Scientific American backs Joe Biden, endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in its 175-year history
- Scientific American endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, marking the first time the renowned magazine has backed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history.
- President Donald Trump’s history of denying and politicizing science prompted this decision, according to the publication’s editors.
- “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science,” they wrote.
- Scientific American excoriated Trump for pushing against the science on COVID-19 and climate change.
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Scientific American on Tuesday announced that it is endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden for president in 2020 — a first in the publication’s 175-year history.
The editors of Scientific American wrote that they felt “compelled” to voice support for Biden given President Donald Trump’s well-documented record of ignoring science, particularly in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.
“The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September,” they wrote.
“[Trump] has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges,” the magazine’s editors added. “That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.”
The endorsement came just one day after Trump once again dismissed climate science during a briefing on the historic wildfires ravaging California.
“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said in reference to climate change.
The president has repeatedly and baselessly pushed against climate science.
Before entering the White House, Trump suggested climate change was a “hoax” created by the Chinese (it’s not).
Trump has also falsely suggested on multiple occasions that cold weather proves climate change is fake. The actual evidence, however, proves Trump wrong: 2019 was the second-hottest year on record.
But the president’s rejection of science extends well beyond climate change.
Top public health experts say that Trump’s anti-science approach to the coronavirus pandemic allowed the US outbreak to spiral out of control. The US has recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases — 6.57 million — and fatalities — more than 195,000 — in the world.
Trump has downplayed the threat of COVID-19 from the start.
Recordings of interviews with veteran journalist Bob Woodward that were released last week showed that Trump deliberately misled Americans on the true dangers of the virus. Trump told Woodward he did not want to cause a “panic” so withheld information on the infection’s asymptomatic and airborne transmission.
Meanwhile, the president falsely claimed that Biden is a socialist and warned Americans that suburbs will be destroyed by “THUGS” if the Democratic nominee wins in November.
For these reasons and more, Scientific American endorsed Biden.
“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,” the publication’s editors wrote. “It’s time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.”
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