Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "The average man is stronger than 99.9% of women. https://sciencedirect.com/science/articl"
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "The 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."
Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunity - "The mean effect size for these sex differences in total and upper body muscle mass and strength is about 3, which indicates less than 10% overlap between the male and female distributions, with 99.9% of females falling below the male mean. An effect size of this magnitude also means that sex—a single dichotomous variable—explains roughly 70% of the variance in muscle mass and upper body strength in humans. The sex difference in upper-body muscle mass in humans is similar in magnitude to the sex difference in lean body mass in gorillas, the most sexually dimorphic primate (Zihlman & McFarland, 2000)."
Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ on X - "For just the second time in its 179-year history, Scientific American is endorsing a candidate for president of the United States: Kamala Harris."
Enguerrand VII de Coucy on X - "The other time was 4 years ago, which tends to imply that the current editor Laura Helmuth has broken with an extremely old and well established tradition of not wading Scientific American into politics. The Scientific American that was about science is dead"
wanye on X - ""For just the second time in its 179-year history" is meant to imply that this is something they rarely do, when the truth is that the first time was last election and it's something they just started doing. Speaks to a fundamental commitment to deception and dishonesty."
Thread by @martianwyrdlord on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "How did a formerly respectable, once excellent publication focusing on high quality popularization of cutting edge scientific research turn into a cut rate political rag? Forget about the masthead. Let's look at the people hiding behind it. First up: the editor in chief, Laura Helmuth. Helmuth is actually a scientist (PhD cognitive neuroscience), although she prefers to be known as a Woman In Science. From her bio, "She speaks frequently on ... ways to use social media effectively and fight misinformation."
Next up, the managing editor Jeanna Bryer. Bryer has an English BA, an MSc in biogeochemistry, and a graduate degree in journalism. Not really a scientist, though apparently she did some wetland conservation work. "She is a firm believer that science is for everyone". Does 'everyone' include Trump voters? Rhetorical. Yikes, that haircut though. Just screams 'bitter middle aged shrew with penis envy'.
Next up, senior news reporter Meghan Bartels. From her bio she doesn't seem to have any actual scientific training - she's worked exclusively as a "science reporter" and has master's in journalism. This is a face that despises ethics in gaming journalism.
Next we have Sunya Bhutta, the "Chief Audience Engagement Editor", which sounds like she runs social media or something, and is in fact precisely that. Once again she has absolutely no scientific training - she's an English BA, which appears to be her highest qualification. WYB?
The first male we find is Lee Billings, senior editor for space/physics. Billings doesn't appear to be a scientist either (journalism degree), but the American Institute of Physics gave him an award for a book he wrote about astrobiology, so there's that. This face is screaming to be soyjaked.
The senior graphics editor is another middle aged woman, Jen Christiansen. The problem glasses and chainsaw haircut immediately inform you that she has Strong Opinions on politics, and that she will take every opportunity to inform you about those opinions, despite it being wholly unnecessary as a glance at her is sufficient to determine what those opinions are. Once again, no actual scientific training. Her job is to make the graphs look pretty.
Jeffery DelViscio is the Chief Multimedia Editor. He's a former NYT reporter, but does actually have some scientific experience, having worked on an oceanographic research vessel. As an aside, it really jumps out that what small amount of scientific training the editors have seems to be top-heavy with climatology-adjacent fields. I wonder why that might be.
Arminda Downey-Mavromatis is the Associate Engagement Editor, i.e. the social media intern. There's an even chance she wrote the tweet the OP QT'd. Hi, Arminda! To her credit, she has a BA (not a BSc?) in biochemistry, but seems to have worked exclusively in publishing.
This smarmy-looking character, straight out of central casting for "middle management", is Mark Fischetti, Senior Editor, Sustainability. "Sustainability" is apparently a scientific field now. He does, however, have a physics degree - the first hard scientist in the pressroom - and has a pretty impressive publication record, having co-authored a book with Tim Berners-Lee. That he isn't the editor in chief is remarkable, until you consider the politics, which he certainly supports. Though I can't help but wonder how he feels about not being editor in chief because of his chromosal disability (XY, yuck).
There are dozens more in the pressroom to get through, but the point has already been made. Scientific American isn't Scientific American. It's a skinsuit being worn by a cabal of overpromoted head girls and their housebroken soyboys, for whom science is only interesting insofar as it can be used to bolster propaganda imperatives for their side's political goals - "sustainability", "equity", and so on. If those goals require "science" to be redefined as "supporting a cackling social-climbing prostitute with the verbal IQ of a parakeet", then that's what The Science means. Science journalism is desperately in need of a Gamergate.
