18 ms·

The Shameful Decline of Scientific American

307 points by throwawaysea 5y ago

jdkee 5y ago
Reposting my comment from the E.O. Wilson thread from a couple of weeks ago, "As a reader of the magazine for the past 35 years or so, Scientific American, the print publication, has devolved into what Popular Science was about 20 years ago. Sensationalist headlines, writing geared towards a much lower reading comprehension level and the introduction of politics and opinion in various articles. A sad state of affairs for a once great publication, unfortunately. However, the mantle has been taken up by online publications such as Quanta, Aeon, Edge and Nautilus, as well as various science authors on Medium and Substack."
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I definitely have been reading a lot more from alternative sources such as the ones you mentioned. I also would say that the democratization of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. The threat to heterodox thinking isn’t especially new either - Quillette recently reposted an interview of E.O. Wilson from 2009 by Alice Dreger that feels prescient in its coverage of the social/political dynamics that we see continuing today and underpinning recent hit pieces written about Wilson (https://quillette.com/2021/12/29/speaking-with-e-o-wilson/ https://quillette.com/2021/12/29/speaking-with-e-o-wilson/).
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    > of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. Yes and no. Yes, many of these formerly prestigious publications have declined. No, they no longer qualify for the honor of being called journalists. Words matter. We have to stop rewarding bad behaviour.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    The SA article was terribly written and argued, but Wilson's own words in that interview greatly increased my sympathy for Wilson's critics who were suspicious of sociobiology. Wilson severely underplayed the connection between sociobiology and eugenics and Nazism that came before. "I'm just doing science" is a weak defense when the science is something so adjacent to what had just recently been used to murder 10million people.
    - intrasight 5y ago
      You can and should be suspicious of any science. But you should not claim that science murdered 10 million people. A truly evil regime murdered those people.
- mathematicaster 5y ago
  Thanks for that list. I really miss the quality content that Scientific American had in their issue from the 70s and 80s.
  - vidanay 5y ago
    I spent hours and hours reading SA, PopSci, Omni and others at my library in the 80's. It was high quality content and much of it was highly detailed long-form writing.
    - travisporter 5y ago
      I still remember my high school physics teacher literally used a scientific American special on quantum mechanics to explore the topic for a month. Really good
kerneloftruth 5y ago
I keep hoping that we reach and pass Peak Woke, but I think we're still not there. Journalism (capital J) has been thoroughly damaged by it, as is evident in so many magazines, newspapers, sites, channels, etc. I'm optimistic that there will be a renaissance of objective Journalism, and eager for it to happen.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  There has to be a downside to wokeness for it to peak and decline. For some employers, this is starting to happen as the downsides become apparent but for most who kneel at the altar of wokeness, it's almost all upside for them. Society as a whole turning against it or widespread violent blowback are probably the only things that could change this anytime soon. Doubt either happens, though sporadic violence already seems to be taking place.
  - Georgelemental 5y ago
    For many employers wokeness is a legal requirement. If they don't make all the right noises suddenly they get sued for "hostile workplace environment" and have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. This happened to Tesla a few months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-to-ex-worker-over-hostile-work-environment-racism.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t...
    - imiric 5y ago
      > colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace. This sounds like plain racism, nothing to do with wokeness.
      - zo1 5y ago
        I skimmed the article, and I can't tell if he was able to prove that they actually said those things (like a recording or email or corroborating witnesses). Otherwise I will go on a limb and say this person 100% made it up...because "wokeness". Also: "[...] three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor [...] they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues." Sounds like black-people making the workplace non-White friendly. Didn't see anybody sueing because of that...because lets be honest, "wokeness" is racist against white people.
throwaway81523 5y ago
Related or maybe the same: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202
- jshprentz 5y ago
  HN discussion about Scott Aaronson's blog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348
type0 5y ago
Some of their pieces on the blog site read completely like satire (unfortunately they are not), it baffles me how a sane person can write something like that https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not-the-problem-fat-stigma-is/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not... tldr it's because the oppression
- christkv 5y ago
  I cracked up when I saw the name of the author to the link you posted. Some sort of comic joke or destiny.
  - type0 5y ago
    I was more shocked to find out that the author somehow got a PhD in Physiology
  - zo1 5y ago
    For those wanting to know, her surname is "Bacon".
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  "Focusing on weight—or health behaviors—puts the burden on the individual, deflecting attention from the more pernicious problem: systemic injustice." Sounds like when I was a kid and said "the devil made me do it". Taking responsibility for our (in)actions is a necessary prerequisite for being an adult.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's both. Why must everything be a binary war nowadays?
BLanen 5y ago
- a-lex 5y ago
  hacker news has truly fallen off *case in point, this post has been flagged
joelbondurant1 5y ago
type0 5y ago
analog31 5y ago
My parents got Scientific American when I was a kid, which would have been half a century ago. I remember interesting, meaty articles, a column for amateur scientists, and column on math (Hofstadter for a while). Many of the articles were written by top scientists. So of course my spouse and I subscribed for our kids. My first impression was: "It's turned into the Internet." Rather than nice narrative text, the articles were broken up into all sorts of bits and pieces, in vibrating colors. Like the Internet, it actually makes it hard to focus on an article.
WesternWind 5y ago
I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural? Which ignores a huge amount of differences. To pick one eusocial insects of the same species are closely related to the ones they serve, and how slavery is not universal. Family and kinship groups are probably a way better metaphor than slavery. Occasionally some insects use other insects of a different species like aphid farming ants, but that's more like having livestock. Ultimately by suggesting that genetics causes behavior but also being inconsistent about how that works, Wilson at times reinforced the status quo in problematic and mistaken ways, without looking at cross cultural studies, anthropology, or other fields that might have given him a broader view. Anyway the idea that criticizing Wilson is somehow immoral because he is dead seems silly. It's not like many of the same criticisms weren't offered when he was alive, for example this 1975 review of his book. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobiology/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobio... Many people who did great things also said some shitty ones, And some shitty people like Nixon did some good ones. Quite a few people are dead and canonizing them after death as somehow saintly for their good deads and ignoring anything problematic they did rather than challenging their mistaken beliefs where they contradict facts is against the spirit of scientific inquiry. As an aside, my understanding is that while conservatives continue to try to make "woke" into a state of being or a quality of character, as if folks can achieve it, the original usage was stay woke, IE to remain vigilant and observant of what's going on so you can adapt and learn. As far as I'm concerned we all should be doing that, changing our beliefs as we learn, rather than wrapping ourselves too much up in what we currently think to be true. If Wilson's ideas are worthy they will be born out by current and future inquiry into our nature as human beings. Though challenging the status quo might require you to go against your sociobiology.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  > I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural? Even if you granted him for the sake of argument that slavery among humans is "natural", so what? That in no way answers the is-ought problem.
- 5y ago
Maursault 5y ago
I am not defending SJW in saying this, merely pointing out a clear and obvious fallacy and a shameful one considering those who submit and post here that use it. Employing the pejorative "woke" is an ad hominem fallacy because it doesn't speak to any argument, and it, in fact, says nothing at all. It ignores all argument for the sake of, I presume, insult. It is fundamentally tribalistic. Insulting or denigrating the opposition in an argument does not win any argument, not ever. In fact, it hands victory to your opponent whether their argument is sound or not. Using "woke" is, effectively, a stupid way to communicate, and I mean that literally. If one is too stupid to form an argument or to obliterate an opponent's argument using sound reasoning, then you'll employ "woke" in pejorative, as well as other common fallacies. Also, when "woke" is employed as pejorative, I'm nearly certain it is racist or sexist, depending on the context. So in trying to sound cool, the user ends up sounding racist or sexist, again, depending on context. Use meaningful words. Form an opinion. Have good reasons for that opinion. Defend your position with facts and logic. If not, speak not.
