about 25 years because I enjoyed its hard science articles. Over time, the science became squishier, the content decreased, and the editorials could have been written by the DNC. I stopped renewing 10 years ago.