There are 28 individuals listed in the SciAm pressroom. Of these, 17 are women, 10 are men, and 1 is a "they". Ctl-F 'physics' yields 3 with physics degrees, of whom 1 has a PhD. Ctl-F 'Ph.D.' yields a whole 3 hits."
FischerKing on X - "The downfall of popular science magazines into political rags is really depressing. Something like Scientific American used to be a bridge between real scientists and the reasonably intelligent layman. It opened a space so the dentist or lawyer knew roughly what the physicist was doing. That link is broken now thanks to woke losers polluting the pages with race Marxism and other delusions."
Dr Adam Rutherford on X - "Scientific American endorse Harris. Which is good and obviously a pro-evidenced based and scientific stance. Cue: all the data bros going eeeuuuhh science isn’t political and meeeeeh science shouldn’t take sides waaaah."
Porkchop Express on X - "It’s the exact same scientists that told you that suspecting that corona might have emerged from very advanced gain-of-function research being conducted in China was… racist. Scientists might be intelligent, but not in ways that are practical."
Gurwinder on X - "If you really care about evidence-based science, know that the evidence says that not only do political endorsements by science magazines not sway people, but they actually cause people to lose trust in the magazine and in scientists generally."
Political endorsements can affect scientific credibility
Clear proof that those who don't Trust The Science are Ignorant Deplorables
Scientific American Article Claims There’s No Difference Between Male, Female Athletes - " The once-respected publication Scientific American has published a paragraph that is so woke and filled with real disinformation regarding biology that it must be considered for addition to this list. The November issue featured “The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong,” by Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy. In this piece, the authors examine the example of Sophie Power, who, in 2018, ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc while breastfeeding her baby at rest stations. They attribute her endurance to estrogen. Then Ocobock and Lacy make this claim, which is perhaps the most woke paragraph in the history of pseudoscience…yet:
' “The 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.” As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters at women’s events because of the belief they will make women “artificially faster”, as though the women were not doing the actual running themselves.'
I will simply note that the use of the word “inequity” here ties this rubbish to the equity agenda infiltrating scientific fields. But I digress. In reality, serious scientists agree that men have many physical differences in height, muscle mass, upper-body strength, and other factors that boost their performance over women. Men have 25-40% more muscle mass than women, thanks to testosterone... research shows that men handle competition-related stress better, too."
The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️🌈 on X - ""There are no biological differences between men and women that account for the universal trend of male athletes outperforming female athletes in just about every single athletic sport/event that exists. Its actually because men aren't allowed to be pacesetters in women's endurance races"
This absolute woke idiocy from @sciam doesn't even require a rebuttal, it rebuts itself. Do they have anybody with a scientific background at Sci Am anymore, or is it all trans zealots now?
@sciam : "there is no differences in the athletic capability of men and women"
@sciam , the very next sentence: "men can't be pacesetters in women's events because they run faster than women" 🤦🏼♂️🤡
How is this trash magazine still in business?"
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "Hard competition, but this may be the worst paragraph of all time in "Scientific American". Here is how I think it happened: The author of this article was predisposed to thinking that there are no biological differences. Then she read this thing about pacesetters, in which it said that using male pacesetters would make women 'artifically faster'. She took this to mean that there is a sort of conspiracy to make women not run as fast as they can. She could have considered that pacesetters only run the first part of the race, and that if the pace is set too high here, the runners will run out of energy later on. But she didn't consider that, because she was excited to see evidence for what she wanted to believe. Probably she used this argument a number of times on her colleagues, with the punchline "as though women were not actually doing the running themselves", to great success. What a silly assumption, haha.
Another contender is not thinking the normal distribution is a real phenomenon"
Emil O W Kirkegaard on X - "Reposting because it's so funny. Hit piece on E. O. Wilson in Scientific American, talks about how normal distributions assume there are default humans. In fact, they do the exact opposite, implying there is a variety of humans. The linked source for the claim is an article by the author herself. In true schizoposting fashion, the article contains neither the word normal nor the word Guassian, thus having nothing to do with the claim it is cited for. All of her work is of the same type, African tribalism."
The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson | Scientific American - "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"
Demolishing the Myth of the Default Human That Is Killing Black Mothers
Meme - Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil: "This is my nomination for peak Scientific American."
"Here's What the 'Manosphere' Gets Wrong about Cuckoldry. In online forums the term "cuck" has become synonymous with "sucker" and "loser." But this use distorts its history and meaning, creating a baseless moral panic that harms both women and science"
Meme - Colin Wright @SwipeWright: "We are at a peculiar moment where newspapers are retreating from taking official political stances to preserve their credibility, while scientific publications continue torching theirs by adopting political positions. *Washington Post not endorsing anyone as per their roots, Scientific American endorsing Kamala Harris*"
Michael Shermer on X - "Reminder of how far @sciam has fallen: “Inequity between male & female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.” So Serena Williams could beat Roger Federer but for...?"