- type0 5y ago
  I don't consider "woke" to be pejorative to me it's just synonymous to "hyperprogressive", just more searchable because you'll filter out the physical disease and will only be left with the cultural one in the results
  - Maursault 5y ago
    This just kicks the can down the road, as the label "hyperprogressive" then becomes the ad hominem. Once you characterize or label the opponent, whether in contempt, approval or apathy, you've employed ad hominem fallacy. Ignore the arguer. Speak only to the argument.
- derac 5y ago
  The article uses the word woke twice, in reference to a specific sort of ideology. It isn't ad homing the author(s).
  - Maursault 5y ago
bambax 5y ago
> The normal distribution is not about default humans. It’s about the fact that in many statistical studies, the characteristics of the population tend to cluster around a mean. So if the average height of the human population is 5 foot 7, then most individuals will be around that height. NO!! This is known to be false. The average does not mean "most" measurements match the... mean. And it actually does happen that the normal distribution is often (wrongly) interpreted as defining some kind of standard specimen that does not, in fact, exist. There's a famous story about that exact topic, relating to US pilot seats. Excerpts from an article about it: > Using the size data he had gathered from 4,063 pilots, Daniels calculated the average of the 10 physical dimensions believed to be most relevant for design, including height, chest circumference and sleeve length. These formed the dimensions of the “average pilot,” which Daniels generously defined as someone whose measurements were within the middle 30 per cent of the range of values for each dimension. So, for example, even though the precise average height from the data was five foot nine, he defined the height of the “average pilot” as ranging from five-seven to five-11. Next, Daniels compared each individual pilot, one by one, to the average pilot. > Before he crunched his numbers, the consensus among his fellow air force researchers was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. After all, these pilots had already been pre-selected because they appeared to be average sized. (If you were, say, six foot seven, you would never have been recruited in the first place.) The scientists also expected that a sizable number of pilots would be within the average range on all 10 dimensions. But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number. > Zero. > Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
- emergentstate 5y ago
  But the anecdote you're relating doesn't really say anything about the ability of a normal distribution to describe a population. It's just a natural consequence of having a high-dimensional multivariate distribution without accounting for correlation or covariance, along with a low sample size. If you have 4,063 pilots and you take the middle 30% of ten (assumed independent) factors, you're looking at 0.3^10 * 4,063 = 0.02 people who actually fall into that bin, on average -- it's more a dimensions game than anything profound. That's not to refute the anecdote's takeaway, but the same reasoning doesn't apply to a unidimensional unimodal distribution.
modeless 5y ago
What can I put in my house today that will let my children discover science and physics the way Scientific American let me discover them as a teenager?
- mperham 5y ago
  Scientific American? Just because this post had issues with one article doesn’t invalidate the entire periodical.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    If a scientific periodical had an article written by a flat earther that would be bad. If there was a torrent of criticism and the editor defended the article with vigour you would write off the entire periodical. The article discussed above is just as bad as flat earth, but with different polital valence.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    Really? Because the fact that this article was published seems to showcase evidence for a systemic problem. How did this article get approved? I mean, it's linking to a study that makes racial and sexist judgements based off of ... general relativity? Edit: I've read the full article and it is borderline incoherent. I have no idea what in the world she is talking about or how it even remotely relates to E.O. Wilson, much less why in the world they would post this mere days after his death. The article actually barely mentions Wilson other than slandering him in the sentences it does and provides no references to his work or anything that substantiates, well, anything the author is arguing for or against. Yet, the author takes the time to reference near lunacy. The article ends with: > The early work of Venter and Collins was foundational to my dissertation, which examined tumor markers of ovarian cancer. I spent time during my training at the NIH learning from these iconic clinicians and scholars and had occasion to meet and question both of them. As a person who uses science as one of many tools to understand the world, it is important to remain curious in our work. Creative minds should not be resistant to change when rigorous new data are presented. How we engage with old racist ideas is no exception. What does that have to do with anything this article was supposably about? It makes no sense. Yet, someone (multiple people?) approved this article.
WalterBright 5y ago
NOVA has been undergoing a similar decline. The latest episode was about the nanoarchitecture of butterfly wings, which is a fascinating topic. A researcher mimicked the nano structure onto a piece of metal, a disk the size of a nickel, which is so hydrophobic that two disks close to each other would float, as it had essentially a bubble trapped between them. The subtext of the show was about "combating climate change". So the narrator ludicrously suggests that it could be used to create floating cities because global water levels are rising.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  On another episode, "The Universe Revealed: Big Bang", the presenters said: "Somewhere there was a first planet that formed in the entire universe. We'll never know about it. We'll never know when it formed or what its fate was. But it formed somewhere!"
  - naravara 5y ago
    That’s certainly dumb but doesn’t strike me as dumbed down. More like some cynic trying to do a bad parody of Carl Sagan.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Watch the episode. It's pretty dumbed down. Even if you realize that there's only 5 minutes worth of material in a 50 minute show. The filler I quoted is just an example.
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    I beg a pardon, but what's wrong with this one? Sure, if you understand enough of the general relativity theory, you kinda get that "X was earlier than Y" starts making less and less sense if X and Y are light years apart, but it's not something you can easily explain to the general audience. The quoted phrase, on the other hand, understandably conveys the idea that planets are not specific to the solar system, and that other systems have formed and died billions of years before.
garyrob 5y ago
Something like 15 years ago I was at a conference and happened to sit at lunch table with a top editor of Scientific American. (Maybe the top one at the time, I don't remember.) I had been an enthusiastic subscriber for many years and still subscribed at that point, although I was concerned that it seemed to be dumbing itself down. I mentioned that to the editor. I forget the exact words I used, but they were an attempt to be diplomatic, and she replied with something to the effect that the magazine had to have an audience. That was not encouraging. It had had an audience for more than 100 years just as it was. The dumbing down continued until I couldn't enjoy it at all anymore, and I finally cancelled my subscription. That was a sad day. Now get my science news from r/science.
- vwcx 5y ago
  Let me ask you: would you expect the quality/tone/curation of r/science to hold up 50 years from now? Would you be surprised if, in 50 years, r/science didn't have the special sauce it has now? All things are ephemeral, especially in media. We're just marketed at to believe otherwise.
  - chmod775 5y ago
    I had a look at this r/science and honestly can't fathom what that special sauce is supposed to be. A sizable portion of top level comments contain between 5 and 8 words with optional punctuation. About 1/3rd of submissions and half of the comments appear to be more politically motivated than scientific and mostly US-centric. Just in the current top 10: > Republican activists perceive Republican senators with very conservative voting records to be moderate if they do not support Donald Trump. > Study: Emotionally manipulative political ads fail at swaying new voters, but excel at ensuring party loyalty. > Conspiracy mentality (a willingness to endorse conspiracy theories) is more prevalent on the political right (a linear relation) and amongst both the left- and right-extremes (a curvilinear relation) I wouldn't be surprised if most people posting there are from the US and from a certain fraction of the population at that. A rather small and uninteresting bubble compared to science as a whole. Going back to your comment: Neither would I be surprised if r/science 50 years from now was run by a corporation RSCIENCE LTD, drip-feeding "curated" clickbait garbage in-between ads.
