How Science Must Change

Why leaders in science must rediscover that science serves everyone

True, but not through the politics of scientists

A minor brouhaha erupted on social media this week when the editor of Scientific American, Laura Helmuth, in a late-night fit of rage, posted profanity-filled and disparaging comments about those who voted for Donald Trump.¹ As often happens in social media brouhahas, many are calling for Helmuth to be fired from her role as editor.

However, this is not simply about a highly partisan editor at a magazine and firing her would not address the deeper issues. Rather, this episode reflects how intense partisanship, often accompanied by intolerance and vitriol, have become normalized in areas of science that are especially close to policy and politics. Every day I could point you to social media comments by leading and celebrated scientists that make Helmuth’s diatribe look tame.

Leaders of important scientific institutions — including journals, universities, and academies — have not only condoned partisanship and intolerance, they have often rewarded it.² Consider actions by the leaders of the most prestigious science journals:

• The British journal Nature endorsed Kamala Harris, warning apocalyptically that “the fate of US democracy, science and evidence-based policy hangs in the balance.”

• Following the election, Nature framed the comprehensive Republican victory as being in opposition to the global scientific community: “Scientists around the world expressed disappointment and alarm as Republican Donald Trump won the final votes needed to secure the US presidency.”

• The editor of Science, Holden Thorp had his own social media brouhaha back in 2023 when he denigrated those among the public with different political views than his:

  • “[T]hey don't actually want science, they want scientific information they can use as they see fit. This gives people the permission to say things like "climate change may be real, but I don't think we should have government regulation to deal with it," which is unacceptable.”

  He left X/Twitter soon after.

• When it was revealed in climate scientist Michael Mann’s defamation case that Mann — a blistering political partisan — had spread false rumors accusing a female colleague of sleeping her way to a faculty position and interfering in a journal’s peer review process to prevent a paper’s publication, Thorp simply brushed off this unacceptable behavior: “Passion is not misconduct … It’s perfectly human to react when attacked.”

I could go on (and on and on).³

The increasing partisanship among many in leadership roles in the scientific community is well understood. For example, a 2022 study of campaign donations by U.S. scientists found — coincident with Trump’s first candidacy — a sharp increase in donations to Democrats and decrease to Republicans:

Analysis of the FEC data confirms that American scientists who donate to political candidates favor Democratic candidates and organizations over Republican ones. In fact, they do so dramatically. However, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. From 1984–2000, the proportion of donations to Republicans among all university and college employees was fairly stable, at around 40 percent. Academic employees favored Democrats, but only slightly. (Data are not available to separately analyze scientists vs. other academic employees before 2002.) But, from 2000–2021, donations to Republicans fell drastically, to less than 10 percent (Fig. 1). Starting in 2016, professors gave even less to Republicans than did university employees overall, with only about 5 percent of donations from the professoriate going to Republicans. Ivy League professors gave less still—about 2 percent. The total dollar value of aggregate donations increased dramatically in 2019, when academic donations to Republicans were at a recent historic low. Thus, we can observe that in the past 3 years, academic scientists’ giving has gone almost entirely to Democratic candidates.

I have no doubt that the comments by Helmuth and Thorp about those Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent their deeply and sincerely held views against their fellow citizens. Climate scientist Mann goes further and often invokes the language of war against his fellow citizens.

We too must choose to do battle against the forces of darkness, fighting back against a malevolent movement that represents fascism, authoritarianism, racism, misogyny, and bigotry, a movement that uses antiscientific disinformation as its preferred weapon.⁴ We do this not because our success is guaranteed. Given the forces mobilized against us, we are clearly the underdog.

I cite Mann not because he is an outlier in the scientific community, but because he is so representative of many who hold positions of leadership and authority — not to mention his blissful unawareness of how offensive his daily public rants are to those who do not share his extreme politics.⁵

There are an enormous diversity of political views across the United States, on the left and on the right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any scientist holding extreme political views or expressing them in public — It is a free country, and I support all who wish to participate in public debates and discussions.

The larger issue is that the scientific community has chosen to elevate into leadership positions many scientists who oppose and even denigrate the majority of fellow Americans who voted Republican in 2024. At the same time, the scientific community has ostracized and cast off from their own ranks those perceived to deviate in their views even a small amount from this orthodoxy.⁶ Among some scientists, there is even a view that the scientific community is part of “the resistance” against their fellow citizens.⁷

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It can come as no surprise that as the scientific community has increasingly organized itself against normal Americans, many of these normal Americans are increasingly distrustful of scientists and scientific institutions. For instance, (emphasis added below):

Source; AEI 2023

[F]rom January 2019 to May 2023, the percentage of Hispanic Americans expressing a great deal or some confidence in scientists dropped from 82 percent to 61 percent. The pattern is similar for black Americans—from 85 percent to 69 percent over that same period. Generally, non-white Democrats are half as likely as white Democrats to express a great deal of confidence in scientists.