Meme - Kevin Bass PhD MS @kevinnbass: "Ladies and gentlemen, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American"
Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social: "I apologize to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists
Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high- school classmates are celebrating early results because fuck them to the moon and back
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"
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "No person has ever brought ignominy and disrepute upon a once-respected publication as quickly and decisively as this ridiculous woman."
Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social: "I've decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief. I'm going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I'd like to share a very small sample of the work I've been so proud to support (thread)"
‘Scientific American’ Departing Editor Laura Helmuth Helped Degrade Science - "Helmuth may in fact have been itching to spend more time bird watching—who wouldn't be?—but it seems likely that her departure was precipitated by a bilious Bluesky rant she posted after Donald Trump was reelected... Helmuth's posts were symptoms of a much larger problem with her reign as editor. They accurately reflected the political agenda she brought with her when she came on as EiC at SciAm—a political agenda that has turned the once-respected magazine into a frequent laughingstock... increasingly, during Helmuth's tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time. When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior." That author also explained that "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." But the normal distribution doesn't make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn't be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim. Some of the magazine's Helmuth-era output made the posthumous drive-by against Wilson look Pulitzer-worthy by comparison. Perhaps the most infamous entry in this oeuvre came in September 2021: "Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion." That article sternly informed readers that an acronym many of them had likely never heard of in the first place—JEDI, standing for "justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion"—ought to be avoided on social justice grounds. You see, in the Star Wars franchise, the Jedi "are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of "Jedi mind tricks," etc.)" You probably think I'm trolling or being trolled. There's no way that actual sentence got published in Scientific American, right? No, it's very real. But what really caught my eye was SciAm's coverage of the youth gender medicine debate. This is one of the few scientific subjects on which I've established a modicum of expertise: I've written articles about it for major outlets like The Atlantic and The Economist, and am working on a book. I found SciAm's coverage to not just be stupid (JEDI) or insulting or uncharitable (the Wilson story), but actually a little bit dangerous. I know, I know: We're not supposed to call mere words "dangerous." Hear me out: The evidence for youth gender medicine—blockers, hormones, and (sometimes) surgery for minors to treat their gender dysphoria—is scant. We really don't know which treatments help which kids in which situations. Every major government or government-backed effort to look into this question, most recently the U.K.'s Cass Review, has come to this conclusion. The supposed leading professional organization, WPATH, is mired in scandal, with evidence from court cases strongly suggesting it has suppressed negative research results. One of the leading clinicians and researchers in the country admitted to The New York Times that she and her team suppressed negative research results (not the first time, I don't think). Rather than cover these important developments, Scientific American has hermetically sealed itself and its readers inside a comforting, delusional cocoon in which we know youth gender medicine works, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and only bigots and ignoramuses suggest otherwise. Over and over, SciAm simply took what certain activist groups were saying about these treatments and repeated it, basically verbatim, effectively laundering medical misinformation and providing it with the imprimatur of a highly regarded science magazine. This was a chronic problem at Scientific American. One article, to which I wrote a rebuttal for my newsletter, contained countless errors and misinterpretations: Most importantly, it falsely claimed that there is solid evidence youth gender medicine ameliorates adolescent suicidality, when we absolutely do not know that to any degree of certainty. As far as I can tell, every article SciAm published on this subject during Helmuth's tenure followed the exact same playbook of reciting activist claims — often long after they'd been debunked. Some of these articles might have done serious damage to the public's understanding of this issue. For example, SciAm ran a response to the Cass Review written by a pair of writers who were somehow able to issue a searing critique of the review despite having clearly never read it. They wrote that the document's problems "help explain why the Cass recommendations differ from previous academic reviews and expert guidance from major medical organisations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the American Academy of Pediatrics." But part of the Cass Review's remit was to evaluate the strength of these exact pieces of expert guidance—the Cass Review explicitly explains why the WPATH and AAP guidelines are weak and untrustworthy. Anyone who read the document would have understood that. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Cass Review argued that the WPATH and AAP guidelines were shoddily constructed, and SciAm published a response accusing the Cass Review of differing from the WPATH and AAP guidelines. That's the sort of error that can only occur in the context of lax editorial standards married to ideological certitude. People trust Scientific American... SciAm has had no qualms about spreading what can only be described as medical misinformation on this subject—something it decries when the sources and claims in question are right-coded... The crisis of expert authority has many causes. But one of them is experts mortgaging their own credibility. When magazines like Scientific American are run by ideologues like Helmuth, producing biased dreck as a result, it only makes it more difficult to defend the institution of science itself from relentless attack. This lack of trust absolutely contributes to the sorts of dunderheaded, reactionary populism presently threatening America and much of Europe. If experts aren't to be trusted, charlatans and cranks will step into the vacuum"
Meme - CNBC: "Vance wants to raise the child tax credit to $5,000: Here's why that could be difficult" - MON, AUG 12
CNBC: "Harris calls for expanded child tax credit of up to $6,000 for families with newborns" - FRI, AUG 16
Meme - Taylor Lorenz: "Good time to remind people that Pirate Wires is not a journalistic outlet and regularly publishes false information. It, like Bari Weiss' Free Press, cosplays as independent media while existing to prop up the interests of billionaires"
Mike Solana @micsolana: "this is libel. we have never published a false story. but a good time to remind people taylor has published lies for years. I probably won't sue bc I'm busy, and I can't respond because she blocked me. but please tell her I said hi, and share your favorite lies of hers below. fyi we’ve created a new resource for keeping track of this walking infohazard’s many lies. please let us know if we’ve missed anything, or when anything new should be added (constant, we expect)"
Pirate Wires @PirateWires: "An up to date timeline of Taylor's lies and distortions, which we will happily update with new information when we get it."