WalterBright 5y ago
My father subscribed, and I found in his papers many articles he'd clipped out and saved, usually from the 1960s. He'd given up on SA by the 1980s, saying their quality had declined.
black_13 5y ago
I read the magazine through high school as part of UIL competition. I loved it and it continued to be great through the 90s. Its a shadow of its former self.
mmaunder 5y ago
Self-censorship is the other half of this problem. How many of us here have self censored our writing out of fear of painting a bullseye on our backs? The more you have to lose, the more cautious you are. If you’ve spent a lifetime studying a certain field, building a business or becoming a well know expert, you risk having it all taken away if you provoke the ire of the mob. And the mob has nothing to lose and everything to gain by targeting well known public figures. The result is that absurd ideas enter the public psyche and not one expert will risk their career by contradicting them. The democratization of publishing is an exciting breakthrough in all of human history. I’d rather have it than not. But this post-truth era that is emerging is worrying.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  Your comment has me wondering about history and whether such previous drastic changes in communication technology have also brought waves of censorship, both by others and by ourselves. For example, with radio, the telephone, or even the printing press. In other words, not only the ability to publish/broadcast, but to have people reply to your publishing or broadcasting. I also wonder if we somehow adapt to it as we learn these new ways to communicate.
  - mmaunder 5y ago
    Those breakthroughs had gatekeepers, for better or worse. Publishing house owners, newspaper owners/editors, radio station supervisors and owners. For the first time in all of history we can all publish instantly to everyone else at no cost. It’s a very exciting time and is, unsurprisingly, fraught with problems.
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      Yeah, I agree. The ability to broadcast (and respond to broadcasts) to the world from almost anywhere in the world at any time, and have it recorded in text, audio, video, or more for an indefinite amount of time, so that people can receive it almost at any time from any place, I'd say has no close parallels in human history. The lack of gatekeepers I think is one of the biggest deals. Maybe the printing press gave the lack of gatekeeper, and maybe some forms of radio had that as well, but normally to broadcast to large audiences, there have been gatekeepers. Now, that being said, some platforms are starting to gatekeep at a very high level (e.g. Youtube, Twitter, FB), and many communication forums have lower level moderation (reddit, group chats, email lists, etc), yet, still, huge changes. I try to not say "we're living in an unprecedented time" because I think people use it way too often and it often has more to do with their inability to see similarities across time. And yet, as you've mentioned, we've never had communication like this as a species.
mactavish88 5y ago
Within the original article, there's a reference to this paper: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/704991 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/704991 (the author seems well-credentialed in the physics realm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein). Does anyone have any insight as to what this paper's trying to show? Looking at the beginning of the conclusion: > The central argument of this article is that white empiricism limits who is authorized to make claims about physics and that this is damaging to physics and alters its empirical direction. All I can get from it is that the author's trying to point out that (1) science has emerged in dialogue between humans, and (2) we should be mindful of who exactly's participating in that dialogue as that influences the kind of science that emerges. This seems somewhat reasonable and a good justification for encouraging a diversity of perspectives. But what new insight/perspective does the paper really contribute? For example, earlier in the same paper we find this when talking about some of the author's perceived failings of string theory: > Surveying what should happen next, there are at least three distinct possibilities: > 1. Patience is required, and evidence is coming. > 2. String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways because the community—which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics—is too homogeneous. > 3. The scientific method overly constrains our models to meet certain requirements that no longer serve the needs of physics theory. > ... > The second option is effectively unconsidered in the literature. Instead, the case for the third option has been made. This is a curious turn of events. Rather than considering whether structural and individual discrimination results in a homogeneous, epistemically limited community, physicists are willing to throw out their long-touted objectivity tool, the scientific method. The author hints that "there are at least three distinct possibilities", and from what I understand of postmodernism, it's what's hidden in the margins of the text, i.e. what's left out of a philosophical argument, that usually unravels that original argument entirely. One glaring missing possibility is that we just haven't yet found a better theory or approach that more accurately fits observations than string theory. If that's what the author's trying to convey with option 2, it seems like a pretty unnecessarily racialized and facile way to do so to me, and still hints at an important omission that there may be a totally non-racialized explanation for why string theory hasn't lived up to expectations. Maybe I haven't read enough postmodern literature to be able to appreciate this paper's contributions (maybe they're subtle), but from my first reading it ultimately just seems like one long complaint that black women have been excluded from physics by white men, which isn't really a novel contribution in 2020 if the theme already made its way into popular films. For someone so well-credentialed, I really would've expected a more substantial epistemological critique, or at least practical recommendations as to how to cultivate an environment that encourages a diversity of perspectives. Or, even more practically, if the author had actual evidence of bias (i.e. practices of actively excluding people of certain groups from the physics community), why not address that in the appropriate forum? It's all very strange to me, including why a paper like this is cited in Scientific American.
waynecochran 5y ago
I remember my dad’s subscription when I was a kid in 1970’s. It was more like a scientific journal back then. It is not even worth looking at anymore.
dtgriscom 5y ago
In the 70s I was an avid SciAm reader. I loved the monthly "Amateur Scientist" column, "conducted" by C. L. Stong. Lots of detailed technical info about how to make a seismometer, a nitrogen laser, an electron microscope, antibubbles, etc. etc. etc. I have the Amateur Scientist 3.0 CD-ROM, including columns from 1928 to 2001, and I just pulled out an October 1974 column, "Electrostatic Motors Are Powered By Electric Field of the Earth". I remember reading it at the time and noticing that one motor diagram had a commutator drawn so that it shorted the supply for half of the rotation. I wrote a (probably precocious and annoying) letter to C. L. Stong alerting him of the problem, signing it as "Dan Griscom, Age 12". Mr. Stong wrote back, confirming that I was right, and signing it as "C. L. Stong, Age 72". (Still have the letter...) And yes: the magazine has gone downhill.
- thrill 5y ago
  Brilliant - reminds me of the detailed self-typed (whiteout and all) reply I got from John Glenn many years ago.
- zmix 5y ago
  > Amateur Scientist 3.0 CD-ROM, including columns from 1928 to 2001 I know a lot of DataHoarders, who would love to get a hand on this ;-)
- jmrm 5y ago
  I recommend you to have a backup of that CD before it rot down. That seems pretty cool to loose it. Also, uploading it to Internet Archive wouldn't be a bad idea either :-)
Gatsky 5y ago
The original article is unspeakably bad, a shameful incoherent diatribe from an apparently professional academic. Not least because it is bizarrely self-obsessed, the author cites her own research in a complete non sequitur and links to a lecture where she apparently asked Craig Venter a question…
ageek123 5y ago
A lot of domain-specific publications have become insufferably political; they are trading on their previous reputations but are now so ideological that they're basically worthless. A few that come to mind are Wired, MIT Technology Review, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.
- scarab92 5y ago
  The current editor in chief's career as a journalist was largely writing clickbait style opinion pieces on identity politics for Slate etc.. I have no idea how they were deemed a suitable candidate to work for Scientific American, and it's no surprise her tenure has resulted in a rapid series of controversies.
ourmandave 5y ago
It's an opinion piece, not an article. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Sure but it's still a garbage article. Not all opinions are equal or equally well supported. Having an opinion based on nothing but cringe and woke-ism isn't really one worth reading.
- OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
  Scientific American is a publication, not someone's Facebook page. The writing gets Scientific American's legitimacy when they publish it and it reduces Scientific American's legitimacy if it's of poor quality. Editor-In-Chiefs should remember that 'it's an opinion piece' isn't a valid defense to separate the work from the publication or argue against a poor quality writing. They shouldn't publish the piece if the work doesn't represent the views of the publication or meet the quality of work expected. Sometimes I feel like we've forgotten what a reputation is and how they work. At the very least, it seems we've decided that opinions are functionally equivalent facts.
