Wesley Smith writes for National Review Online about a science journal taking an unwelcome political stance.
These days, scientific and medical journals are seemingly as much ideological — on the left — as scientific.
Here we go again. Nature — perhaps the preeminent science journal in the world — has posted a piece swooning over Vice President Kamala Harris as a “historic” presumptive presidential nominee stirring “optimism” among scientists. Why? The article assumes that progressive political positions are good for science. From “What Kamala Harris’s Historic Bid for the U.S. Presidency Means for Science”:
Health and science have been a part of Harris’s life since an early age: her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who Harris cites as a major influence, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer. …
… That’s nice. What else? Liberal health policies:
During the 2020 Democratic primary race, Harris was to Biden’s left on healthcare policy. For one, she endorsed a universal single-payer national health insurance system — which still included a role for private insurance companies — while Biden preferred tweaking the existing system, which he had helped to engineer as vice-president. …
… From the perspective of the article, she’s also great on — ta-da — abortion:
Harris has been more vocal than Biden on abortion rights. Last December, she launched a nationwide reproductive freedoms tour, in which she became the first US vice-president to ever visit an abortion provider.
And we can’t forget climate change:
Harris has long promoted action on climate as well as environmental justice, says Leah Stokes, a climate-policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a district attorney in San Francisco and then attorney general for the state of California, Harris became a champion for communities on the front lines of fossil fuel pollution, Stokes says. …
… Even though many scientists might disagree with Harris’s progressive politics, there are no voices with different perspectives presented — which makes it seem as if “science” and liberal politics are conjoined at the hip.
