Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

A lot of criticism of SA seems to be from those who don't read the magazine. It is still mostly just thorough coverage of developments in physics, biology, engineering, and other pretty uncontroversial science topics and this coverage has not 'gone downhill'. It is a lot of work to do good reporting of an area of science by talking to a range of experts in that area and SA still does good work here. Some topics are politicized, but that doesn't mean you just don't report on the science in those areas. Almost everyone who thinks 'SA used to be good now it is woke' are either revealing they don't read it or just don't seem to like how the consensus in an area of research might now conflict with their worldview.

They do have an opinion section, like many journalism outlets, which sort of by definition have to be 'hot takes' (e.g. you don't publish opinion pieces that 99% of people will already agree with). Out of thousands it is seems hard to avoid having some bad ones (all major outlets seem to have opinion pieces that are dumb). Most of the flack they get seems to be from these dumb pieces, and it is sad that the entire brand gets tarred with it. You could argue that SA just shouldn't have opinion pieces at all, but ultimately opinion pieces are pretty good at drawing readers and SA is not a non-profit. Additionally, while there are some that overstep the research and are 'click-baity', some opinion pieces are thought-provoking in a valuable way. Nonetheless, perhaps it would be better to get rid of the opinions just to avoid hurting the reputation of the rest of the magazine, but running a journalism magazine is a tough business and it is easy for commenters on the internet to pop in and say stuff like this who don't actually have to run a magazine. I would rather they exist with occasional bad opinion pieces than not exist at all, as their coverage in general is still great.

This guy seems to really not like their coverage of science around gender non-conforming individuals, though I don't see why I should trust his representation of the research over theirs as he seems to have an agenda as well. He then cherry-picks a few examples of some bad opinion pieces not written by their journalists that overstepped the research and then paints the entire outlet with it, and that is frustrating because most of the science coverage reporting is still excellent.

The author of this article very (in)famously re-launched his career as a writer (prior to GNC youth he wrote mostly culture pieces) by misinterpreting a scientific paper on the subject he now claims to be an expert on. I don’t think he did this maliciously, but I do think, like many writers, he struggles to digest scientific literature accurately.

I know that I and many others switched to American Scientist years ago. SA has definitely gone downhill since the 80's. I would describe it as as bit softer/popular when I made the switch. I have no experience in the last few years.

Which article and how did he misinterpret it?

I’m a casual, occasional listener to his podcast (Blocked and Reported) but don’t really know his origin story and am curious to learn more.

Looking at https://www.scientificamerican.com/ I see the following front page topics and articles:

- Nutrition: It’s Actually Healthier to Enjoy Holiday Foods without the Anxiety

- Climate Change: Climate Change Is Altering Animals' Colors

- Climate Change: An Off Day in Brooklyn—And on Uranus

- Cats: Miaou! Curly Tails Give Cats an ‘Accent’

- Games: Spellement

- Opinion: We Can Live without Fossil Fuels

- Games: Science Jigsaw

- Arts: Poem: ‘The First Bite’

Don't know if it's representative, but it doesn't surprise me at all and is exactly why I don't subscribe.

The titles are clickbaity, but based on a quick skim of the content of those articles it doesn't feel too removed from reading the print issue ~15 years ago. Especially if you look at the featured articles from the most recent online issue [1]

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/2024/12-01/

I grant that the horse one looks pretty solid and interesting.

But it's the choice of topics. SciAm has an extremely narrow view of what science is worth publicizing, one that aligns very closely with online causes du jour. Looking at the recent technology topic articles, I see: AI causes e-waste; turning a car into a guitar; AI uses too much water; misinformation is an epidemic; voting is secure; zoetropes; another e-waste story; UN should study effects of nuclear war; bird going extinct; another misinformation story; AI and fungus; AI and (yet again) misinformation.

I guess there's a market for this stuff, but I'm not in it.

Back in 2016 he wrote an article in The Cut titled "What's Missing From the Conversation About Transgender Kids."[1] (which, incidentally, has since been silently corrected by The Cut's editors). It draws some pretty major conclusions from a single study [2] where he seems to overlook some pretty glaring issues that contradict his conclusion. [3]

Signal, to his credit, admits the error, although he goes on to argue it actually strengthens his argument (It does not IMO).

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171202080010/https://www.thecu...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23702447/

[3] https://www.emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-got-more-wr... and https://emilygorcenski.com/post/jesse-singal-still-got-more-...

You can read Singal's response to these criticisms here: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-sorta-quick-response-to...

The criticisms of Singal's piece are pretty weak, and often resort to refuting things he never actually wrote. He explicitly notes that data is sparse - this is one of the most controversial research subjects - but it does indeed suggest a desistance rate of 50-60% absent medical intervention. Contrast that with the common claim that desistance in gender dysphoric children is a myth which is just totally contradicted by the available evidence.

The downhill slide was already underway by the 1990s. Readership was in a slow decline and the publishers turned to various marketing gimmicks to maintain solvency. More pictorial articles, more po-sci articles, cover wrappers suggesting that it was worth subscribing even if you didn't read the whole magazine etc. I stopped reading around 2000, when I bought an issue and noticed I had read the whole thing in under 4 hours rather than the usual 5-6. A comparison indicated they had changed the font size and line spacing slightly, so as to maintain the same page count but with about 15% less content.

There's a list of resources critical of Jesse Singal here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/20353892

(found via https://bsky.app/profile/quatoria.bsky.social/post/3layjy6zb... )

(Sharing because I've been trying to do my personal learning on this topic)

I distinctly remember an article in the late 1990s (guessing 1998) which I read, but which I now can't find. It was about Y2K, and the bottom line was, we need more work to prevent disaster, but no matter how much is done, it will still be pretty awful.

I thought at the time he was exaggerating, and that Y2K was unlikely to be a big event. As everyone knows, a lot was done to fix the problem, and January 1, 2000 indeed turned out to be a non-event.

I cannot find the article now. I know I didn't dream it up, and I'm pretty certain it was in SciAm--I remember it had the usual sorts of graphs, illustrations, layout etc. as all SciAm articles did back then. If anyone can find it, I'd appreciate knowing. It was a turning point in my own reading of SciAm--I mostly gave it up after that, despite having devoured it up until 1980 or so.

A lot of awful men on that list.

Andrea James the obsessive stalker and harrasser, Julia Serrano the abusive misogynist who thinks lesbians should be shamed for not wanting dick, Ana Valens the creep who openly fantasizes about raping women in breeding farms.

If these horrible males are angry at Singal then I can only assume he's doing something right.

> Singal has argued repeatedly that Zucker was fired without cause due to a witch hunt by trans activists (this will come up again)

And Singal was right in that regard. Zucker was awarded over half a million dollars in a defamation suit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Zucker#Settlement