Scientific American, backing Biden, makes its first ever presidential endorsement. – The New York Times

The editorial also made an affirmative case for Mr. Trump’s opponent. “Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control Covid-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making,” it said.

Scientific American, founded in 1845 and published by Springer Nature, has opined on political matters before. In the 1950s, the magazine was an outspoken opponent of the hydrogen bomb, prompting the Atomic Energy Commission to censor one issue (and burn 3,000 copies of it). In the 2000s, the editors waded into the stem-cell research debate. And in 2016, they warned of Mr. Trump’s “disregard, if not outright contempt,” for science in an editorial that nonetheless stopped short of explicitly endorsing his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

As the magazine’s editors discussed its election coverage earlier this summer, they determined that the endorsement was necessary, said Laura Helmuth, who became editor in chief in March.

“He’s been so much worse than we warned,” Ms. Helmuth said of Mr. Trump in an interview. “The evidence was there already that he rejected expertise, that he embraced conspiracy theories, that he wasn’t interested in getting the right answers — just interested in projecting his own ideas. And then his administration has been just a disaster for science at every level.

“We could have gone on for pages and pages and pages,” she added.

Ms. Helmuth said the editors strove to make the editorial about President Trump rather than partisanship.