The 'Science' Has Spoken

The latest issue of Scientific American includes something that the magazine has only done one other time before: a presidential endorsement. It’s as predictable as you would imagine, and the article accompanying it presents a ridiculous binary scenario.

“In the November election, the U.S. faces two futures. In one, the new president offers the country better prospects, relying on science, solid evidence, and the willingness to learn from experience,” the article begins. “She pushes policies that boost good jobs nationwide by embracing technology and clean energy. She supports education, public health, and reproductive rights. She treats the climate crisis as the emergency it is and seeks to mitigate its catastrophic storms, fires, and droughts.”

If the outré gender pronouns didn’t give it away, the magazine is talking about Kamala Harris, of course. Contrast it with the other scenario.

“In the other future, the new president endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies,” the piece continues. “He ignores the climate crisis in favor of more pollution. He requires that federal officials show personal loyalty to him rather than upholding U.S. laws. He fills positions in federal science and other agencies with unqualified ideologues. He goads people into hate and division, and he inspires extremists at state and local levels to pass laws that disrupt education and make it harder to earn a living.”

The only way Scientific American could make it more obvious is to give Harris a halo and Donald Trump a mustache to twirl. The magazine gives us details that continue to lay out the devil vs. angel lens through which “science” views the election.

Related: Who's the Threat to 'Democracy'?

Interestingly enough, Scientific American lays out the issues in terms of supporting the left’s policies and denigrating the right’s solutions. After all, there aren’t scientific experiments that conclude that government-run health care is best or that the government should ban guns, yet the magazine parrots Democrat talking points on those issues.

“Even after Trump was injured and a supporter was killed in an attempted assassination, the former president remained silent on gun safety,” the magazine nervily claims.

There is, however, actual, real-deal science that shows us that babies are alive in the womb. Ultrasound technology and other ways of seeing how babies develop in the womb render support for Harris’ “reproductive rights” rhetoric unscientific.

When it comes to environmental issues, Scientific American also mimics the left’s perspective with no consideration for alternative views. There’s also no discussion of free-market solutions to climate concerns; only sweeping big-government action (by Harris, of course) will do.

None of this represents science as we traditionally know it. Rather, it represents The Science™ — the left’s view that only its policies represent “science.” It’s scientism.

“It’s not science they’re committed to, but scientism — a weird hybrid of technocratic managerialism and radical progressive ideology,” writes Toby Young at The Spectator. “If the modern era was made possible by the separation of knowledge and morality, the worshippers at this new altar seem determined to usher in a new post-modern utopia in which science and religion are fused once again.”

Young notes that “it seems a bit daft to alienate roughly half the U.S. population” by endorsing Harris, but he concludes that the endorsement is “not a choice dictated by science, but by theology.”

The only other candidate Scientific American has endorsed was, you guessed it, Joe Biden. It’s telling that the scientists at Scientific American are so beholden to the left, which means that there’s no room for other opinions or theories in their closed minds.