Scientific American endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its history. These are unprecedented times. Never has the need for unbiased, evidence-based decision-making been more urgent.
The editors wrote:
Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.
The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.
The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump’s rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S. He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing disease, yet he did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines. Testing people for the virus, and tracing those they may have infected, is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks, saved lives, and successfully reopened businesses and schools. But in the U.S., Trump claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer. Trump opposed $25 billion for increased testing and tracing that was in a pandemic relief bill as late as July. These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country—particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color, where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population.
It wasn’t just a testing problem: if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances. Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus. He encouraged governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures, saying in April—again, falsely—that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” and ignoring infectious disease experts who warned at the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened.
And of course, the rebound came, with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June. The states that followed Trump’s misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not. By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients. States had to close up again, at tremendous economic cost. About 31 percent of workers were laid off a second time, following the giant wave of unemployment—more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses—that had already decimated the country. At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.
Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump’s falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation’s leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.
Trump’s reaction to America’s worst public health crisis in a century has been to say “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Instead he blamed other countries and his White House predecessor, who left office three years before the pandemic began.
But Trump’s refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus. He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no alternative; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness. Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us for future challenges. Congress has countermanded his reductions. Yet he keeps trying, slashing programs that would ready us for future pandemics and withdrawing from the World Health Organization. These and other actions increase the risk that new diseases will surprise and devastate us again.
Trump also keeps pushing to eliminate health rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, putting people at more risk for heart and lung disease caused by pollution. He has replaced scientists on agency advisory boards with industry representatives. In his ongoing denial of reality, Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to mitigate it. The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms, wildfires and extreme flooding.
Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making. He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals.
On COVID-19, he states correctly that “it is wrong to talk about ‘choosing’ between our public health and our economy…. If we don’t beat the virus, we will never get back to full economic strength.” Biden plans to ramp up a national testing board, a body that would have the authority to command both public and private resources to supply more tests and get them to all communities. He also wants to establish a Public Health Job Corps of 100,000 people, many of whom have been laid off during the pandemic crisis, to serve as contact tracers and in other health jobs. He will direct the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to enforce workplace safety standards to avoid the kind of deadly outbreaks that have occurred at meat-processing plants and nursing homes. While Trump threatened to withhold money from school districts that did not reopen, regardless of the danger from the virus, Biden wants to spend $34 billion to help schools conduct safe in-person instruction as well as remote learning.
Biden is getting advice on these public health issues from a group that includes David Kessler, epidemiologist, pediatrician and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief; Rebecca Katz, immunologist and global health security specialist at Georgetown University; and Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. It does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called “very respected” and “spectacular.”
Biden has a family and caregiving initiative, recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery. His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out of the economy and places enormous strains on families.
On the environment and climate change, Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035, build energy-efficient structures and vehicles, push solar and wind power, establish research agencies to develop safe nuclear power and carbon capture technologies, and more. The investment will produce two million jobs for U.S. workers, his campaign claims, and the climate plan will be partly paid by eliminating Trump’s corporate tax cuts. Historically disadvantaged communities in the U.S. will receive 40 percent of these energy and infrastructure benefits.
It is not certain how many of these and his other ambitions Biden will be able to accomplish; much depends on laws to be written and passed by Congress. But he is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges.
Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.
Editor’s Note (9/15/20): This article has been edited after its publication in the October 2020 issue of Scientific American to reflect recent reporting.
This article was originally published with the title “From Fear to Hope” in Scientific American 323, 4, 12-13 (October 2020)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1020-12
We subscribe to Scientific America. Good! This is terrific.
Go Joe and Kamala.
Unfortunately, “scientific american” is now an oxymoron.
The problem is much worse than just Trump.
it often feels as if we are a nation hogtied by our own constitutional tolerance: religions free to worship are also more and more free to own/control politicians
We need all the air support we can get to dump this human disaster in the White House. Scientific American carries a lot of weight and respect in this country, hopefully it will convince a few more people to vote for Biden/Harris, though I am pretty sure that the subscribers to Scientific American were already anti-Trump. The recent comments by Michael Caputo and Roger Stone are very frightening, alarming and ominous, with their appeal to martial law and violence. The only election results they will accept is a Trump win, and if Trump loses they are ready and willing to throw the country to the hounds of hell, they don’t care how many people will die or be injured.
Id bet if you asked most Americans what Scientific American is, they would not know.