chmod775 5y ago
> “Why are string theorists calling for an end to empiricism rather than an end to racial hegemony? I believe the answer is that knowledge production in physics is contingent on the ascribed identities of the physicists.” This one and most of the other quotes sound like they were written by some AI.
weeblewobble 5y ago
The opinion piece in question (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...) strikes me as a restrained and sober attempt to explore the possibility that Wilson and others did bad science by presuming differences between races were due to genetics. Maybe you think the piece is wrong but it's just someone expressing some ideas, it's not intended to incite the woke mob or whatever. If anything, the OP seems to be trying to whip up a moral panic to suppress speech (i.e. to teach publishers that writing about race is toxic and dissuade them from publishing further opinion pieces examining race as a structural issue)
- twofornone 5y ago
  >presuming differences between races were due to genetics Its not a farfetched presumption that natural selection continued after the emergence of the homo sapien species. What is less likely is the notion that evolution magically stopped above the shoulders while geographically distinct human groups spent thousands of generations adapting physically, culturally, and likely cognitively to drastically different environments. >OP seems to be trying to whip up a moral panic to suppress speech These accusations of racism are the moral panic. This is pushback.
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    >What is less likely is the notion that evolution magically stopped Well, the problem is that the science stopped being about "what is more likely" and turned into "what is more pleasant to hear to an average person". Back in the times of physical magazines and written letters, reading a scientific article required non-trivial effort, that worked as a sort of a selection bias, ensuring that the reader would be sufficiently educated, professional and open-minded [1]. These days, finding racism everywhere has become the claim for fame and meaning of life for too many people, so we all now have to take it into account. The funny part is that genetically were are very similar to the cave people some 50K years ago, and the huge difference in life quality is caused purely by what we learn, what values we teach to our kids, and where we pick our role models. Any genetic differences between races would pale in comparison to something you can learn in your lifetime. But this baby has somehow been thrown out with the water - one side is now convinced that all problems of certain demographics are unfixable and are caused by genetics, the other side attributes 100% of them to an unquantifiable oppressor and thinks that burning books and renaming formulas will somehow solve them, but nobody actually wants to put effort developing personality traits and habits that actually help a person achieve success in life. [1] as in "willing to examine weird-looking ideas from a rational standpoint, even if they personally don't like them" as opposed to "supporting the politically expected ideas even if they contradict the rational approach"
twofornone 5y ago
Its not unlike the travesty that has befallen our once informative channels: natgeo, discovery, animal planet...though perhaps not quite as extreme. And the National Geographic magazine has been obsessing over woke politics for a decade now as well. Its a damn shame to lose these institutions to such blatant politicking. Across society we seem to be regressing to the lowest common denominator. Entertainment, education, consumer goods, advertisement...this can't be sustainable.
- shazeubaa 5y ago
  > … this can’t be sustainable. Cue the film _Idiocracy_
VictorPath 5y ago
In the old days priests would say the gods put rulers in their place over everyone. Nowadays we have Wilson saying the same thing, except science and genetics have replaced talk of the gods. It's very simple and the basis of all ideology - the rulers are right to rule for whatever reason. It is not a new criticism of Wilson, people in the 1970s saw it for what it was. Funny to see mention of Lysenko. Lysenko mainly talked about plant germination. Wilson talked about human brains and how one race is superior to another. It seems Lysenko was more modest than Wilson. It's odd to bring Lysenko up as Wilson is completely ideological and politicized - you'd think they would leave out mention of Lysenko. Of course if you right a political book about one race's superiority to another's and want to pass it off as science, first strategy is to accuse anyone who questions any aspect of it of being ideological. I'm glad old bastards like Wilson, who would prefer to go back to his youth of segregated buses and drinking fountains, are dropping dead. Of course the day will come that this wack job on Medium foaming at the mouth about inferior blacks and communists will one day kick off too.
nate_meurer 5y ago
From the article: On her Twitter, the writer of the piece [Monica McLemore] wrote: "I purposively didn’t quote his work so you could read it for yourself." Not a good look for an aspiring scholar when her very first word is a misapprehension of everyday english.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- greenyoda 5y ago
  "Purposive" is a word that I've never seen used before, but it's actually in the dictionary, and one of the meanings is as a synonym of the more usual "purposeful": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purposive https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purposive
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    Well I'll be damned. Citations include Aldous Huxley's 1936 "Notes on Propaganda".
MichaelRazum 5y ago
So where is the mob? I mean for me this is an attack on science.
sproketboy 5y ago
da39a3ee 5y ago
At least pseudo-academic wokes like that leave plenty of evidence of the stupidity of their beliefs so that it cannot be in doubt.
coldtea 5y ago
It's not Scientific American. It's every medium. The NYT of 2022 is not the NYT of the past, and WP is not the WP of Watergate. And it goes beyond the ideological issues. In fact, the same declining quality (though not with the same specifics of course) is the case in every industry where they're fighting for increasingly thinner profit margins. It was the same back in the day (as far back as Mark Twain, Hearst/"Kane" and the first newspapers), where it was all about political and magnate influence to please some sponsor or another, and cheap writing to get people to buy papers. If journalism had a veneer that it wasn't about the bottom line, that was when money were plenty, because there was a brief (not that innocent, but much better than before and after) period, say between 1940 and 2000), when: (a) consumer spending got big (b) advertising budgets grew (c) while still having no "per page view" metric available, (d) and before the race-to-the-bottom of the online era, as there weren't hundreds of thousands of competing news sources plus every amateur with a website plus social media plus 24/7 tv that gave print journalists the luxury of working independently and with more prestige.
- entropicgravity 5y ago
  Not to mention National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal. Buzzfeed on the other hand has been getting better, from a low base.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  I agree corporate journalism is a pathetic shell of its former self that can only race bait to get clicks. But I do think there is some good journalism going on in the independent scene. For example, Glenn Greenwald still puts out good investigative journalism, and there is a lot of good content on substack as well. I think this is the future, it just makes sense. In the past, journalists had to group into big organizations as you needed a lot of infrastructure to get the message out - printing presses, delivery workers, etc. Now with the internet all you really need is a single person.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    That true, because they use a different model (directly supported by people via subscriptions/donations). This model can produce good journalism in some cases (when the people have taste and the journalist doesn't try to optimize his way to placating larger masses) but can also produce bad journalism (say, subscriptions are what sustain all kinds of crap content creators via things like Patreon to Twitch, and hell, OnlyFans).
lr1970 5y ago
A recent HN discussion on the same subject 13 days ago: The Demise of Scientific American (scottaaronson.blog) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 (419 comments)
pixelgeek 5y ago
I had this same experience trying to find some good science magazines for my 14yr old. They are quite interested in genetics and I looked and looked and none of the available magazines were any good. I think that looking at the advertisements in the magazines tells you what part of the problem is. They are aimed at a fairly old demographic and probably the one remaining that still buys magazines. The other significant issue is ads. No-one wants to spend ad money on ads that do not provide the type stats that Facebook and Google do. Before the internet the relationship between an ad campaign and increased sales wasn't causal. Maybe the ads worked. Maybe they didn't. Now advertisers have far more information about the success of their campaigns and much, much more control over how ads are targeted. So why would anyone do print or newspaper ads? So magazines and newspapers are left with a diminishing pool of advertisers who target a declining demographic.

