Helmuth’s bizarre anti-Trump screed capped off her destructive four-year tenure.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look back at the worst content published by Scientific American during editor in chief Laura Helmuth’s tenure, and we cover more media misses.
Scientific American Editor in Chief Resigns, Ending Not-So-Scientific Tenure
Scientific American’s editor in chief, Laura Helmuth, has resigned from her post after receiving backlash on social media over her verbal tirade against Trump supporters on Election Night.
“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f*** them to the moon and back,” she wrote in a post on Bluesky.
“I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of f***ing fascists,” she added in a separate post. She also shared a Scientific American article about “election grief,” which the outlet declared “is real” and offered readers advice on “how to cope.”
“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist. The moral arc of the universe isn’t going to bend itself,” she wrote in another post.
While the Daily Beast touted Helmuth’s posts as an “epic rant,” the controversial messaging earned Helmuth widespread backlash – even from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who responded to a post from a user on X who asked, “Does the editor-in-chief of Scientific American seem like someone who is entirely dedicated to uncompromising scientific integrity? Or does she seem like a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution?”
Musk replied: “The latter.”
Helmuth ultimately deleted her posts and issued an apology, calling her comments “offensive and inappropriate.” She claimed to “respect and value people across the political spectrum.”
But on Thursday, she announced she had stepped down. “I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief,” Helmuth wrote on her Bluesky account. “I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”
Scientific American president Kimberly Lau said the decision was Helmuth’s.
The resignation ends a more than four-year tenure in which Helmuth oversaw the publishing of numerous stories that veered from the magazine’s commitment to a scientific worldview.
For starters, the magazine chose to formally endorse Vice President Kamala Harris this cycle – only the second endorsement the magazine had ever offered in a presidential race in its 179-year history.
After taking the reins in April 2020, Helmuth injected the magazine with progressive neuroses around “misinformation” and the importance of fact-checking as a remedy to the ill-informed or bigoted views of the public. “An editor’s biggest job is to decide what’s worth covering,” Helmuth wrote in December 2020. She said it can “be a tricky decision.”
“Famous people often share misinformation or disinformation, whether it’s about vaccines or coronavirus or a flat earth. If the statements aren’t getting a lot of attention already, don’t cover them, since debunking can draw attention to a false claim that otherwise would have faded away. (Editors don’t get enough credit in general for stopping bad stories.) When the false information can’t be ignored — if it is being used to guide policy decisions — it is crucial to note clearly that the claim is false and to cover the falsehood as prominently as the claim,” she wrote.
Under Helmuth’s leadership, the magazine seemingly viewed the arguments against the distortion of biological sex as false information that cannot be ignored.
Take, for example, the outlet’s answer to the question, “What Are Puberty Blockers, and How Do They Work?”
“Decades of data support the use and safety of puberty-pausing medications, which give transgender adolescents and their families time to weigh important medical decisions,” an article from May 2023 claims.
“But despite the evidence for the safety and efficacy of puberty-delaying treatments, some lawmakers across the U.S. have spread false claims about the drugs and other gender-affirming treatments as part of their efforts to ban or severely restrict access to health care for transgender people,” it adds.
However, a growing body of research suggests the use of puberty-blockers can leave children permanently altered, suffering from brittle bones, underdeveloped secondary sex characteristics, and infertility.
The piece was part of an ongoing crusade against facts related to biological sex.
“Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex — the male — and considered the female body an inferior version of it,” Scientific American wrote in a post on X in August 2022. “The shift historians call the ‘two-sex model’ served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body.”
The post linked to an article about a documentary from the Intersex Society of North America, which claims that intersex individuals suffer from 30 different conditions that make them not clearly male or female. Intersex individuals make up an estimated 1.7 percent of the population, according to the piece, which cites “intersex activist and researcher” Sean Saifa WAll.
But as Andrew Follett wrote for NR at the time:
Actual scientists from the Montgomery Center for Research in Child and Adolescent Development dispute the 1.7 percent estimate, noting that 29 of the 30 conditions referenced involve no sexual ambiguity. “Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of 1.7%.” according to the Montgomery Center scientists. Almost nine out of ten of the individuals whom Scientific American claims are intersex are actually subject to just one condition, late-onset adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH), with completely normal genitalia at birth that align with their sex chromosomes. To label LOCAH an intersex condition is simply dishonest, according to Dr. Collin Wright, an evolutionary biologist.
