Scientific American used to be worth reading.

Now it is trash. Utter and complete trash. Junk. Juvenile political commentary masquerading behind meaningless credentials.

A case in point:

Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity https://t.co/To4TBuDbSO

— Scientific American (@sciam) November 13, 2022

This is puerile commentary, worthy of a Freshman in college. And because it is being published under the imprimatur of a formerly “legitimate” science publication, it reflects badly not just upon everything Scientific American publishes, but on everything that is promoted under the name of science.

By that I don’t mean that there isn’t lots of great science. There is. Rather I mean that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between good science and non-science.

We have witnessed the transformation before our eyes over the past 3 years, but the trend started well before its acceleration during COVID. It pervades science and science writing–which are different beasts entirely–at every level. Scientists are less and less wary of publishing crap science, and not just for political reasons. The incentive structures in scientific circles prioritize getting surprising results, not accurate ones.

Fraud is rampant in science, and fraudulent science is used as a propaganda tool in politics. That is the case in the above linked article, for instance.

A week and a half before the midterm elections, a man broke into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house, screaming “Where’s Nancy?” and attacked her husband with a hammer. David DePape, charged in the attack, had posted a slew of rants that included references to a sprawling conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which claims that Democratic, Satan-worshipping pedophiles are trying to control the world’s politics and media.

Several hours before, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson interviewed right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, who claimed drag queens participating in book readings were trying to “sexualize children.” The people who support these events, he said, want to create “a sexual connection between adult and child, which has of course long been the kind of final taboo of the sexual revolution.”

With the support of former President Donald Trump, the pedophile conspiracy theory has contributed to a widening spiral of threats and violence, including the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. A revival of the “groomer” smear against the LGBTQ community (a reference to a pedophile) has ramped up the aggression. Right-wing media personalities and activists have created or amplified conspiracy theories about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and others.

This is pure crap, from the first word to the last. There is zero connection between the acts of a deranged nudist drug addled whack job and what Tucker Carlson said. Whatever you think of Tucker, he has never gone nearly as far in inciting violence as Nancy Pelosi’s family (her daughter applauded the attack on Rand Paul), and certainly nowhere near what Maxine Waters has said about going after Republicans.

If “stochastic terrorism”–a wholly invented concept to attack any free speech criticisms of Leftists–truly exists, Democrats pioneered it. Hell, they applauded the BLM riots and called them necessary to public health.

At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.

In my new book Flush, I describe how psychologists have come to view disgust as a kind of behavioral immune system that helps us avoid harm. Whether in response to feces or rats, disgust triggers an aversion to things that can make us physically sick. The emotion has a darker side, however: in excess, it can be weaponized against people.

Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.

Given that Sunny Hostin just called white women cockroaches, I think there is a throwing stones in glass houses problem here.

I am not going to do an analysis of this puerile piece of propaganda, because you get the point. It is not science. In the least. It is a steaming pile of crap. And in what used to be a respectable magazine dedicated to scientific discovery.

Now Scientific American thinks this is a good thing, and defend their approach in yet another article.

Telling scientists and science writers to "stay in our lane" is a tactic to silence people with relevant expertise from weighing in on divisive issues. Scientific American is committed to explaining the world around us—that means every lane is our lane. https://t.co/bmIOGs5ZKh

— Scientific American (@sciam) November 13, 2022

This is a fascinating argument. Basically it is appealing to the prestige of science while undermining its very foundation: the authority of science, to the extent it deserves any outside a very limited area, is based upon a developed expertise in a subject matter. Chemists know about chemistry, physicists about physics, entomologists about bugs, etc. I would not question without serious reason an entomologist telling me about bugs. I would assume his expertise guides him.

The claim advanced here though is much more basic: scientists are experts about everything, and should lecture or even rule us. An entomologist should have claim to expertise on economics? A physicist about heart disease and nutrition? On and on.

It is absurd on its face. And as somebody who comes from a family of exceptional astronomers and physicists, I can tell you beyond certainty that expertise in one area does not translate. Some of the most interesting and quirky people in the world inhabit the realm of physicists (who by profession have the highest IQ of any), but they are hardly the wisest.

Not that wisdom and extreme intelligence are mutually exclusive; they simply are different things entirely. Arguing that they are not vastly different is in itself an example of the truth that they are. Smart people say and do stupid things all the time, and if you aren’t wise enough to notice you are proving my point.

Unfortunately for us, science still has the earned respect from centuries of exceptional progress–leading us to trust scientists when we should not. And unfortunately for science, scientists will lose that respect quickly as the idiotic things we keep getting fed reveal themselves to be lies.

We are seeing that happen in real time both in epidemiology and in “gender affirming care.” Absolute guarantees of wholly beneficial and benign results from pursuing certain policies are proving to be obviously false, and people catch on after a while. This harms everyone.

We need science to be good and to succeed, lest we be less wealthy, less healthy, and more ignorant. However we don’t need arrogant and ignorant propagandists appropriating the good name of science for their own ends, and we will lose the benefits of science to society if we continue to let these evil people–and they are evil in what they are doing, if not in their souls–succeed.

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