307 points by throwawaysea 5y ago

Reposting my comment from the E.O. Wilson thread from a couple of weeks ago, "As a reader of the magazine for the past 35 years or so, Scientific American, the print publication, has devolved into what Popular Science was about 20 years ago. Sensationalist headlines, writing geared towards a much lower reading comprehension level and the introduction of politics and opinion in various articles. A sad state of affairs for a once great publication, unfortunately. However, the mantle has been taken up by online publications such as Quanta, Aeon, Edge and Nautilus, as well as various science authors on Medium and Substack."

throwawaysea 5y ago
I definitely have been reading a lot more from alternative sources such as the ones you mentioned. I also would say that the democratization of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. The threat to heterodox thinking isn’t especially new either - Quillette recently reposted an interview of E.O. Wilson from 2009 by Alice Dreger that feels prescient in its coverage of the social/political dynamics that we see continuing today and underpinning recent hit pieces written about Wilson (https://quillette.com/2021/12/29/speaking-with-e-o-wilson/ https://quillette.com/2021/12/29/speaking-with-e-o-wilson/).
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  > of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. Yes and no. Yes, many of these formerly prestigious publications have declined. No, they no longer qualify for the honor of being called journalists. Words matter. We have to stop rewarding bad behaviour.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  The SA article was terribly written and argued, but Wilson's own words in that interview greatly increased my sympathy for Wilson's critics who were suspicious of sociobiology. Wilson severely underplayed the connection between sociobiology and eugenics and Nazism that came before. "I'm just doing science" is a weak defense when the science is something so adjacent to what had just recently been used to murder 10million people.
  - intrasight 5y ago
    You can and should be suspicious of any science. But you should not claim that science murdered 10 million people. A truly evil regime murdered those people.
mathematicaster 5y ago
Thanks for that list. I really miss the quality content that Scientific American had in their issue from the 70s and 80s.
- vidanay 5y ago
  I spent hours and hours reading SA, PopSci, Omni and others at my library in the 80's. It was high quality content and much of it was highly detailed long-form writing.
  - travisporter 5y ago
    I still remember my high school physics teacher literally used a scientific American special on quantum mechanics to explore the topic for a month. Really good

kerneloftruth 5y ago

I keep hoping that we reach and pass Peak Woke, but I think we're still not there. Journalism (capital J) has been thoroughly damaged by it, as is evident in so many magazines, newspapers, sites, channels, etc. I'm optimistic that there will be a renaissance of objective Journalism, and eager for it to happen.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
There has to be a downside to wokeness for it to peak and decline. For some employers, this is starting to happen as the downsides become apparent but for most who kneel at the altar of wokeness, it's almost all upside for them. Society as a whole turning against it or widespread violent blowback are probably the only things that could change this anytime soon. Doubt either happens, though sporadic violence already seems to be taking place.
- Georgelemental 5y ago
  For many employers wokeness is a legal requirement. If they don't make all the right noises suddenly they get sued for "hostile workplace environment" and have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. This happened to Tesla a few months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-to-ex-worker-over-hostile-work-environment-racism.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t...
  - imiric 5y ago
    > colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace. This sounds like plain racism, nothing to do with wokeness.
    - zo1 5y ago
      I skimmed the article, and I can't tell if he was able to prove that they actually said those things (like a recording or email or corroborating witnesses). Otherwise I will go on a limb and say this person 100% made it up...because "wokeness". Also: "[...] three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor [...] they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues." Sounds like black-people making the workplace non-White friendly. Didn't see anybody sueing because of that...because lets be honest, "wokeness" is racist against white people.

throwaway81523 5y ago

Related or maybe the same: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

jshprentz 5y ago
HN discussion about Scott Aaronson's blog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348

type0 5y ago

Some of their pieces on the blog site read completely like satire (unfortunately they are not), it baffles me how a sane person can write something like that https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not-the-problem-fat-stigma-is/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not... tldr it's because the oppression

christkv 5y ago
I cracked up when I saw the name of the author to the link you posted. Some sort of comic joke or destiny.
- type0 5y ago
  I was more shocked to find out that the author somehow got a PhD in Physiology
- zo1 5y ago
  For those wanting to know, her surname is "Bacon".
readthenotes1 5y ago
"Focusing on weight—or health behaviors—puts the burden on the individual, deflecting attention from the more pernicious problem: systemic injustice." Sounds like when I was a kid and said "the devil made me do it". Taking responsibility for our (in)actions is a necessary prerequisite for being an adult.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- colordrops 5y ago
  Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's both. Why must everything be a binary war nowadays?

BLanen 5y ago

a-lex 5y ago
hacker news has truly fallen off *case in point, this post has been flagged

joelbondurant1 5y ago

type0 5y ago

analog31 5y ago

My parents got Scientific American when I was a kid, which would have been half a century ago. I remember interesting, meaty articles, a column for amateur scientists, and column on math (Hofstadter for a while). Many of the articles were written by top scientists. So of course my spouse and I subscribed for our kids. My first impression was: "It's turned into the Internet." Rather than nice narrative text, the articles were broken up into all sorts of bits and pieces, in vibrating colors. Like the Internet, it actually makes it hard to focus on an article.

WesternWind 5y ago

I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural? Which ignores a huge amount of differences. To pick one eusocial insects of the same species are closely related to the ones they serve, and how slavery is not universal. Family and kinship groups are probably a way better metaphor than slavery. Occasionally some insects use other insects of a different species like aphid farming ants, but that's more like having livestock. Ultimately by suggesting that genetics causes behavior but also being inconsistent about how that works, Wilson at times reinforced the status quo in problematic and mistaken ways, without looking at cross cultural studies, anthropology, or other fields that might have given him a broader view. Anyway the idea that criticizing Wilson is somehow immoral because he is dead seems silly. It's not like many of the same criticisms weren't offered when he was alive, for example this 1975 review of his book. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobiology/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobio... Many people who did great things also said some shitty ones, And some shitty people like Nixon did some good ones. Quite a few people are dead and canonizing them after death as somehow saintly for their good deads and ignoring anything problematic they did rather than challenging their mistaken beliefs where they contradict facts is against the spirit of scientific inquiry. As an aside, my understanding is that while conservatives continue to try to make "woke" into a state of being or a quality of character, as if folks can achieve it, the original usage was stay woke, IE to remain vigilant and observant of what's going on so you can adapt and learn. As far as I'm concerned we all should be doing that, changing our beliefs as we learn, rather than wrapping ourselves too much up in what we currently think to be true. If Wilson's ideas are worthy they will be born out by current and future inquiry into our nature as human beings. Though challenging the status quo might require you to go against your sociobiology.

technothrasher 5y ago
> I mean apparently Wilson suggested at one point that because eusocial insects exist where some insects serve others, slavery among humans is natural? Even if you granted him for the sake of argument that slavery among humans is "natural", so what? That in no way answers the is-ought problem.
5y ago

Maursault 5y ago

I am not defending SJW in saying this, merely pointing out a clear and obvious fallacy and a shameful one considering those who submit and post here that use it. Employing the pejorative "woke" is an ad hominem fallacy because it doesn't speak to any argument, and it, in fact, says nothing at all. It ignores all argument for the sake of, I presume, insult. It is fundamentally tribalistic. Insulting or denigrating the opposition in an argument does not win any argument, not ever. In fact, it hands victory to your opponent whether their argument is sound or not. Using "woke" is, effectively, a stupid way to communicate, and I mean that literally. If one is too stupid to form an argument or to obliterate an opponent's argument using sound reasoning, then you'll employ "woke" in pejorative, as well as other common fallacies. Also, when "woke" is employed as pejorative, I'm nearly certain it is racist or sexist, depending on the context. So in trying to sound cool, the user ends up sounding racist or sexist, again, depending on context. Use meaningful words. Form an opinion. Have good reasons for that opinion. Defend your position with facts and logic. If not, speak not.

