Earlier: It’s Official: Even Hard Science Entering New Dark Age

[Excerpted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively through VDARE.com]

Recently I had things to say about wokeness at the fine old magazine Scientific American. Their September issue had run a long article, headlined Reckoning With Our Mistakes, in which the editors groveled, rent their garments, heaped ashes on their heads, and flagellated themselves with guilt over shamefully un-Woke things the magazine had published back in the 19th century.

All that was bad enough—distressing enough, I should say, for an old science geek like myself who, in his youth, looked to Scientific American for instruction and amusement on science and math topics, delivered in a spirit of objective enquiry.

Now here came the October issue. For the first time ever in the magazine’s 175-year history the editors [Editor in Chief Laura Helmuth Tweet her] have endorsed a Presidential candidate. [Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden | We’ve never backed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now, October, 2020]

Can you guess which one? Of course you can! Quote:

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science.

There follow several hundred words about how ineptly the Administration has coped with the COVID-19 pandemic, with some supplementary remarks on healthcare in general and environmental issues. Then this concluding paragraph:

Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.

What exactly are those obstacles to voting that Trump has tried to create? The online version of this Scientific American editorial has a link to a Chicago Tribune story headlined Cook County GOP Sues to Block State’s Enhanced Vote-by-Mail Efforts ,by Rick Pearson, August 10, 2020. Back in June, you see, the Governor of Illinois signed a law to expand mail-in voting. Of course, this meant expanding opportunities to corrupt November’s election [Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots, by Jon Levine, NY Post, August 29, 2020]. A conservative legal group, the Liberty Justice Center, has tried to block the law.

The Scientific American editorial is, in short, just cut’n’pasted from Biden campaign talking points.

For more on the ongoing corruption of American science by ideology, see Heather Mac Donald’s article Conformity To A Lie in the summer issue of City Journal.

Heather quotes the revolting statements of self-abasement issuing from college presidents and faculty heads about how they must strive harder to purge their institutions of “systemic racism” and “white privilege.”

Some science-relevant extracts from Heather’s article:

• The dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, Albert (“Al”) P. Pisano [Email him] pronounced himself “absolutely dedicated” to turning the engineering school into an “anti-racist organization.” Doing so “crucially includes unconscious bias work we must do within ourselves,” he added. How that work will interact with research on nanoparticles and viral transmission, say, was unspecified.


• The chairman of the earth and planetary sciences department at the University of California at Davis, announced an “anti-racist reading group” for faculty and students. The group’s purpose was to confront the “structural racism that pervades” the field of geology. Such structural racism in the study of igneous rocks is apparently so obvious that the chair did not bother to elaborate further.

• The American Astronomical Society held color-coded Zoom meetings, one for white astronomers to “discuss direct actions to support Black astronomers,” one for black astronomers to “talk, vent, connect, and hold space for each other,” and one for “non-Black people of color to discuss direct actions to support Black astronomers.” See AAS Endorses #ShutDownSTEM, #ShutDownAcademia & #Strike4BlackLives, AAS website, June 9,

This kind of thing is what has led VDARE.com’s Lance Welton to say, repeatedly, that science is entering a new Dark Age:

To my mind, nothing is worse than this corruption of science.

Objective, reasoned scientific inquiry is the crowning glory of Western civilization.

These solemn declarations of guilt and repentance are a regression to what came before: superstition and witch-doctoring.

These so-called academics might as well put bones through their noses.

FOOTNOTE: But let’s raise a glass to Betsy DeVos over at the Department of Education.

In that piece by Heather Mac Donald that I mentioned, one of the college presidents confessing his institution’s sinful racism is Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University. President Eisgruber [Email him] has, Heather tells us,

ordered the school’s top faculty and administrators to submit plans on how they will “combat systemic racism within and beyond the University.” Every aspect of Princeton will be reexamined with a “bias toward action,” Eisgruber said.

So Princeton University is, according to its president, addled with “systemic racism.”

That caught the eye of Betsy DeVos, or one of her underlings.

The Department of Education has sent a letter to Eisgruber reminding him that Princeton has received more than $75 million in federal aid during his seven years as president on the understanding, repeatedly confirmed by Princeton, that Princeton complies with the 1964 Civil Rights Act by being scrupulously non-discriminatory. [Princeton’s “systemic racism” captures the government’s attention, By Paul Mirengoff, PowerLineBlog, September 17, 2020]

How, the Department wants to know, can that square with those confessions of “systemic racism within … the University”?

They have opened an investigation.

Yesssss! The weasel is caught in its own trap!

Here’s a toast to Secretary DeVos! And please, let’s see more of this.

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.