Laura Helmuth leaves as editor of Scientific American

November 14, 2024 • 1:50 pm

From Bluesky via Dr. Cobb:

I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief. I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I’d like to share a very small sample of the work I’ve been so proud to support (thread)

— Laura Helmuth (@laurahelmuth.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T19:23:01.434Z

You can follow the thread by clicking on the tweet.

One can only speculate about what happened, and that is unproductive. The facts are that Helmuth had a total social-media meltdown the night of the election (see her tweets here), for which she later apologized (see tweet here).  People called for her to be fired given the tenor of what she wrote, but I’ve never done that. We don’t know if she resigned or was fired, and it really makes no difference. I just hope the magazine hires a successor who can pivot the magazine back to doing what it’s famous for: having real scientists write engaging and instructive real science articles.

As for Helmuth, I wish her well. Everybody should have a second chance, and she does, after all, have a long history of science journalism in other places.

28 thoughts on “Laura Helmuth leaves as editor of Scientific American”

  2. Sounds like good news – I hope that her replacement is actually committed to scientific objectivity and that Sci Am has really learned a lesson.

    1. The publishers had to know what they were getting when they hired Helmuth. It remains to be seen whether the next editor will be committed to science or be another wokebot, but with better anger management.

  3. I cannot find anything to like about this, but agree with PCC(E).

    However, I did compare her rage tweet with the writing guidance attributed to Ernest Hemingway – write drunk, edit sober – and concluded the EIC job is simply holding back what might be a great writing career!

  5. Helmuth’s thread celebrating her “sample of the work I’m so proud to support” includes “And the first trans clinic was destroyed by Nazis”. However, she fails to mention the fact, which I noted the other day, that some of the clinic’s pioneering surgeries were carried out by Erwin Gohrbandt, who went on to become a Nazi war criminal conducting human experiments at Dachau.

    Her thread has been archived here: https://archive.is/LjzUT

  6. I first subscribed to SciAm when I was 16 (I’m 75 now), and finally gave up in 2022. It seemed to be following another old stalwart, NPR, into a slough of anaerobic wokitude from which there was no turning back.
    Actually, I began to worry about SciAm in the late 90s, when its famously crisp and informative illustration started to undergo replacement by gaudily cartoonish decorations. But it was the metastasis of preachy social-sciency content during the past decade that finally killed my old friend for me.

    2. Similar. Had a 9th grade study hall in the library and discovered Sci Am and Martin Gardner, Amateur Scientist, and amazing articles. You can visit the archives with a subscription, but current issues make me sad.

    1. Great idea.

      It’s too early to know if sanity will prevail: the owners of the magazine may still be firm believers in the crazy left but want someone who’s polite.

  8. A set of restrained comments so far. By contrast I say Hallelujah! She transformed a wonderful magazine into a joke and should have been removed long ago for being bad at her job. The tweets are insignificant in comparison.

    1. Well, I for one am trying to be charitable here because I suspect she was let go. That is never pleasant, although, as readers here know, I have long thought that she ran that magazine into the ground.

  9. Prof, if she doesn’t think that her remarks, actions and the decline of the quality of the scientific articles under her leadership is a problem then how can we expect her to do well in the future.

      1. Good science writing is wonderful. Science ideology stimulates the emotions (good or bad) but supresses the wonder.

        I know which I prefer.

  10. Jerrys’ saying everybody should have a second chance is especially appropriate here. Many have succumbed to some popular irrational ideology only to be finally able to realize they were in error. I was just telling someone yesterday about how as a good Communist in the 70’s I thought it was ok to torture anti-communist activists in eastern Europe. I called it fighting fire with fire. When you are sure you are on the side of right, anything is possible. And then, for the rest of your life you think with regret what might have been.

    2. Knowing what I staunchly believed in when I was 16 makes me very humble regarding my current opinions, which, however, at least have the benefit of a bit more knowledge and experience.

  11. I wanted to relay a story by Eric S. Raymond on eXtwitter :

    He says he collected all his Scientific Americans from youth, and recalls “the clouds were gathering” around when Gardner’s column ended in 1980, then specified one article on the Reagan administration’s Space Defense Initiative. It was more a political “hatchet job” than the anticipated “semi-science-fictional wonders” that ruined the magazine for him. This article:

    “OCTOBER 1, 1984
    Space-Based Ballistic-Missile Defense”

    (I leave it link-free to avoid the WordPress gremlins).

    1. Personally I wouldn’t take ESR as an authority on anything at all. Notable scientists who were against SDI, and by no means woke, include Nobel Laureates Steven Weinberg and Phil Anderson. ESR also does not believe in anthropogenic global warming, and has interesting views on a wide variety of topics: https://x.com/tqbf/status/816447812661551108

      Thomas Ptacek raised a fair bit of money for The Great Slate from people paying him not to quote ESR on Twitter. Last I heard of ESR he was trying to crowd fund so that he and the five other people who apparently are the only ones to understand how the internet works could keep the whole thing going, and he wouldn’t have to get an actual job.

  13. She’s an arrogant, corrupt, deceitful authoritarian leftist. I don’t wish her well at all. Vile human being.

    1. Do you have any evidence that she’s a “vile human being” beyond the tweets, which may have been made in anger. I don’t have data that would suggest that, so please be more polite on this forum. Thank you.

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