type0 5y ago
I don't consider "woke" to be pejorative to me it's just synonymous to "hyperprogressive", just more searchable because you'll filter out the physical disease and will only be left with the cultural one in the results
- Maursault 5y ago
  This just kicks the can down the road, as the label "hyperprogressive" then becomes the ad hominem. Once you characterize or label the opponent, whether in contempt, approval or apathy, you've employed ad hominem fallacy. Ignore the arguer. Speak only to the argument.
derac 5y ago
The article uses the word woke twice, in reference to a specific sort of ideology. It isn't ad homing the author(s).
- Maursault 5y ago

bambax 5y ago

> The normal distribution is not about default humans. It’s about the fact that in many statistical studies, the characteristics of the population tend to cluster around a mean. So if the average height of the human population is 5 foot 7, then most individuals will be around that height. NO!! This is known to be false. The average does not mean "most" measurements match the... mean. And it actually does happen that the normal distribution is often (wrongly) interpreted as defining some kind of standard specimen that does not, in fact, exist. There's a famous story about that exact topic, relating to US pilot seats. Excerpts from an article about it: > Using the size data he had gathered from 4,063 pilots, Daniels calculated the average of the 10 physical dimensions believed to be most relevant for design, including height, chest circumference and sleeve length. These formed the dimensions of the “average pilot,” which Daniels generously defined as someone whose measurements were within the middle 30 per cent of the range of values for each dimension. So, for example, even though the precise average height from the data was five foot nine, he defined the height of the “average pilot” as ranging from five-seven to five-11. Next, Daniels compared each individual pilot, one by one, to the average pilot. > Before he crunched his numbers, the consensus among his fellow air force researchers was that the vast majority of pilots would be within the average range on most dimensions. After all, these pilots had already been pre-selected because they appeared to be average sized. (If you were, say, six foot seven, you would never have been recruited in the first place.) The scientists also expected that a sizable number of pilots would be within the average range on all 10 dimensions. But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number. > Zero. > Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

emergentstate 5y ago
But the anecdote you're relating doesn't really say anything about the ability of a normal distribution to describe a population. It's just a natural consequence of having a high-dimensional multivariate distribution without accounting for correlation or covariance, along with a low sample size. If you have 4,063 pilots and you take the middle 30% of ten (assumed independent) factors, you're looking at 0.3^10 * 4,063 = 0.02 people who actually fall into that bin, on average -- it's more a dimensions game than anything profound. That's not to refute the anecdote's takeaway, but the same reasoning doesn't apply to a unidimensional unimodal distribution.

modeless 5y ago

What can I put in my house today that will let my children discover science and physics the way Scientific American let me discover them as a teenager?

mperham 5y ago
Scientific American? Just because this post had issues with one article doesn’t invalidate the entire periodical.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  If a scientific periodical had an article written by a flat earther that would be bad. If there was a torrent of criticism and the editor defended the article with vigour you would write off the entire periodical. The article discussed above is just as bad as flat earth, but with different polital valence.
- bmitc 5y ago
  Really? Because the fact that this article was published seems to showcase evidence for a systemic problem. How did this article get approved? I mean, it's linking to a study that makes racial and sexist judgements based off of ... general relativity? Edit: I've read the full article and it is borderline incoherent. I have no idea what in the world she is talking about or how it even remotely relates to E.O. Wilson, much less why in the world they would post this mere days after his death. The article actually barely mentions Wilson other than slandering him in the sentences it does and provides no references to his work or anything that substantiates, well, anything the author is arguing for or against. Yet, the author takes the time to reference near lunacy. The article ends with: > The early work of Venter and Collins was foundational to my dissertation, which examined tumor markers of ovarian cancer. I spent time during my training at the NIH learning from these iconic clinicians and scholars and had occasion to meet and question both of them. As a person who uses science as one of many tools to understand the world, it is important to remain curious in our work. Creative minds should not be resistant to change when rigorous new data are presented. How we engage with old racist ideas is no exception. What does that have to do with anything this article was supposably about? It makes no sense. Yet, someone (multiple people?) approved this article.

WalterBright 5y ago

NOVA has been undergoing a similar decline. The latest episode was about the nanoarchitecture of butterfly wings, which is a fascinating topic. A researcher mimicked the nano structure onto a piece of metal, a disk the size of a nickel, which is so hydrophobic that two disks close to each other would float, as it had essentially a bubble trapped between them. The subtext of the show was about "combating climate change". So the narrator ludicrously suggests that it could be used to create floating cities because global water levels are rising.

WalterBright 5y ago
On another episode, "The Universe Revealed: Big Bang", the presenters said: "Somewhere there was a first planet that formed in the entire universe. We'll never know about it. We'll never know when it formed or what its fate was. But it formed somewhere!"
- naravara 5y ago
  That’s certainly dumb but doesn’t strike me as dumbed down. More like some cynic trying to do a bad parody of Carl Sagan.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Watch the episode. It's pretty dumbed down. Even if you realize that there's only 5 minutes worth of material in a 50 minute show. The filler I quoted is just an example.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  I beg a pardon, but what's wrong with this one? Sure, if you understand enough of the general relativity theory, you kinda get that "X was earlier than Y" starts making less and less sense if X and Y are light years apart, but it's not something you can easily explain to the general audience. The quoted phrase, on the other hand, understandably conveys the idea that planets are not specific to the solar system, and that other systems have formed and died billions of years before.

garyrob 5y ago

Something like 15 years ago I was at a conference and happened to sit at lunch table with a top editor of Scientific American. (Maybe the top one at the time, I don't remember.) I had been an enthusiastic subscriber for many years and still subscribed at that point, although I was concerned that it seemed to be dumbing itself down. I mentioned that to the editor. I forget the exact words I used, but they were an attempt to be diplomatic, and she replied with something to the effect that the magazine had to have an audience. That was not encouraging. It had had an audience for more than 100 years just as it was. The dumbing down continued until I couldn't enjoy it at all anymore, and I finally cancelled my subscription. That was a sad day. Now get my science news from r/science.

vwcx 5y ago
Let me ask you: would you expect the quality/tone/curation of r/science to hold up 50 years from now? Would you be surprised if, in 50 years, r/science didn't have the special sauce it has now? All things are ephemeral, especially in media. We're just marketed at to believe otherwise.
- chmod775 5y ago
  I had a look at this r/science and honestly can't fathom what that special sauce is supposed to be. A sizable portion of top level comments contain between 5 and 8 words with optional punctuation. About 1/3rd of submissions and half of the comments appear to be more politically motivated than scientific and mostly US-centric. Just in the current top 10: > Republican activists perceive Republican senators with very conservative voting records to be moderate if they do not support Donald Trump. > Study: Emotionally manipulative political ads fail at swaying new voters, but excel at ensuring party loyalty. > Conspiracy mentality (a willingness to endorse conspiracy theories) is more prevalent on the political right (a linear relation) and amongst both the left- and right-extremes (a curvilinear relation) I wouldn't be surprised if most people posting there are from the US and from a certain fraction of the population at that. A rather small and uninteresting bubble compared to science as a whole. Going back to your comment: Neither would I be surprised if r/science 50 years from now was run by a corporation RSCIENCE LTD, drip-feeding "curated" clickbait garbage in-between ads.

