Even though Scientific American had never endorsed a presidential candidate in the magazine’s 175-year history, its top editor on Tuesday said that there was little internal debate over a decision to back former US vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
Editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth said that US President Donald Trump’s administration was much worse for the scientific community than the magazine had feared.
The magazine’s endorsement was posted online on Tuesday, a day after Trump questioned the science of climate change in relation to the California wildfires.
Helmuth said the timing was coincidental and the editorial was written during the past two months.
Scientific American said that “the evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has basically damaged the United States and its people because he rejects evidence and science.”
The editorial by senior editor Josh Fischman sharply condemned Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The magazine criticized Trump for seeking cutbacks in scientific funding and hobbling the US response to climate change.
Biden “has a record of following the data and being guided by science,” the magazine said.
There has been some pushback.
Helmuth said that the magazine has been monitoring requests for canceled subscriptions and has received some — many from people who were not subscribers, anyway.
Conservative columnist S.E. Cupp tweeted that while she agreed with the magazine’s arguments and planned to vote for Biden, “I do have mixed feelings on whether this is a good use of scientific clout and credibility.”
University of New Mexico psychology professor and author Geoffrey Miller said that the magazine was betraying 175 years of principled bipartisanship “for the sake of some cheap, short-sighted, opportunistic virtue signaling.”
“I’m old enough to remember when your magazine had some integrity,” he wrote on Twitter.
However, Helmuth said the magazine has not ignored politics; the US Atomic Energy Commission burned 3,000 copies of an issue in the 1950s because of its stance against the hydrogen bomb.
In 2016, it wrote an editorial questioning Trump’s fitness to be president, although it did not endorse then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Part of our magazine’s mission is to show people how the world works — whether it’s black holes, evolution, viruses, or systemic racism,” Helmuth said. “We felt it was our duty as part of that mission to warn people that Trump has been disastrous for research, science, health and the environment.”
The magazine hopes it does not have to make a presidential endorsement again, she said.
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