James B. Meigs

Unscientific American
Science journalism surrenders to progressive ideology.

/ From the Magazine / Arts and Culture, Politics and law
Spring 2024

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his "Skeptic" column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth. Shermer's role models included two twentieth-century thinkers who, like him, relished explaining science to the public: Carl Sagan, the ebullient astronomer and TV commentator; and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a popular monthly column in Natural History magazine for 25 years. Shermer hoped someday to match Gould's record of producing 300 consecutive columns. That goal would elude him.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country's leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer - some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies - especially concerning race, gender, or climate - couldn't be questioned.

"I started to see the writing on the wall toward the end of my run there," Shermer told me. "I saw I was being slowly nudged away from certain topics." One month, he submitted a column about the "fallacy of excluded exceptions," a common logical error in which people perceive a pattern of causal links between factors but ignore counterexamples that don't fit the pattern. In the story, Shermer debunked the myth of the "horror-film curse," which asserts that bad luck tends to haunt actors who appear in scary movies. (The actors in most horror films survive unscathed, he noted, while bad luck sometimes strikes the casts of non-scary movies as well.) Shermer also wanted to include a serious example: the common belief that sexually abused children grow up to become abusers in turn. He cited evidence that "most sexually abused children do not grow up to abuse their own children" and that "most abusive parents were not abused as children." And he observed how damaging this stereotype could be to abuse survivors; statistical clarity is all the more vital in such delicate cases, he argued. But Shermer's editor at the magazine wasn't having it. To the editor, Shermer's effort to correct a common misconception might be read as downplaying the seriousness of abuse. Even raising the topic might be too traumatic for victims.

The following month, Shermer submitted a column discussing ways that discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished (while acknowledging the need for continued progress). Here, Shermer ran into the same wall that Better Angels of Our Nature author Steven Pinker and other scientific optimists have faced. For progressives, admitting that any problem - racism, pollution, poverty - has improved means surrendering the rhetorical high ground. "They are committed to the idea that there is no cumulative progress," Shermer says, and they angrily resist efforts to track the true prevalence, or the "base rate," of a problem. Saying that "everything is wonderful and everyone should stop whining doesn't really work," his editor objected.

Shermer dug his grave deeper by quoting Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald and The Coddling of the American Mind authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, who argue that the rise of identity-group politics undermines the goal of equal rights for all. Shermer wrote that intersectional theory, which lumps individuals into aggregate identity groups based on race, sex, and other immutable characteristics, "is a perverse inversion" of Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. For Shermer's editors, apparently, this was the last straw. The column was killed and Shermer's contract terminated. Apparently, SciAm no longer had the ideological bandwidth to publish such a heterodox thinker.

(cont.)

-------------------------
Dora Hates You

"To the editor, Shermer's effort to correct a common misconception might be read as downplaying the seriousness of abuse."
This sounds like it could be a legitimate concern for a commercial magazine.

Further, I know lots of people who would be considered woke, progressive, left, or whatever buzzword you like to use for open minded; I can't think of one who wouldn't whole heartedly acknowledge that discrimination against marginalized people has improved greatly since the times when non-white hetero people might be lynched in front of happy crowds of Americans, and Nazis were fashioning the Nuremburg Codes after the Jim Crow laws in the American south. The undefended statement "They are committed to the idea that there is no cumulative progress," rings false from my personal experience.

But, in so much as Shermer considers himself a skeptic, I suppose I'd say I'm a skeptic of him. I do see he's been accused of some ungentlemanly behavior toward women, so there could be some bias on his part. Maybe he'd like to excuse himself from being considered sexually abusive on the basis that he's known many MORE women who he DIDN'T abuse?

-------------------------
"Hey, where's Cricket?" - Kristi Noem's daughter.

I haven't read his original pieces, so I'll decline to comment.

Ding, have you read anything he has produced or are you just going by what you have read on the internet?

-------------------------
I was right.

The progs are ruining everything. Woke is one of their weapons for doing that.

-------------------------
I :heart; Q

The progs are ruining everything. Woke is one of their weapons for doing that.

-------------------------
I :heart; Q

Speaking of people who want to deny progress...



-------------------------
"Hey, where's Cricket?" - Kristi Noem's daughter.

Sure am. Destroying the country is not my idea of progress.

-------------------------
I :heart; Q

Well I intend to enjoy watching the spectacle, myself. America deserves trump I think. In so many ways he does represent the Great American Con Job.

-------------------------
"Hey, where's Cricket?" - Kristi Noem's daughter.

Pretty obvious. Why else would you vote for Dementia Joe? I just need it to hold off for 9 months until my fortress is finished.

-------------------------
I :heart; Q

Yes, you'll be safe from the boogie man in your pillow fort.

-------------------------
"Hey, where's Cricket?" - Kristi Noem's daughter.

Yep.

-------------------------
I :heart; Q

Ttump can't be bothered to do anything. If he wins, it's late mornings and back to the golf course.

Ttump was a truly terrible president.

-------------------------
I was right.

Reminds me of the blues brothers arriving at a country bar:
why, we have both kinds of music...country....AND... western!
When I get up to go to work: woke.
and when I get home, after settling in a bit:
not woke
This is is just another blatant magat attempt to hassle non white American citizens.
by the stupid grandstanding Florida guvner deliberately ignoring the well being of our priceless aquatic resources.
Oh and: dirtsantos is pretty bad too

-------------------------
It's a democratic hoax

For progressives, admitting that any problem - racism, pollution, poverty - has improved means surrendering the rhetorical high ground.

Says who? I am, and have always been, a Progressive and I disagree with the above. That's the problem with opinions, everyone has one, but sometimes they should be kept to themselves.

-------------------------
I was right.

They say opinions are like assholes- everybody has one.

or in Tbok's case, is one.

-------------------------

Pro Puppy-Killer Party 2024

Agreed. I get the impression this guy got called out for being a creep during "me too", and now he's mad at liberals.

-------------------------
"Hey, where's Cricket?" - Kristi Noem's daughter.