WalterBright 5y ago

My father subscribed, and I found in his papers many articles he'd clipped out and saved, usually from the 1960s. He'd given up on SA by the 1980s, saying their quality had declined.

black_13 5y ago

I read the magazine through high school as part of UIL competition. I loved it and it continued to be great through the 90s. Its a shadow of its former self.

mmaunder 5y ago

Self-censorship is the other half of this problem. How many of us here have self censored our writing out of fear of painting a bullseye on our backs? The more you have to lose, the more cautious you are. If you’ve spent a lifetime studying a certain field, building a business or becoming a well know expert, you risk having it all taken away if you provoke the ire of the mob. And the mob has nothing to lose and everything to gain by targeting well known public figures. The result is that absurd ideas enter the public psyche and not one expert will risk their career by contradicting them. The democratization of publishing is an exciting breakthrough in all of human history. I’d rather have it than not. But this post-truth era that is emerging is worrying.

jimkleiber 5y ago
Your comment has me wondering about history and whether such previous drastic changes in communication technology have also brought waves of censorship, both by others and by ourselves. For example, with radio, the telephone, or even the printing press. In other words, not only the ability to publish/broadcast, but to have people reply to your publishing or broadcasting. I also wonder if we somehow adapt to it as we learn these new ways to communicate.
- mmaunder 5y ago
  Those breakthroughs had gatekeepers, for better or worse. Publishing house owners, newspaper owners/editors, radio station supervisors and owners. For the first time in all of history we can all publish instantly to everyone else at no cost. It’s a very exciting time and is, unsurprisingly, fraught with problems.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree. The ability to broadcast (and respond to broadcasts) to the world from almost anywhere in the world at any time, and have it recorded in text, audio, video, or more for an indefinite amount of time, so that people can receive it almost at any time from any place, I'd say has no close parallels in human history. The lack of gatekeepers I think is one of the biggest deals. Maybe the printing press gave the lack of gatekeeper, and maybe some forms of radio had that as well, but normally to broadcast to large audiences, there have been gatekeepers. Now, that being said, some platforms are starting to gatekeep at a very high level (e.g. Youtube, Twitter, FB), and many communication forums have lower level moderation (reddit, group chats, email lists, etc), yet, still, huge changes. I try to not say "we're living in an unprecedented time" because I think people use it way too often and it often has more to do with their inability to see similarities across time. And yet, as you've mentioned, we've never had communication like this as a species.

mactavish88 5y ago

Within the original article, there's a reference to this paper: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/704991 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/704991 (the author seems well-credentialed in the physics realm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein). Does anyone have any insight as to what this paper's trying to show? Looking at the beginning of the conclusion: > The central argument of this article is that white empiricism limits who is authorized to make claims about physics and that this is damaging to physics and alters its empirical direction. All I can get from it is that the author's trying to point out that (1) science has emerged in dialogue between humans, and (2) we should be mindful of who exactly's participating in that dialogue as that influences the kind of science that emerges. This seems somewhat reasonable and a good justification for encouraging a diversity of perspectives. But what new insight/perspective does the paper really contribute? For example, earlier in the same paper we find this when talking about some of the author's perceived failings of string theory: > Surveying what should happen next, there are at least three distinct possibilities: > 1. Patience is required, and evidence is coming. > 2. String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways because the community—which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics—is too homogeneous. > 3. The scientific method overly constrains our models to meet certain requirements that no longer serve the needs of physics theory. > ... > The second option is effectively unconsidered in the literature. Instead, the case for the third option has been made. This is a curious turn of events. Rather than considering whether structural and individual discrimination results in a homogeneous, epistemically limited community, physicists are willing to throw out their long-touted objectivity tool, the scientific method. The author hints that "there are at least three distinct possibilities", and from what I understand of postmodernism, it's what's hidden in the margins of the text, i.e. what's left out of a philosophical argument, that usually unravels that original argument entirely. One glaring missing possibility is that we just haven't yet found a better theory or approach that more accurately fits observations than string theory. If that's what the author's trying to convey with option 2, it seems like a pretty unnecessarily racialized and facile way to do so to me, and still hints at an important omission that there may be a totally non-racialized explanation for why string theory hasn't lived up to expectations. Maybe I haven't read enough postmodern literature to be able to appreciate this paper's contributions (maybe they're subtle), but from my first reading it ultimately just seems like one long complaint that black women have been excluded from physics by white men, which isn't really a novel contribution in 2020 if the theme already made its way into popular films. For someone so well-credentialed, I really would've expected a more substantial epistemological critique, or at least practical recommendations as to how to cultivate an environment that encourages a diversity of perspectives. Or, even more practically, if the author had actual evidence of bias (i.e. practices of actively excluding people of certain groups from the physics community), why not address that in the appropriate forum? It's all very strange to me, including why a paper like this is cited in Scientific American.

waynecochran 5y ago

I remember my dad’s subscription when I was a kid in 1970’s. It was more like a scientific journal back then. It is not even worth looking at anymore.

dtgriscom 5y ago

In the 70s I was an avid SciAm reader. I loved the monthly "Amateur Scientist" column, "conducted" by C. L. Stong. Lots of detailed technical info about how to make a seismometer, a nitrogen laser, an electron microscope, antibubbles, etc. etc. etc. I have the Amateur Scientist 3.0 CD-ROM, including columns from 1928 to 2001, and I just pulled out an October 1974 column, "Electrostatic Motors Are Powered By Electric Field of the Earth". I remember reading it at the time and noticing that one motor diagram had a commutator drawn so that it shorted the supply for half of the rotation. I wrote a (probably precocious and annoying) letter to C. L. Stong alerting him of the problem, signing it as "Dan Griscom, Age 12". Mr. Stong wrote back, confirming that I was right, and signing it as "C. L. Stong, Age 72". (Still have the letter...) And yes: the magazine has gone downhill.

thrill 5y ago
Brilliant - reminds me of the detailed self-typed (whiteout and all) reply I got from John Glenn many years ago.
zmix 5y ago
> Amateur Scientist 3.0 CD-ROM, including columns from 1928 to 2001 I know a lot of DataHoarders, who would love to get a hand on this ;-)
jmrm 5y ago
I recommend you to have a backup of that CD before it rot down. That seems pretty cool to loose it. Also, uploading it to Internet Archive wouldn't be a bad idea either :-)

Gatsky 5y ago

The original article is unspeakably bad, a shameful incoherent diatribe from an apparently professional academic. Not least because it is bizarrely self-obsessed, the author cites her own research in a complete non sequitur and links to a lecture where she apparently asked Craig Venter a question…

ageek123 5y ago

A lot of domain-specific publications have become insufferably political; they are trading on their previous reputations but are now so ideological that they're basically worthless. A few that come to mind are Wired, MIT Technology Review, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.

scarab92 5y ago
The current editor in chief's career as a journalist was largely writing clickbait style opinion pieces on identity politics for Slate etc.. I have no idea how they were deemed a suitable candidate to work for Scientific American, and it's no surprise her tenure has resulted in a rapid series of controversies.

ourmandave 5y ago

It's an opinion piece, not an article. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Sure but it's still a garbage article. Not all opinions are equal or equally well supported. Having an opinion based on nothing but cringe and woke-ism isn't really one worth reading.
OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
Scientific American is a publication, not someone's Facebook page. The writing gets Scientific American's legitimacy when they publish it and it reduces Scientific American's legitimacy if it's of poor quality. Editor-In-Chiefs should remember that 'it's an opinion piece' isn't a valid defense to separate the work from the publication or argue against a poor quality writing. They shouldn't publish the piece if the work doesn't represent the views of the publication or meet the quality of work expected. Sometimes I feel like we've forgotten what a reputation is and how they work. At the very least, it seems we've decided that opinions are functionally equivalent facts.

