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    Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

    (reason.com)
    473 points Bostonian | 17 comments | 18 Nov 24 22:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.29s | source | bottom
    1. bashmelek ◴[19 Nov 24 00:17 UTC] No.42178778[source]▶
    To be honest, even 18 years ago, long before this editor in chief, I found Scientific American rather ideological. Maybe it got more obvious over time, but I don’t see its recent tone categorically different.
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    2. sbuttgereit ◴[19 Nov 24 00:34 UTC] No.42178909[source]▶
    I agree. This editor may well have been a current-day culmination of a trend that started some time ago. I stopped my own print subscription to SciAm once the articles started to ostensibly push certain sociopolitical viewpoints in the guise of science journalism. This was well before the editor being discussed was editor enough so I never knew this person existed.

    While this editor may have crossed some redlines, I am doubtful this change in represents a genuine philosophical shift at the magazine.

    3. jgalt212 ◴[19 Nov 24 00:37 UTC] No.42178941[source]▶
    True. SciAm has been broken for a long time. The same can be said for most magazines, but SciAm being broken probably just hurts more for our crowd.
    4. itishappy ◴[19 Nov 24 00:48 UTC] No.42179009[source]▶
    Any examples? I'm in the same boat as you, and while I agree with the premise, I don't recall anything as egregious as the examples from the article:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denial-of-evoluti...

    https://archive.is/H8hJw

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi...

    https://archive.is/oMzz7

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    5. kbelder ◴[19 Nov 24 00:59 UTC] No.42179088[source]▶
    SciAm was transformative to my life, I think. My father brought home a stack of them, maybe a couple year's worth, for me when I was twelve or so. I read them over and over again during my teens, slowly puzzling understanding out of the articles that were initially so far beyond me. Learned more from that stack of magazines than some years of high school.

    But that was in the 80s. For the last couple of decades, Scientific American just makes me sad. Crap I wouldn't bother reading.

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    6. dtgriscom ◴[19 Nov 24 01:31 UTC] No.42179260[source]▶
    In the early 70's I loved The Amateur Scientist, "conducted" by C. L. Stong. Great articles, with real technical details, giving you a real chance to build real equipment. To pick one article at random, from February 1972: "A Simple Laser Interferometer, an Inexpensive Infrared Viewer and Simulated Chromatograms". Very, very cool.

    There's nothing like that out there now.

    7. bashmelek ◴[19 Nov 24 02:25 UTC] No.42179545[source]▶
    From my own impression back then, it was less political but more subtly ideological. Truth be told, I have my own ideology as well. Some things that I remember were an article that used a trolley problem of throwing someone in the way to save five as the “obvious rational” choice; and how the covers would often try to link entanglement or dark matter to consciousness. It was numerous little things like that.
    8. tristramb ◴[19 Nov 24 08:59 UTC] No.42181316[source]▶
    Back when I was 11 or 12, in the early '70s, one of my father's friends who was training for medical school left a box of Scientific Americans in our loft. I discovered them and would spent hours and hours poring over them trying to understand the articles and soaking up the air of unbounded optimism which I now realise was derived from the Moon landings. This was a major factor in pulling me towards science and maths. Later, at university, I came to realise that all SciAm articles are to some extent oversimplifications and that you should really go to original sources for true understanding. However, at that age they were just what I needed.
    9. bell-cot ◴[19 Nov 24 09:57 UTC] No.42181722[source]▶
    The problem is >40 years old. I was a subscriber in the early 1980's (when SciAm was still quite good), and recall them publishing one of Carl Sagan's articles on the dangers of nuclear winter.

    Whatever the correctness of Carl's science, he was an astronomer. Not a subject-matter expert. And the the article was very clearly ideological. In an era when the political winds in Washington were blowing hard in the other direction.

    I was rather younger then, but still recall thinking that SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons, for the feel-good (& maybe profit) of appealing to the left. Which seemed hard to reconcile with them actually believing the results they published, saying that humanity could be wiped out.

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    10. setgree ◴[19 Nov 24 11:06 UTC] No.42182170[source]▶
    Bias might emerge as much in choice of topics to cover as in the tone of the coverage. On X, someone mentioned that Wired’s coverage in the past 5-10 years is striking for how little it discusses SpaceX, for example.
    11. pmontra ◴[19 Nov 24 13:08 UTC] No.42182992[source]▶
    Yup, I don't like the trend of publishing more and more articles written by journalists instead of by the very researchers working on the subject. There is a huge difference in quality between the two type of articles. Ones can be quickly skimmed, the others must be read.
    12. ◴[19 Nov 24 13:14 UTC] No.42183055[source]▶
    13. tiahura ◴[19 Nov 24 13:15 UTC] No.42183061[source]▶
    You’re absolutely right. Nuclear was an emotional topic that caused many many otherwise grounded scientists to lose it. SDI was another.
    14. ◴[19 Nov 24 13:15 UTC] No.42183064[source]▶
    15. pvg ◴[19 Nov 24 15:44 UTC] No.42184730[source]▶
    SciAm's approach had thrown away any chance of appealing to the Washington decision-makers, controlling the nuclear weapons

    It seems to have worked, though - the biggest nuclear war skeptic in that administration was Ronald Reagan and he's one of the world's most successful nuclear arms controllers and disarmers, whatever one may think of the rest of his politics and policies.

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    16. bell-cot ◴[19 Nov 24 17:05 UTC] No.42185648{3}[source]▶
    > It seems to have worked, though...

    Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan? "I don't want any American city to end up like Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima" was a perfectly acceptable right-wing value.

    My read is that Reagan understood the difference between talking big & tough, and actually starting a war. He obviously had a taste for proxy wars, but conflicts with direct US involvement were very few and small on his watch.

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    17. pvg ◴[19 Nov 24 17:29 UTC] No.42185979{4}[source]▶
    Did it? Or did Reagan have clear memories of WWII - when he was 30-ish years old - and the horrific level of death and devastation which even conventional bombing had inflicted upon Europe and Japan?

    Yes it did. The influence of media and popular depictions of nuclear war on Reagan is very well documented. His experience of WWII was working on propaganda materials, not exposure to the devastation of war. He was convinced nuclear war was likely civilization-ending, an actual Armageddon. In this he was at odds with the bulk of his administration and US nuclear doctrine. His attitudes and interactions with Gorbachov on these issues are also surprisingly well documented.