Scientific American is looking for a new and “diverse” editor-in-chief!
Scientific American, where discrimination and
bigotry thrive!
Scientific American needs a new editor-in-chief, but right off the bat I must warn qualified white men they needn’t bother to apply. They won’t get the job.
More on why later. First we must give the background. In November Scientific American’s editor-in-chief, Laura Helmuth, resigned, claiming it was time for her “to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”
In truth, it was time for her to go. She had disgraced herself repeatedly by posting some very ugly posts condemning Trump and insulting his supporters in a most emotional and irrational manner. But those posts weren’t the real reason she need to leave.
[I]ncreasingly, during Helmuth’s tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day’s social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we’ll be living with for a long time.
When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy”? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented “his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” That author also explained that “the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.” But the normal distribution doesn’t make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn’t be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.
Under her leadership this formerly honored magazine has been anything but scientific or American. That she has left would appear on its face a good thing, and might make possible a major reform at the magazine.
Don’t bet on it. In the job announcement the magazine sent out today to the National Association of Science Writers — to which I have been a member now for almost thirty years — Scientific American’s management made it very clear its attitude toward “diversity.”
At Springer Nature [the larger publisher of the magazine], we value the diversity of our teams and work to build an inclusive culture, where people are treated fairly and can bring their differences to work and thrive. We empower our colleagues and value their diverse perspectives as we strive to attract, nurture and develop the very best talent.
Springer Nature was awarded Diversity Team of the Year at the 2022 British Diversity Awards. Find out more about our DEI work HERE.
At that website the company makes it very clear that it doesn’t define “diversity” as bringing to it many different ideas and perspectives. No, it instead means that the company must maintain racial hiring quotas favoring some races and women, and do so proudly.
Women make up 44% of our global leadership cohort: an increase of +5 percentage points from 2018, when we first set our gender representation goal of 45%. Women also make up 50% of our management board.
Using learning from our global inclusion and diversity survey, we set new global representation goals for race and ethnicity in senior leadership roles. Globally, we want to increase the proportion of people of colour in senior leadership from approximately 29% to 35% by the end of 2025. We have also set goals to make sure our senior leaders reflect our global footprint.
These policies practically guarantee that the next editor-in-chief of Scientific American must be either a woman or “a person of color”, or maybe both! If you are a white man however you shouldn’t waste your time applying, because you won’t get the job, no matter how qualified you are.
Or maybe some very qualified white man should apply, and then when he is passed over for a DEI applicant with clearly less qualifications file a lawsuit claiming racial discrimination. The discovery phase of such a lawsuit would be quite entertaining.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Scientific American, where discrimination and
bigotry thrive!
Scientific American needs a new editor-in-chief, but right off the bat I must warn qualified white men they needn’t bother to apply. They won’t get the job.
More on why later. First we must give the background. In November Scientific American’s editor-in-chief, Laura Helmuth, resigned, claiming it was time for her “to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”
In truth, it was time for her to go. She had disgraced herself repeatedly by posting some very ugly posts condemning Trump and insulting his supporters in a most emotional and irrational manner. But those posts weren’t the real reason she need to leave.
[I]ncreasingly, during Helmuth’s tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day’s social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we’ll be living with for a long time.
When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy”? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented “his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.” That author also explained that “the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.” But the normal distribution doesn’t make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn’t be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.
Under her leadership this formerly honored magazine has been anything but scientific or American. That she has left would appear on its face a good thing, and might make possible a major reform at the magazine.
Don’t bet on it. In the job announcement the magazine sent out today to the National Association of Science Writers — to which I have been a member now for almost thirty years — Scientific American’s management made it very clear its attitude toward “diversity.”
At Springer Nature [the larger publisher of the magazine], we value the diversity of our teams and work to build an inclusive culture, where people are treated fairly and can bring their differences to work and thrive. We empower our colleagues and value their diverse perspectives as we strive to attract, nurture and develop the very best talent.
Springer Nature was awarded Diversity Team of the Year at the 2022 British Diversity Awards. Find out more about our DEI work HERE.
At that website the company makes it very clear that it doesn’t define “diversity” as bringing to it many different ideas and perspectives. No, it instead means that the company must maintain racial hiring quotas favoring some races and women, and do so proudly.
Women make up 44% of our global leadership cohort: an increase of +5 percentage points from 2018, when we first set our gender representation goal of 45%. Women also make up 50% of our management board.