"Taylor Lorenz's History of Lies. this week, former wapo reporter taylor lorenz accused us of regularly posting false information, which we categorically deny, and are following up with a list of lies she's told online. Neeraja Deshpande"
Meme - @jason @Jason: "The @nytimes vs @a16z / tech just hit a new level with @TaylorLorenz claiming @pmarca is using the “r-word” on @joinClubhouse — then deleting the tweet because.... it didn’t happen?!"
Sarah Haider 👾 @SarahTheHaider: "Just a few days ago, NYT lost a veteran reporter for repeating a bad word years ago, and now its reporters are attempting to tattle on others for similar crimes (which did not even occur). The most esteemed journalistic institution in the world, staffed with kindergarteners.
Worth nothing:
- Veteran reporter was covering perhaps the most important beat, the pandemic, and doing a fantastic job.
- Tattle-teller Taylor Lorenz covers TikTok influencers, with what can barely be described as "analysis".
One is fired, the other will remain untouchable"
Taylor Lorenz Gets Wrecked for Calling 9/11 a 'Punchline' - "New York Times and Washington Post alum Taylor Lorenz is getting raked over the coals online for calling the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people a “punchline” on Thursday. Reacting to a post from another user condemning the baking of a “9/11 cake” on X, Lorenz wrote: “You don’t have enough respect for the sanctity of 9/11” is such a ridiculously out of touch and frankly boomer ass take in 2025. 9/11 has been a punchline for over a decade, ppl are having 9/11 themed parties and there are 9/11 parody t shirts and memes all over. “Young ppl today also correctly recognize that 9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum, it was a direct response to/consequence of US foreign policy in the middle east,” she added. “The more u know abt what the US has done in the middle east the more u understand why many believe the US deserved 9/11.”... “GenX here. Three people I knew died in the towers, human beings just like Taylor Lorenz, who got on the subway and went to work one day and then suddenly while they were drinking their coffee they had to decide whether to jump or burn to death,” wrote The Washington Post‘s Megan McArdle. “Not a fucking punchline.” “Bashing Taylor Lorenz is too easy. There will always be crazy assholes like her, clamoring for attention,” observed economic commentator Noah Smith. “Instead we need to ask why, as a society, we elevated Taylor Lorenz to be an important public intellectual, and gave her important jobs at the country’s top newspapers.” “I think we all know that Taylor Lorenz is not mentally stable and none of us would be surprised one day to read of her untimely demise,” submitted conservative radio host Erick Erickson. “She needs help and an intervention and she needs a lot of prayer. She is simply not well.” “Young people (not Lorenz) cannot appreciate how horrifying 9/11 was for those old enough to experience it,” observed the Manhattan Institute’s Jessica Riedl. “My translation for younger people is to imagine another school shooting. Except its 3,000 victims instead of 10. And on live TV. And you wondered if your school was next.”... During Taylor Lorenz’s tenure at the NYT and WaPo non-leftists were complaining about her stories but were told with no small amount of disdain that we just hated the truth and that reporters don’t root for a side period but in reality she was having 9/11 parties the whole time. — Jarvis (@jarvis_best)... Lorenz has also been criticized in recent days for celebrating former President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis and championing Luigi Mangione, the man who has been charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year."
AG on X - "Taylor Lorenz hangs out with a bunch of crazed pro-terror left-wing extremists obsessed with hating America and thus assumes their deranged behavior is also normalized among other Americans."
Charles C. W. Cooke on X - "The best part is that she casts those who don’t think like this as “out of touch.”"
