Laura Helmuth was named editor-in-chief of Scientific American in March 2020, shortly before the magazine was set to celebrate its 175th year in print. Helmuth, who had previously directed health and science coverage at The Washington Post, told Poynter it was her dream job: "I love this magazine. It’s been around forever ... and I want to make it even more influential.”
Last week, after four-and-a-half years at the helm of the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, Helmuth resigned. She made this decision shortly after a series of posts on Bluesky in which she called Trump voters "fucking fascists." Helmuth later deleted the posts, but screenshots wound their way to Twitter, where Elon Musk weighed in, leading to a wave of online harassment. It's unclear what exactly prompted Helmuth's resignation, but it's hard not to connect the dots. Helmuth did not respond to a request for comment.
Back in 2020, Helmuth shared her top three editorial priorities for the magazine: moving beyond first-order pandemic coverage to addressing problems in public health, especially globally; diversifying staff and content; and reporting on misinformation and the science of misinformation. These priorities were a tall order during an unsettled time. In Helmuth's first week as editor-in-chief, nearly 400,000 people had contracted COVID-19 and more than 12,700 people had died of it. But the state of the world made Helmuth's priorities all the more vital. The pandemic disproportionately affected, and continues to affect, communities of color, and misinformation around the virus made its spread more prolific. In these priorities, Helmuth ensured the magazine was taking a stand on several issues that should be uncontroversial, such as the idea that a more diverse staff will lead to better stories and that scientific misinformation should be combated. She also oversaw clear-eyed coverage over the looming threats and possible remedies to the climate crisis.
In 2020, the magazine endorsed Joe Biden—the first presidential endorsement in the magazine's 175-year history—publishing an editorial that explained how "Trump repeatedly lied to the public" about the threat of COVID-19. This was less a stance than an objective fact, but legacy newspapers famously shirk from calling a lie a lie. In 2024, Scientific American's endorsement of Kamala Harris provoked the ire of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which accused the publication of transforming "into another progressive mouthpiece." But if a science magazine's purpose is to present good analysis of science, endorsing a candidate who believes in science over a candidate who regularly suppresses, downplays, or lies about scientific research, and actively spreads conspiracy theories, seems like a crucial part of that magazine's mission.
Over Helmuth's tenure, she steered the magazine toward coverage that understands that science has never been "objective." Science is and has always been social and political, in theory and in practice: every experiment is shaped by the people who design it and carry it out, by the questions they choose to ask, and by the powers that fund it or promote it or suppress it—to name just a few influences. She supported coverage of racial, environmental, and reproductive justice. In doing so, Helmuth ensured the magazine she led would be a bastion not just of lucid journalism, but also moral clarity. (Disclosure: I interned at Scientific American in 2015, and never overlapped with Helmuth).
Moral clarity is a rarity in legacy media, and Scientific American's stance on one particular issue drew ongoing backlash from certain readers. Under Helmuth's leadership, the magazine published many rigorously reported stories about the nuances of trans healthcare: on the wealth of research demonstrating that gender-affirming care for trans kids is good healthcare; on the misguided, harmful intentions of research on the determinants of gender identity; on the misinformation tactics of groups seeking to disenfranchise trans people. Unlike publications that still cite debunked claims of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" to buttress arguments against young people transitioning, Scientific American explained why these claims are not supported by science. These stories featured sources who offered different perspectives, and even disagreed with each other. Indeed, there is robust desire within the scientific community to figure out how to deliver the best possible care to trans people of all ages, as the field is relatively new and historically underfunded. But unlike many other major magazines and publications, Scientific American did not offer false balance between people on either side of the question, "Should kids be able to transition" because one side is supported by robust research and major medical associations, and the other side is supported by parents and conservative politicians, neither of which is a title that offers real expertise on the issue. This position polarized some readers, because some science is polarizing. But that does not make it not science.
On the same day that Helmuth resigned, Marcia McNutt, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, published an editorial in Science titled "Science is neither red nor blue" that bemoaned how science had become "politically contentious" and argued that "science, at its most basic, is apolitical." Whatever McNutt's intentions, the editorial appears to blame scientists for suggesting that science dictate policy, which, to some degree, it should. Scientists modeling sea level rise fueled by climate change should influence policies that protect coastal communities. Scientists studying infectious diseases should influence policies around vaccination to prevent public health crises. Although science might not be partisan, it is political. To that end, calling science apolitical is a political statement that, given just months before an administration of climate deniers, anti-vaxers, and assorted catch-all bigots take office, whose political agenda depends upon a rejection of science, is also a cynically savvy one.
The next four years will be terrifying for anyone interested in truth. I want to read publications whose leaders are not afraid to call a fascist a fucking fascist. I worry what Helmuth's loss means for Scientific American, and for anyone doing and covering science. As some media outlets scurry right to normalize Trump, the editorial courage of the past four years at Scientific American remains urgent and necessary.
The first issue of Scientific American came out in 1845, and it is difficult to articulate just how meaningful its moral stances were coming from such a longstanding, reputable magazine. As a trans science journalist, one who has worked in a newsroom that was blatantly hostile toward the idea that people like me should have autonomy over our bodies, I was grateful that such a celebrated, influential magazine was publishing work that I could learn from and cite in my own coverage of trans healthcare.
And as a trans person, I was deeply moved by the knowledge that the magazine's readers were seeing stories about trans people that did not frame transition as a tragedy of parenting. Instead, they were reading stories that interviewed trans people as experts of their own experience and illuminated the history of trans healthcare and debunked the misguided or malicious junk science wielded against trans people.
My dad has read Scientific American since he could afford a subscription, because he is a curious person interested in expanding his understanding of the world. He reads it cover-to-cover, leafing through the glossy pages over meals, and though he sometimes disagrees with the stories he reads, they no doubt influence his beliefs, and, by extension, his politics. More than 9 million people subscribe to Scientific American. I wonder what they'll read in the next issue.
