It made news when Laura Helmuth, the editor-in-chief of the venerable 175-year-old Scientific American magazine, had a complete public breakdown on X following Trump’s election. However, the rot runs much deeper than one woman. The magazine has been collapsing for years, something that predated her taking the helm. In that way, Scientific American’s decline embodies how leftism destroys both people and institutions.

First, let’s talk Helmuth.

On paper, Helmuth is impressive. She has a BS in biology and psychology and a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. One would think that this woman is a hard scientist who deserves to helm America’s oldest continuously published magazine, a job she took over in April 2020.

However, from the moment Helmuth took over Scientific American, she blatantly politicized it. She did so by breaking with the magazine’s 175-year tradition of staying out of politics. In 2020, the magazine endorsed Joe Biden. The magazine also endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024.

But Helmuth’s real political fervor showed up in a series of tweets she posted once it became clear that Kamala had lost. These weren’t just “Aw, shucks, my preferred candidate lost” tweets. These were the ravings of a mad woman:

Public domain.

When Helmuth realized her career was at risk, she apologized:

Public domain.

No word yet, though, on whether her apology will save her job.

Certainly, Helmuth revealed herself to be yet another one of those crazy leftist women I keep writing about, the broken women who have drunk so deeply of the leftist Kool-Aid that they are emotional basket cases.

What’s important here, though, is that Helmuth wasn’t hired to change Scientific American’s direction; she was hired to reinforce it. Here are some of the crazier leftist ideas—many of which are highly unscientific, emotion-based advocacy—that this once respectable magazine has pushed both before and after Helmuth’s tenure. They accelerated under Helmuth’s leadership, but the rot was already there. (I’ve skipped most of the COVID issues because they were overwhelming in number and leftism.)

• January 2016: “Young and Transgender: How best to help them thrive” [Note: There is no evidence whatsoever that transgenderism is real.]
• September 2017: “It’s Not a Women’s Issue: Everybody has a stake in the new science of sex and gender.”
• May 2019: “Inconceivable: The science of women’s reproductive health has huge gaps. What we don’t know is hurting all of us.” [Note: One essay wants men on birth control, and another insists that “racism” is the “critical factor” in women’s deaths during childbirth.]
• February 2020: “Women: Why their equality, health, wealth and safety matter to everyone.”
• July 2020: “Inside the Coronavirus: Everything we know so far about the cause of COVID-19.” [Note: I opened this expecting an anti-ivermectin rant but, instead, found an essay eager to tell me about “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.”]
• August 2020: “Climate Change: What’s happening to our planet.”
• October 2020: “Truth v. Lies: It’s never been more important to understand the science of misinformation and deception and how to know what’s real.” [Note: An essay assures us that “implicit bias” is totally real, and another promises to help us deal with benighted souls who “doubt the validity of climate change...”]
• November 2020: “Confronting Misinformation: How to protect society from fear, lies and division.”
• March 2021: “How Social Justice Movements Succeed: Black Lives Matter takes upon the baton of the Civil Rights Movement.” [Note: Without a subscription, I have no idea how this counts as “science.”]
• July 2021: “The Science of Overcoming Racism: What research shows and experts say about creating a more just and equitable world.” [Note: In this issue, which includes a collection of past essays, you’ll learn that “We’ll Never Fix Systemic Racism by Being Polite,” something that sounds decidedly non-scientific; that “racial bias” is flexible; that AI can be the racial bias police; and that “diversity makes us smarter.”]
• October 2022: “The Power of Viking Women: What new archaeological discoveries reveal.” [Note: Apparently, they made powerful textiles.]
• November 2022: “Meltdown: New evidence that Antarctica’s ice is collapsing faster than expected.” [Note: We’re all going to die.]
• November 2023: “Women the Hunter: New science debunks the myth that men evolved to hunt and women to gather.” [Note: I have no idea what the essay says, but given that women get pregnant, nurse, and are responsible for children, I highly doubt that this new evidence, even if accurate, represents the prehistoric norm.]

In addition to those purely leftist concepts, the magazine offers endless “women’s magazine” subjects such as dieting, human relationships, feelings, looks, aging, etc. Instead of feeling like a scientifically rigorous popular magazine, it feels like a vaguely scientific version of Woman’s Day or Family Circle which were homemaker staples during the 1960s and 1970s.

In other words, Helmuth presided over and accelerated, but did not cause, the intellectual degradation of this venerable magazine. Both the magazine and her post-election breakdown are microcosms of what the left has done to the world of reason.

Image: June 1922 Scientific American cover. Public domain.