Scientific American also claims that intersex individuals are oppressed by society. The magazine supports this claim by citing a 2020 survey conducted by the Center for American Progress, a far-left think tank, which was previously led by former White House chief of staff and 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Pretending that political hacks are unbiased scientists isn’t scientific . . . or American.
The outlet then followed that up with a piece published in November 2023: “The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong.”
That article eventually works its way to its main argument: that the “inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.” The outlet offers, as an example, the fact that men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women’s running events because of the belief that they will make the women “artificially faster.”
NR’s resident runner Jack Butler picked apart the argument in his own response:
While various factors have led to an improvement in athletic performance for both sexes over the past 100 years, women have improved at a faster rate than men. But that faster rate has been a product of dramatic increases in participation. As the previously cited paper notes, “the sex difference in performance for many events leveled off after 20–30 [years] of ‘catch up’ for women.” Biological reality ultimately intrudes.
And that reality is inescapable. Sexual differences in physical capability emerge with puberty and arise from the disparity in levels of key hormones, such as testosterone, between men and women. The resulting asymmetries in bone and muscle mass, lung capacity, height, and more cannot be wished away.
But perhaps the magazine’s most ridiculous piece of “reporting” in the past few years was this: “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.”
The article, for some reason, required the contribution of five whole authors and works to outwoke the DEI of STEM: Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, or JEDI.
“The Jedi are inappropriate mascots for social justice,” the article argues. “Although they’re ostensibly heroes within the Star Wars universe, the Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of ‘Jedi mind tricks,’ etc.). The Jedi are also an exclusionary cult, membership to which is partly predicated on the possession of heightened psychic and physical abilities (or ‘Force-sensitivity’). Strikingly, Force-wielding talents are narratively explained in Star Wars not merely in spiritual terms but also in ableist and eugenic ones: These supernatural powers are naturalized as biological, hereditary attributes.”
“Sending the message that justice work is akin to cosplay is bad enough; dressing up our initiatives in the symbolic garb of the Jedi is worse,” it concludes.
Headline Fail of the Week
“Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, was investigated for alleged sexual assault in 2017,” CBS News reports.
Nevermind that the investigation found no evidence to back the claims and was closed without any charges being filed against Hegseth, CBS News apparently decided it was a story worth telling.
The story says Hegseth was investigated for an alleged sexual assault in 2017 in Monterey, Calif.
“In response to multiple public record requests to the city, including one from CBS News, officials released a public statement late Thursday evening about a 2017 police investigation into Hegseth. The statement from the City Manager’s Office and Monterey Police Department contained few details about the case and said they would not make any other public statements related to the investigation,” the story explains.
It’s not until the eighth paragraph that the outlet includes a statement from Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, who explains, “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it.”
Trump communications director Steven Cheung offered a similar comment: “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”
Media Misses
• The New York Times offered an eyebrow-raising “fact-check” of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims about the artificial ingredients used in Froot Loops cereal in the U.S. “Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops as an example of a product with too many artificial ingredients, questioning why the Canadian version has fewer than the U.S. version,” the Times‘ report read. “But he was wrong. The ingredient list is roughly the same, although Canada’s has natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used ‘for freshness,’ according to the ingredient label.” The “fact-check” seemed to confirm – not refute – Kennedy’s statement.
• Someone should let HBO’s John Oliver know there’s an opening at Scientific American. He’d fit right in after he aired a segment falsely claiming “there is no evidence” transgender-identifying children “pose any threat” to fairness in women’s sports. Benjamin Ryan, a freelance health reporter who has written extensively on the issue of biological sex, was quick to refute Oliver’s claims in this thread on X.
• Whoopi Goldberg falsely claimed that a Staten Island bakery refused to serve her because of her liberal political views. But the owner of Holtermann’s Bakery was able to summarily refute The View co-host’s claims in a press conference with local officials, who supported her explanation that a boiler issue kept her from taking on Goldberg’s order. “It’s been here 145 years. They had a boiler that was 60 or 70 years old. And the first week in November, guess what? It went on the fritz,” Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said. “They had it replaced. And the reputation of Holtermann’s is impeccable, so rather than commit to something they couldn’t guarantee, they said, ‘We can’t do it.’ And the person who besmirched, defamed them, took that as an insult to her. Well, get over it. This family will be here for, God willing, another 145 years.”