I haven't read SciAm for many years (I got New Scientist addiction when I was a PhD student, and have continued since), but I can see why you'd be annoying by idiocies like that.
ISTM this "wokeness" you refer to is basically an outcome of the intellectually bankrupt idea of post-modernism. Everybody is right, and nobody's position is priveleged over anone else's. It's not scientific, nor rational. On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 03:58:04PM -0500, John Clark wrote: > A few days ago the editor of scientific American magazine, Laura Helmuth, was > fired and I am NOT sorry to see her go. She was fired because a few days after > the election she posted a tweet calling Trump supporters "fascists" and " > bigoted", but that's not why I'm glad she was kicked out. I'm glad because she > also made the following unscientific claim: > > "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." > > Elon Musk said, with some justification, the magazine should change its name > to > Unscientific American. Even worse was the way Laura Helmuth treated the memory > of Richard Feynman and E.O. Wilson as I explained in the following post that I > originally sent in early 2022: > == > "In recent days the once great magazine Scientific American has been plagued > by > a serious and perhaps fatal case of wokeness, it is no longer the home of > giants like Martin Gardner and Philip Morrison. A few years ago Ash Jogalekar > was fired from the magazine by its editor, Laura Helmuth, for writing an > article that was too complimentary to Richard Feynman, she having judged that > Feynman was insufficiently politically correct according to today's rapidly > evolving social standards. Then the magazine blasted Joe Biden for appointing > Eric Lander, an excellent scientist, as his science advisor because Lander had > committed the unforgivable crime of being neither black nor female. And now, > just three days after the death of the great evolutionary biologist E.O. > Wilson, the magazine ran a hit piece on him written by somebody named "Monica > McLemore", who is obviously not a scientist, claiming that Wilson was a racist > without giving a single quote by Wilson demonstrating that fact. I say > "obviously not a scientist" (she turns out to be a nursing teacher) because > the > article contains the following unintentionally hilarious remark: > > "The so-called "normal distribution" of statistics assumes that there are > default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately > measured against." > > So I guess according to her the great mathematician Carl Gauss must have also > been a racist for having discovered the normal distribution more than 200 > years > ago. > I wrote the following letter to the magazine, I know it won't do any good but > it made me feel better: > ==== > > I've been a subscriber to your magazine for over half a century but after > reading the shameful article by Monica R. McLemore disparaging the memory of a > great scientists like E.O. Wilson just days after his death, I kept asking > myself two questions: > > 1) Why couldn't Scientific American find somebody smarter than Monica R. > McLemore to write for them, at least somebody smart enough to know what a > statistical normal distribution is? > > 2) Why do I continue my subscription to Scientific American? > > John K Clark > > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > tbi > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email > to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list > /CAJPayv3F8yXmXZamY3oTdxO7eUU9dJEmtKWxPfK5B%3DrgA3ndGw%40mail.gmail.com. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders [email protected] http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/Z0T4Lvm1OgTPpSER%40zen.