chmod775 5y ago

> “Why are string theorists calling for an end to empiricism rather than an end to racial hegemony? I believe the answer is that knowledge production in physics is contingent on the ascribed identities of the physicists.” This one and most of the other quotes sound like they were written by some AI.

weeblewobble 5y ago

The opinion piece in question (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-l...) strikes me as a restrained and sober attempt to explore the possibility that Wilson and others did bad science by presuming differences between races were due to genetics. Maybe you think the piece is wrong but it's just someone expressing some ideas, it's not intended to incite the woke mob or whatever. If anything, the OP seems to be trying to whip up a moral panic to suppress speech (i.e. to teach publishers that writing about race is toxic and dissuade them from publishing further opinion pieces examining race as a structural issue)

twofornone 5y ago
>presuming differences between races were due to genetics Its not a farfetched presumption that natural selection continued after the emergence of the homo sapien species. What is less likely is the notion that evolution magically stopped above the shoulders while geographically distinct human groups spent thousands of generations adapting physically, culturally, and likely cognitively to drastically different environments. >OP seems to be trying to whip up a moral panic to suppress speech These accusations of racism are the moral panic. This is pushback.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  >What is less likely is the notion that evolution magically stopped Well, the problem is that the science stopped being about "what is more likely" and turned into "what is more pleasant to hear to an average person". Back in the times of physical magazines and written letters, reading a scientific article required non-trivial effort, that worked as a sort of a selection bias, ensuring that the reader would be sufficiently educated, professional and open-minded [1]. These days, finding racism everywhere has become the claim for fame and meaning of life for too many people, so we all now have to take it into account. The funny part is that genetically were are very similar to the cave people some 50K years ago, and the huge difference in life quality is caused purely by what we learn, what values we teach to our kids, and where we pick our role models. Any genetic differences between races would pale in comparison to something you can learn in your lifetime. But this baby has somehow been thrown out with the water - one side is now convinced that all problems of certain demographics are unfixable and are caused by genetics, the other side attributes 100% of them to an unquantifiable oppressor and thinks that burning books and renaming formulas will somehow solve them, but nobody actually wants to put effort developing personality traits and habits that actually help a person achieve success in life. [1] as in "willing to examine weird-looking ideas from a rational standpoint, even if they personally don't like them" as opposed to "supporting the politically expected ideas even if they contradict the rational approach"

twofornone 5y ago

Its not unlike the travesty that has befallen our once informative channels: natgeo, discovery, animal planet...though perhaps not quite as extreme. And the National Geographic magazine has been obsessing over woke politics for a decade now as well. Its a damn shame to lose these institutions to such blatant politicking. Across society we seem to be regressing to the lowest common denominator. Entertainment, education, consumer goods, advertisement...this can't be sustainable.

shazeubaa 5y ago
> … this can’t be sustainable. Cue the film _Idiocracy_

VictorPath 5y ago

In the old days priests would say the gods put rulers in their place over everyone. Nowadays we have Wilson saying the same thing, except science and genetics have replaced talk of the gods. It's very simple and the basis of all ideology - the rulers are right to rule for whatever reason. It is not a new criticism of Wilson, people in the 1970s saw it for what it was. Funny to see mention of Lysenko. Lysenko mainly talked about plant germination. Wilson talked about human brains and how one race is superior to another. It seems Lysenko was more modest than Wilson. It's odd to bring Lysenko up as Wilson is completely ideological and politicized - you'd think they would leave out mention of Lysenko. Of course if you right a political book about one race's superiority to another's and want to pass it off as science, first strategy is to accuse anyone who questions any aspect of it of being ideological. I'm glad old bastards like Wilson, who would prefer to go back to his youth of segregated buses and drinking fountains, are dropping dead. Of course the day will come that this wack job on Medium foaming at the mouth about inferior blacks and communists will one day kick off too.

nate_meurer 5y ago

From the article: On her Twitter, the writer of the piece [Monica McLemore] wrote: "I purposively didn’t quote his work so you could read it for yourself." Not a good look for an aspiring scholar when her very first word is a misapprehension of everyday english.

deleted 5y ago
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greenyoda 5y ago
"Purposive" is a word that I've never seen used before, but it's actually in the dictionary, and one of the meanings is as a synonym of the more usual "purposeful": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purposive https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purposive
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  Well I'll be damned. Citations include Aldous Huxley's 1936 "Notes on Propaganda".

MichaelRazum 5y ago

So where is the mob? I mean for me this is an attack on science.

sproketboy 5y ago

da39a3ee 5y ago

At least pseudo-academic wokes like that leave plenty of evidence of the stupidity of their beliefs so that it cannot be in doubt.

coldtea 5y ago

It's not Scientific American. It's every medium. The NYT of 2022 is not the NYT of the past, and WP is not the WP of Watergate. And it goes beyond the ideological issues. In fact, the same declining quality (though not with the same specifics of course) is the case in every industry where they're fighting for increasingly thinner profit margins. It was the same back in the day (as far back as Mark Twain, Hearst/"Kane" and the first newspapers), where it was all about political and magnate influence to please some sponsor or another, and cheap writing to get people to buy papers. If journalism had a veneer that it wasn't about the bottom line, that was when money were plenty, because there was a brief (not that innocent, but much better than before and after) period, say between 1940 and 2000), when: (a) consumer spending got big (b) advertising budgets grew (c) while still having no "per page view" metric available, (d) and before the race-to-the-bottom of the online era, as there weren't hundreds of thousands of competing news sources plus every amateur with a website plus social media plus 24/7 tv that gave print journalists the luxury of working independently and with more prestige.

entropicgravity 5y ago
Not to mention National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal. Buzzfeed on the other hand has been getting better, from a low base.
uejfiweun 5y ago
I agree corporate journalism is a pathetic shell of its former self that can only race bait to get clicks. But I do think there is some good journalism going on in the independent scene. For example, Glenn Greenwald still puts out good investigative journalism, and there is a lot of good content on substack as well. I think this is the future, it just makes sense. In the past, journalists had to group into big organizations as you needed a lot of infrastructure to get the message out - printing presses, delivery workers, etc. Now with the internet all you really need is a single person.
- coldtea 5y ago
  That true, because they use a different model (directly supported by people via subscriptions/donations). This model can produce good journalism in some cases (when the people have taste and the journalist doesn't try to optimize his way to placating larger masses) but can also produce bad journalism (say, subscriptions are what sustain all kinds of crap content creators via things like Patreon to Twitch, and hell, OnlyFans).

lr1970 5y ago

A recent HN discussion on the same subject 13 days ago: The Demise of Scientific American (scottaaronson.blog) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29778348 (419 comments)

pixelgeek 5y ago

I had this same experience trying to find some good science magazines for my 14yr old. They are quite interested in genetics and I looked and looked and none of the available magazines were any good. I think that looking at the advertisements in the magazines tells you what part of the problem is. They are aimed at a fairly old demographic and probably the one remaining that still buys magazines. The other significant issue is ads. No-one wants to spend ad money on ads that do not provide the type stats that Facebook and Google do. Before the internet the relationship between an ad campaign and increased sales wasn't causal. Maybe the ads worked. Maybe they didn't. Now advertisers have far more information about the success of their campaigns and much, much more control over how ads are targeted. So why would anyone do print or newspaper ads? So magazines and newspapers are left with a diminishing pool of advertisers who target a declining demographic.