With the red wave that just swept the United States, there are some early encouraging signs within the scientific community that the extreme partisanship of its leaders must now change.

In an editorial yesterday titled ‘Time to Take Stock,” Thorp, the editor of Science, shows a growing awareness of the current realities:

“[Trump’s] his message resonates with a large portion of the American populace who feel alienated from America’s governmental, social, and economic institutions. These include science and higher education. Winning back this disaffected group will require science leaders to foster and promote a more inclusive scientific landscape for all Americans and lay out how science can be successful under Trump.”

Yet, Thorp’s essay also reads as if he is struggling to reconcile a profound dissonance between this growing awareness and where the scientific community has been focused over the past decade:

“During Trump's previous term in office, scientists often responded to incidents by fighting back on social media and cable news. (I was an enthusiastic participant but left Twitter, now called X, a year ago.) Although this animated and often confrontational banter created a sense of unity among many scientists and provided a platform to defend science, it ultimately failed to persuade the public that the attacks were baseless.”

He almost gets there. The “banter” was indeed persuasive to the public — it helped to persuade them that the scientific community deserves less of their trust.

Similarly, in a long essay lamenting Trump’s election, Nature includes the wisdom of Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff, a long-time scholar of science and technology studies:

“I think it’s a learning moment,” says Sheila Jasanoff, a social scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trump’s victory illustrates a fundamental disconnect between academic researchers and many Republican voters. Finding common ground will require social engagement, and probably humility on the part of scientists, who have yet to fully come to grips with this social and political divide. For many Republicans, Jasanoff says, “the problem is us” — the academic ‘elites’.”

There is ample evidence revealing the dynamics underlying decreasing trust in science, but leaders of the scientific community have instead chosen denial. For example, a 2023 study looked at the effects among the public of Nature’s 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden, finding that it decreased trust in science overall:

[E]lectoral endorsements by Nature and potentially other scientific journals or organizations can undermine public trust in the endorser, particularly among supporters of the out-party candidate. This has negative impacts on trust in the scientific community as a whole and on information acquisition behaviours with respect to critical public health issues. Positive effects among supporters of the endorsed candidate are null or small, and they do not offset the negative effects among the opposite camp. This probably results in a lower overall level of public confidence and more polarization along the party line. There is little evidence that seeing the endorsement message changes opinions about the candidates.

Nature editorialized on the study — completely rejecting it — and of course chose in 2024 to again offer a presidential endorsement.

The scientific community is not a subset of a political party. The scientific community is not the opposition or engaged in a war against other citizens. The U.S. scientific community is largely funded by the public in support of performing research and education to serve the broad interests of the nation and its citizens — all of its citizens regardless who they choose to vote for.

We should fully expect some in the scientific community to double down on partisanship and vitriol — It’s them, not us! Of course, thinking in terms of us and them is a huge part of the problem.⁸

The first priority of those who lead important institutions of science must be to reestablish a spirit of public service, recognizing that we serve the public, we do not lead the public. That will mean leadership that works to ensure that every American can see themselves benefitting from the work of the scientific community.

If current leaders are unable or unwilling to make what will necessarily be difficult and unsettling changes, then it is time for new leadership.

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1. I’m not posting the comments or her later apology. You can easily find them on X/Twitter if you’d like. I do not want any disparaging comments about Helmuth here.

2. There are also leaders in the community who are not in important institutional roles, but who carry outsized influence, such as through social media. I also include science journalists as part of the scientific community.

3. The THB archives are full of examples.

4. Note how Mann identifies antiscience and disinformation as the primary “weapons” of his opponents. This place scientists like him — who believe that they are fighting antiscience and disinformation— at the center of an epic, Manichean political battle for the future of humanity. Or something like that.

5. Similarly, in the comments below, I don’t want any personal comments about or insults of Mann. He is doing just fine speaking for himself.

6. I was struck yesterday by this comment by Ezra Klein at The New York Times: “The Democratic Party had spent years kicking people out of its tent.” Much the same can be said of climate science and of academia.

7. I regularly hear from THB readers in the scientific community who express fear for their careers or social/professional standing if they express views at odds with the political views of leaders in the scientific community.

8. Many of these folks have decamped their social media presence to BlueSky and off of X/Twitter. Ironically, the effort to create an epistemic bubble/echo chamber removed from a broader diversity of views may ultimately help the scientific community to reorient itself away from its most intense and pathological politicization.