It does carry weight among scientific Americans, but they only make up a small and shrinking fraction of the general populace.
SDP, and your point is? Not to care what the scientific community says because educated people are elites? They matter to me.
I was just addressing the claim that it carries a great deal of weight.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
And for what it’s worth, I was educated as a scientist (physics) and spent most of my career working with scientists and engineers, so the idea that my point is “not to care what the scientific community says because educated people are elites” could not be further from the truth.
The Scientific American carries weight not just with scientists but all kinds of educated Americans, professionals, professors, teachers, amateur astronomers, ordinary people interested in science (there are a few) and the folks who listen to NPR and watch PBS. I think it’s big news but that’s just me.
The monthly magazine, with a circulation of 3.5 million, is owned by Springer Nature, an international academic and scientific publishing company.
Quote: 11.Business leaders make up 45% of its audience (20% C-suite). It is in the top 20 magazines for business leaders. That is ahead of Money, Esquire, The New Yorker, Entrepreneur, Fortune and Forbes. (Source: MRI.) For professional learning, for instance, we offer courses in collaboration with NYU Poly.
12.It is #17 in professional/managerial for all 196 measured consumer titles. (Source: MRI.)
13.Policy leaders make up 21% of its audience, and it has more Beltway opinion leaders than Forbes, Wired, Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek, Vanity Fair, Fortune, Barron’s and the LA Times. (Source: MRI.) Many such experts contribute essays to the Forum department online and in print.
14.It is #2 for influentials for all 196 measured consumer titles. (Source: Erdos & Morgan.)
15.Educators make up 14% of its audience, and it is #18 for education professionals for all 196 measured consumer titles. As a result, it is often used in classrooms. (Source: MRI.) To serve educators, parents and students, we have a number of Education initiatives.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/at-scientific-american/15-surprises-about-scientific-american/
I don’t doubt there are educated Americans who subscribe to it (which need not mean they understand it or even read it, by the way)
What I doubt is that they make up a significant fraction of the American populace, particularly the voting populace.
And I also doubt that it is going to change the mind of any of the relatively small number of people who do read it.
First, any remotely scientific person who actually cares about science would have recognized long ago that Trump is a scientific ignoramus who regularly politicizes science. So, they would not be Trump supporters period. And people like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (an avid Trump supporter) are never going to change their mind about Trump, no matter what SA says.
Now, if USA Today or the National Inquirer came out and said Trump is a scientific ignoramus, I have little doubt it would carry weight.😀
Trump does carry a lot of weight.
Calling on all Patriotic Trumeteers! Show your support for our President in this election season by writing your local school district to insist that they teach science from Trump’s gut.
–Global warming is a hoax cooked up in China to undermine the United States.
–The wildfires in California have nothing to do with global warming; they could have been prevented if Democrats had swept their forests instead of leaving them all untidy. They should hire the Mar-a-lago cleaning staff.
–Not testing for a disease reduces its prevalence.
–If you leave a disease alone, it will magically disappear due to herd mentality.
–Windmills cause cancer.
–Exercise is bad for you because it uses up limited energy.
–The Coronavirus–scientific name, The China Flu or Kung Flu–was created in a Chinese lab.
–Stealth planes are actually invisible.
–One exciting prospect for the U.S. space program is sending astronauts to the sun.
–If you want the best air, use lots of good, clean coal.
–The scientific method: check Trump’s gut. (For God’s sake, remove scientists from any decision-making in scientific agencies! And fire all the watchdogs.)
–Professional scientists: Democrats working for the Deep State.
–To stop hurricanes, nuke them.
–The United States has a proud technological history, going all the way back to the airports liberated by the Continental Army.
–Nobody knows technology like Donald Trump.
–Donald Trump should get the Noble Prize.
and, of course,
–Inject disinfectants and get your medical advice from the how-to-protect-yourself-from-succubi doctor and the My Pillow Guy
Fortunately, with Trump’s gut leading us, we are way ahead in “the cyber.”
Trump’s gut is definitely leading waaay out in front.
Gut Leadership
His head is far behind
And so is his behind
His gut is out in front
Leading like a bunt
Cartoon:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/09/donnie-baby/
In the wake of the Scientific American endorsement of Joe Biden, the White House is calling on Trump supporters to boycott the magazine. Scientific American is saying that it will make up by other means the lost five dollars and 95 cents in revenue from the purchase of a magazine by by a Trump supporter.