Using learning from our global inclusion and diversity survey, we set new global representation goals for race and ethnicity in senior leadership roles. Globally, we want to increase the proportion of people of colour in senior leadership from approximately 29% to 35% by the end of 2025. We have also set goals to make sure our senior leaders reflect our global footprint.
These policies practically guarantee that the next editor-in-chief of Scientific American must be either a woman or “a person of color”, or maybe both! If you are a white man however you shouldn’t waste your time applying, because you won’t get the job, no matter how qualified you are.
Or maybe some very qualified white man should apply, and then when he is passed over for a DEI applicant with clearly less qualifications file a lawsuit claiming racial discrimination. The discovery phase of such a lawsuit would be quite entertaining.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Astonishing: “That author also explained that ‘the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard . . .'” It’s one thing to not understand the most basic of statistical concepts, but to write publicly about it, exposing her ignorance in a national science magazine? Apparently science ain’t what it used to be. About the author: “Monica R. McLemore is an associate professor in the Family Health Care Nursing Department and a clinician-scientist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.” First, dismissals should also extend to McLemore and article editor Megha Satyanarayana, as well as Helmuth. Second, remind me never to get sick in San Francisco . . .
Related: You will get the point. Low standards is no standards:
“The “progressive” radical Democrat political agenda accomplishes exactly that. And as you may know I call much of what they did as per their political agenda while in political power political treason. ”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/nola-i-could-not-believe-my-ears-1
Such DEI postioning, especially from “scientists” is utterly preposterous.
Think about it. So many such people insist on the concept of evolution by natural selection, what many would describe as “survival of the fittest”, but they demand that hiring/employment be determined solely by social and demographic criteria, rather than actual capabilities and merit.
“Using learning from our global inclusion and diversity survey,”
“learning” is not a noun. All else aside, it’s that easy to know to run away.
Was a subscriber for 20 years before she took control. Shortly after noticed the rapid decline in quality and never renewed. Based on this article I still wont subscribe for the foreseeable future. Truly is a shame how the woke have ruined such good things.
print circulation 240,000?
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/scientific-american-the-oldest-u-s-magazine-hits-another-milestone-as-the-appetite-for-science-news-heats-up/
That seems like a pretty high number.
Back in the 70’s, I was working in a metal fabrication machine shop to pay for my college tuition (Chemistry major). Sawmill machinery and hatch covers for ships.
One day, I brought a Scientific American issue to lunch break. Was reading Pioneer at Jupiter, or something. I was the new kid on the block. I guess they thought I was ignoring them. “Read it to us, out loud.”
I had a pony tail. They were always telling me what would happen if it got caught in any of the moving machinery.
That’s my last recollection of Scientific American.
I’m still streamed about that vicious hit piece on E.O. Wilson Helmuth had SA publish back in 2021, right after his death.
It really showed just UNscientific Scientific American had become under her leadership.
Nothing short of a thorough purge of the journal, from the board on down, can salvage it at this point.
Another great read on this subject: Paul D Thacker’s Substack essay, “Scientific American Ignored Years of Editor Laura Helmuth’s Appalling Conduct, Then Scalped Her After I Circulated Her Own Tweets” (Nov. 18, 2024). Like Bob, Thacker is deeply skeptical that Helmuth’s departure will change anything at Scientific American..
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/scientific-american-ignored-years
https://www.baiermarine.com/
Hatch covers. I did stuff for thousands of them. Many years ago.
Must have done a good job back then. They’re still around.
The way sci-am attacked Lomborg was unforgivable
I used to subscribe to SA, and all the others: NatGeo, Discover, PopSci, etc. Even after the emergence and subsequent maturity of the Internet, there is nothing quite like holding the printed material in your hands. But I gave up all of them when the shift to ideologically driven content (e.g. climate change) became too ubiquitous to ignore any longer. I used to think these publications would all just fold, but I suppose the next generation has been sufficiently indoctrinated that they don’t even notice the propaganda they are being fed. It is normal to them.
We still need the 1960’s Scientific American and National Geographic. The internet has not yet provided a good substitute.
I cannot remember exactly when NatGeo went Malthusian, but my dad cancelled the subscription right away. The article discussed Chinese statutory birth restrictions as a positive path that must be embraced.
We had decades of the magazine on shelves, and used them for school papers. This was all pre- internet. And the reporting is why I am a space and astronomy geek today. But they embraced politics over science.
I left NatGeo a long time ago. I noticed that more and more articles were mentioning GW in some way. I even noticed that the ads were starting to mention GW.. At that point I stared to look for the mentions of GW. Eventually every single article was blaming GW for everything. And all full page ads mentioned it in some way.
