The Patriot Post® · Scientific American Makes an Unscientific Endorsement

“Scientists are most effective when they provide sound, impartial advice,” said acclaimed MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel, “but their reputation for impartiality is severely compromised by the shocking lack of political diversity among American academics, who suffer from the kind of group-think that develops in cloistered cultures. Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.”

The above warning seems to have aged quite well, given that it was issued a decade ago. If anything, the leftist lurch within the scientific community has only worsened since then.

Case in point: Scientific American, which, as it proudly proclaims, had never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history, recently endorsed everyone’s favorite Man of Science, Joe Biden. But the editors don’t do it lightly, they’ll have us know.

“The evidence and the science,” the magazine’s sages somberly write, “show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.”

It’s hard to imagine Biden’s own press secretary putting together a puffier piece of political spin. But that’s what “science” has come to.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve lamented the politicization of science. As we wrote back in 2016, “There is a political party that is behind much of the so-called science we hear about these days. That of course is the Democrat Party. There is a major problem with the Party of Science™, though, and that is every time science doesn’t jive with their worldview, they ditch the evidence.”

We also noted the defenestration of Harvard President and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers for having had the temerity to suggest that there might be some intellectual differences between men and women that allow them to excel in certain areas while not reaching the highest heights in other areas. There are also the pesky realities that keep intruding on the “settled science” of the climate change crowd, and the Left refuses to so much as look at an ultrasound for fear that it might actually settle the science of life itself. We might also mention the Left’s opposition to genetically modified foods, which could’ve saved millions of Africans from starvation; or the Left’s efforts to ban animal experimentation, which would devastate the field of medical research; or the Left’s knee-jerk resistance to studying the genetic basis for human behavior; or the Left’s insistence that a man can be a woman.

After yammering on about the settled science of Donald Trump’s awfulness, the Scientific American’s Biden PAC closes with this: “Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.”

Got that? Joe Biden and his party are “guided by science.” Except when they’re not.