An Unscientific American
Editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth’s departure from ‘Scientific American’ last week is an object lesson in the dangers of mixing facts and ideology.
The day after the 2024 election, journalist Paul D. Thacker posted on his X account a series of expletive-filled posts from Laura Helmuth’s Bluesky account, in which she apologised “to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists,” upbraided high-school classmates for celebrating Trump’s win—“fuck them to the moon and back”—and described her home state of Indiana as “racist and sexist.”
Series of posts by Scientific American's Laura Helmuth who turned America's oldest magazine into her personal political blog of bigotry and hate. When you're so disconnected from American reality don't be shocked that trust in your magazine evaporates. Science is not politics. pic.twitter.com/kgsCEUIomU
The ensuing media firestorm led Helmuth to delete the comments and offer an unconvincing apology for her “offensive and inappropriate posts,” asserting that she ‘respects and values people across the political spectrum’ and remains “committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity.”