At that point I even looked for GM in all other publications I could find. They were all getting just as bad.
Man made GW was being blamed for everything from hang nails to homosexual penguins. By the late 90’s I quit buying all scientific magazines.
The internet has in no way replaced them. The quality is even worse.
GW global warming
My SciAm story, I was a big fan in the 80s. But I let my subscription lapse in the 90s because, as noted by others, they started valuing certain politics over full discovery and disclosure. By the mid 80s I realized the use of a certain grammar in their prose, e.g., “workers” was a frequent operative noun. In recent _decades_ the GW genuflect is prominent, along with additional idioms of politics that just ruined the experience of discovery they would have otherwise offered in their editions. Nowadays I get to B&N or the like and I sadly pass over whatever they offer.
It is sad because I knew what they once were. Is this what infiltration and coopting looks like?
I think the time has come to stand-up to this blatantly illegal anti-white racism and to make all these woke companies pay. There even exists a legal entity America First Legal setup to take on these discrimination cases. Even though I’m ok with my current position I wish I had the skill set and background needed for being editor-in-chief of Scientific American because as a white male I know I wouldn’t be hired and could file with American First Legal a lawsuit against the magazine and company that owns them, win, get damages, and advance the cause of using legal means to stop these companies from illegally discriminating against whites
My favorite tech mag was 21st Century Science & Technology (sadly a Lyndon La Rouche deal).
That was pro-technology at least.
JSE is a bit whack, going down the diseases from space deal.
Something Elon should invest in–good hardcopy tech magazines.
CNN used to have Science and Technology week–nice steady employment. Miles O’Brien lost an arm after he was forced to become a stronger when a heavy camera hit him in the arm.
He needed a fasciotomy to save that arm.
I blame CNN for his disability.
Here is the perfect, the world in a nutshell example of what has become of Scientific American under the woke clerisy who have lately been running it into the ground:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/outrage-fatigue-is-real-heres-why-we-feel-it-and-how-to-cope/
Interestingly enough, there is the core of a coherent argument in Prof. Brady’s comments about “outrage fatigue” and how to deal with it in our personal lives. Indeed, having to contend with copious amounts of outrage — with few if any useful emotional outlets* — has been a fixture of life for many of us over the last four years as we have watched our civilization unwind before our eyes. Just look back over the posts and comments on Behind the Black.
*Shouting back (using language that Robert probably wouldn’t care for) at administration officials and spokespersons on TV has only a limited potential for catharsis.
As Prof. Brady observes, being in such a state is not healthy, and it can be exhausting and even debilitating. Similarly, it is not conducive to clear thinking or reasoned arguments, and it can exaggerate — as amplified by social media — the actual differences that do obtain. In short, while outrage may be useful as a prod to engagement and action in an immediate situation, it is not a healthy or useful state of mind over the long term.
Finally, as the interviewee suggests — and speaking from my own personal experience as well — focusing on local politics and direct, person to person contact *can be* a good antidote to the kind of ongoing, accumulated outrage that we are looking at, and it does tend to get people productively re-grounded in their local communities. So, on the whole, and up to this point, a pretty good — and potentially even useful — analysis of an actual problem.
The tell comes in the last paragraph, where Prof. Brady and Ms. Lewis tip their hands and append the obligatory critique of the right:
Q: “Is there evidence that that political parties or groups weaponize outrage fatigue as a way of making people less engaged or resistant?”
A: “In general, here’s one thing we know from at least the U.S. context: outrage has been used as a political tool to divide groups. For example, the political right has specifically used outrage stoking to get certain groups who would be harmed by their economic policies—say, the working class—to vote for them on other issues that have nothing to do with that. For example, issues of immigration, race, identity, things that make them outraged. Abortion is another one—it can distract people from other issues that would harm them. Two of our studies looked at the Russian disinformation organization the Internet Research Agency that was specifically using that as a strategy in the 2016 and 2020 elections. So we know that outrage as a divisive tool is something that is used as a strategy for sure.”
Ah, so. As we have been instructed over the last eight years, it is *only* conservatives who seek to exploit the emotions of people, and —
a benchmark of belief on the left — *nothing* that they advocate, from open borders to infanticide, should ever occasion any outrage by “reasonable,” right-thinking people. QED, only those on the left are entitled to outrage when *their* core values are trespassed. Again, this total absence of moral / intellectual equivalence — and indeed the left’s unflagging belief that the values and concerns of conservatives are not, somehow, even *real* — is the ultimate tell that you are dealing with a partisan of the left.