HebrideanHecateFans of Scientific American might have hoped that this kind of activist journalism would leave the magazine along with former editor Laura Helmuth, who finished her nearly five-year tenure in November. Instead, it appears that little has changed. Other articles published since her departure include a defence of puberty blockers (which makes the striking claim that ‘the underlying principles of trans [healthcare] could make everyone healthier’) and a first-person perspective of a Just Stop Oil campaigner’s arrest.
Under Helmuth, the magazine broke with its 175-year-old tradition of impartiality when it endorsed the candidacy of Joe Biden in 2020, followed by Kamala Harris in 2024. Fittingly, Helmuth’s resignation followed one of the most severe cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome witnessed during November’s election, which she shared with the world on Bluesky. ‘I apologise to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists’, Helmuth wrote after Trump’s re-election. She then added, for good measure:
‘Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist. The moral arc of the universe is not going to bend itself… Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted classmates are celebrating early results because fuck them to the Moon and back.’
Helmuth’s intemperate remarks raise several questions. First, what was she thinking? Presumably, to avoid charges of bias, you’d think the editor of a major scientific magazine would at least try to maintain a modicum of discretion in their public comments. Did she not realise that her comments might put some people off Scientific American who didn’t happen to share her politics?
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