Others, ofc, are questioning whether any Trump supporter actually purchased the magazine, ever. That one does, annually, may be an urban myth. Clearly, he or she wouldn’t be able to read it.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Trump supporters who don’t (and couldn’t) read SA.
America is a nation of scientific ignoramuses.
It was Robert Frost’s favorite magazine!
Jack Frost’s too
He was/is especially interested in the articles on ice ages — and global warming too.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-idea-on-how-earth-became-a-giant-snowball/
A snowballs chance in hell
Is what I give the claim
As far as I can tell
Volcano’s not to blame
The Vulcans get the rap
When no one else will do
And Spock gets so much crap
And also Sarek too
beautiful
Frost is my favorite post, by the way.
Jack, that is.
He wrote an apt one called Volcanos and Snowballs that you may be familiar with.
Robert stole it and changed the title to Fire and ice, but it’s pretty obvious he was plagiarizing Jack.
I guess that would be “plagiaricing”
Some some his term
should end with ire;
some say with nice.
Since I don’t this man admire
I go with those who favor ire.
But if we had to boot him twice,
take him to court, but keep it short.
Then toss him in jail to pay the price,
for all his crimes. That would be nice.
SDP, we had an exchange a few days ago when you corrected me about the various atmospheres, and I appreciated it. But without rain, it does strike me that our temps here in Ohio are significantly lower than they were forecast to be a week ago and the sunsets look more like what I saw in Louisiana (humidity-driven) that what I’ve become accustomed to in Ohio. It’s not medium- to long-term like Krakatoa, but in the short term, it’s real, immediate, and palpable. We need us some rain to clean out the smoke! And it’s all in the wrong place, in the SEC region.
Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden. Why not discuss Biden instead of Ugh? 😊
Some of us (former) students were improperly taught science, via bad textbooks and no labs. ☹️
For decades there has been a brain drain from the world flowing to the US as scientists and medical professionals immigrated to the United States for a better lifestyle and safer environment to raise children in.
https://oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/aid/673/The_brain_drain:_Old_myths,_new_realities.html
If Trump wins in November, expect that brain trust from immigration to reverse and flow back to their home countries while Trump leads the U.S. off a cliff and back to the 19th century.
In fact, if Trump wins a second term and keeps talking about staying in power for 12 years or longer, get ready to see many of our own home-grown scientists and medical experts receiving job offers from China. My son-in-law with a Ph.D. from Stanford in drone technology has already had job offers from China and he didn’t seek any of them. The Chinese companies contacted him and made the offer. He turned them down but that could change.
Since my daughter (a natural born citizen educated here) learned Mandarin growing up from her mother and Chinese grandparents and speaks it fluently and her husband is learning the language, it would be an easy move without suffering any quality in their lifestyle and probably end up with an improvement.
I know a handful of professionals and college professors who say the SA should not have politicized science PERIOD.
In any other era that might be a reasonable position but the political attacks on scientific knowledge are now relentless and dangerous.
Good for SA.
But let us not forget to be critical of claims to scientific and data-driven knowledge when there are good and often well-documented reasons to question the claims.
You should tell that handful of professionals and college professors that they must be really ignorant to say that SA “politicized science”.
What SA did was OPPOSE the politicization of science. If those professionals and college professors don’t want science politicized, they would demand that every scientist in this country make it their personal mission to defeat Trump.
Those college profs seem like people who should not be anywhere near students trying to teach them facts.
Opposing the politicization of science instead of shutting up and allowing the politicization to happen because you believe with all your heart that if you speak out against the politicization of science you are then politicization science, is truly worthy of Orwell. Those so-called college profs sound quite uneducated.
In fact, those handful of professionals and college professionals that you know are themselves complicit with the politicization of science. They should just admit they support the politicization of science instead of lecturing SA for opposing the politicization of science.
To whom it may concern
The smart, the considerate, the savage, which party is bringing people health and happiness?
Do we validate a brain over a heart? Can we ever live with peace through fight or through understanding communication?
To control a child in a bad behaviour, or a group of ignorant ( = ignoramuses), which method is effective?
Psychology or pampering or punishment, which way we use effectively to deal with in the past 5000+ years?
In short, fame, fortune and beauty can it bring people health and happiness? The truth is forever that a consideration and true caring with a logical mind and immensely knowledge will win people heart and will earn us a title “THE LEGENDARY of CENTURY” for any field in education or any careers.
Sincerely yours,
May King or Back2basic