Scientific American editor-in-chief has vulgar meltdown over Trump win

Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth had a public and expletive-laden meltdown on social media last week following President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory.

“I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of f***ing fascists,” she wrote in a post on BlueSky.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f*** them to the moon and back,” she proclaimed in another.

“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 said in an additional post.

She also asked her followers: “Any advice for what workplaces can do to help people who are devastated by the election? Thanks so much.”

At other times, Helmuth has referred to Republicans as “horrible people” and those who refuse vaccines as “those f***ing ghouls.”

A false apology

Helmuth issued an apology after her divisive tweets, saying:

I made a series of offensive and inappropriate posts on my personal Bluesky account on election night, and I am sorry. I respect and value people across the political spectrum. These posts, which I have deleted, do not reflect my beliefs; they were a mistaken expression of shock and confusion about the election results. These posts of course do not reflect the position of Scientific American or my colleagues. I am committed to civil communication and editorial objectivity.

The apology, however, is seen as false by many who contend that Helmuth has had no commitment to editorial objectivity.

At 179 years old, Scientific American is the country’s oldest continuously published magazine. Contributing writers have included Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, and the periodical has published original reporting on inventions like the light bulb and the telephone. Under Helmuth’s stewardship since April 2020, however, the magazine has taken a major departure from science in favor of political activism.

Men in women’s sports

Last year, for example, Scientific American published an article making the elaborate case that men are not physically superior to women.

“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,” read the article.

COVID ‘conspiracy theories’

In March 2021, Helmuth dismissed the “conspiracy theory” that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. Credible evidence suggests that it did.

“On CNN, former CDC director Robert Redfield shared the conspiracy theory that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. Epidemiologists and virologists are doing heroic and urgent work on social media debunking everything he said. Thanks so much to them,” Helmuth wrote.

Presidential endorsements

For over 170 years, Scientific American made no political endorsements. But in September 2020, five months after Helmuth took the helm, the magazine endorsed Joe Biden because “[t]he 2020 election is literally a matter of life or death.” This year, the magazine again made an endorsement, this time for Kamala Harris.