City Journal: Unscientific American
My fourth year teaching at Normandy, I was the department chair. My department was concerned that students didn’t know the scientific method. I taught all Physics and Honors Physics, so figured my kids certainly knew how science worked. Sure, they could list some steps, but they couldn’t really think scientifically.
Around the same time, John Stossel, at ABC News, had done a special on pseudoscience, called, The Power of Belief. It seems a little quaint now, but it was an engaging look at unscientific beliefs that were popular in the culture. Magic crystals, past lives, faith healing, past lives, that sort of thing.
The program stayed away from religion and eco-paganism, so didn’t offend the Left or the Right. I started using the program at the start of each school year to get my students to think scientifically. Here’s a segment of the program.
Michael Shermer is a science writer who appears in this program. He is a professional skeptic and appears or is quoted often in articles about magical thinking, unscientific beliefs or rationalism. He is a dry and reasonable Liberal who tries to be consistent about looking at the evidence.
Early in his career, Shermer was pushing against the Christian Right. That isn’t his problem anymore.
Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth.
Shermer is an old school Liberal. By that, I mean he really does believe in free speech and free inquiry. He is the type of Liberal, like Jordan Peterson, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein and David Rubin, that Conservatives now embrace.
When Progressives talk about dumb hicks who believe fake science, they refer to flat earthers, Christians and creationism. None of these are an actual threat to anyone. Old school liberals are worried about giving puberty blockers to children, having sex clowns read at library story hours and DEI initiatives.
“I started to see the writing on the wall toward the end of my run there,” Shermer told me. “I saw I was being slowly nudged away from certain topics.”
Seeing someone like Michael Shermer get bumped out of Scientific American is a very bad sign. Sacred cows have no place at a prestigious science magazine.
Shermer also wanted to include a serious example: the common belief that sexually abused children grow up to become abusers in turn. He cited evidence that “most sexually abused children do not grow up to abuse their own children” and that “most abusive parents were not abused as children.”
As a teacher, I’ve heard that belief often. I didn’t know it was a forbidden topic. No wonder the misconception remains.
The following month, Shermer submitted a column discussing ways that discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished (while acknowledging the need for continued progress).
It isn’t permitted to acknowledge that any progress has been made.
This dogma sees Western values, and the United States in particular, as uniquely pernicious forces in world history. And, as exemplified by the anticapitalist tirades of climate activist Greta Thunberg, the movement features a deep eco-pessimism buoyed only by the distant hope of a collectivist green utopia.
Generically, we call it going WOKE. In discussions, a popular tactic is for the Progressive to ask for a definition. That is a ploy meant to derail the conversation. A better approach is to not put a label on it, and just address the specific anti-civilization idea that is being promoted.
The DEI worldview took over our institutions slowly, then all at once. Many on the left, especially journalists, saw Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as an existential threat that necessitated dropping the guardrails of balance and objectivity. Then, in early 2020, Covid lockdowns put American society under unbearable pressure.
Calling it the DEI worldview is a simplification because the anti-Western assault has changed forms over time. It started in the late 1960’s when the Soviet Union funded anti-war movements. They funded other groups to destabilize America through racial animosity. More recently, George Soros and other Progressives have funded subversive groups while China has funded organizations on college campuses.
All federal government organizations are filled with Progressives and diversity hires who have no interest in putting America first. Our elite universities have discredited themselves and even state universities have hundreds of DEI bureaucrats. Martin Luther King Jr’s idea of a color-blind society is seen as retrograde heresy.
What Fauci did to America during Covid, hurt us as much as 9/11 did. Almost everything he told us was wrong. Vaccine is safe, vaccine keeps you from getting Covid, masks are necessary, shut down the schools, stay in your house and stay 6 feet away. The CDC and WHO are no longer trusted sources. My doctor and local health officials take the party line. Their suggestions must be verified.
It helps to recognize when a media organization surrendered their credibility. For me, when NPR decided that no one was interested in Hunter Biden’s laptop just a month away from the presidential election, there credibility was gone. I loved NPR, and didn’t want to let it go, but it’s gone. When Scientific American canceled Michael Shermer’s column, they were no longer a trusted source.
What’s to be done?
Don’t take any news report as the truth and don’t limit yourself to one source. Have more trust in specific journalists. They tend to be going independent on substack. Be skeptical of anything the federal government wants to ban. I just don’t believe that natural gas stoves are a health threat. At all. The federal government should focus on core responsibilities and leave states alone for a couple of decades.
In education, I’d like to see the top two tiers of every institution fired and not replaced. Let’s operate like that for a while. A critic might say that can’t work, but what we are currently doing isn’t working and it would free up a lot of cash.