Scientists Stunned to Discover Acting Like Partisan Hacks Makes People Not Trust Them

N ature, which bills itself as the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal, appears shocked to discover that when you engage in partisan hackery, people rightly view you as partisan hacks.

“In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election,” a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour reported. “A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally.”

The research, conducted by a Ph.D. student at Stanford University and published in Nature, surveyed 4,260 U.S. adults and found that respondents who voted for Trump had a much lower opinion of the science magazine after reading that it had endorsed Biden. Biden supporters saw a much smaller positive bump in their opinion of Nature. There was “little evidence that the endorsement changed views about Biden and Trump.”

“This defeats the entire purpose of science, which should be insulated from the passions and caprices of partisan politics,” Bo Winegard, a former assistant professor of psychology at Marietta College, told National Review. “And it further contributes to the distrust of experts and expertise among the populace, especially among conservatives, who increasingly view academic journals and academia more broadly as a propaganda arm of the progressive movement.”

The research itself concluded, “These results suggest that political endorsement by scientific journals can undermine and polarize public confidence in the endorsing journals and the scientific community” and that “by endorsing a Democratic candidate in a polarizing presidential election during the pandemic, scientists risk intensifying existing distrust from a large segment of the population.”

A Nature editorial summarizing the research told a very different story. Its conclusion was that the journal should indeed continue making political endorsements even if doing so harms public trust in science, because “we live in troubling times.” The editorial board stated, “considering the record of Trump’s four years in office, this journal judged that silence was not an option.” The editorial added that “we use our voice sparingly and always offer evidence to back up what we say.”

According to Nature, Trump supporters had failed “to consider the dangers that four more years of Trump would pose — not only for science, but also for the health and well-being of US society and the wider world,” citing Trump’s opposition to the Iran deal, his withdrawal from the pointless 2015 Paris global-warming agreement, and his defunding of the World Health Organization after it played a key role in covering up the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic (a product of Chinese Communist Party influence over the organization).

The Nature editorial practically contradicted the research it summarized to take shots at conservatives and justify further politicization of the journal. Tragicomically, Nature offered no scientific evidence to back up its position and appears to be defensively denying the logical conclusion of the relevant study. Nor has the journal used its voice only sparingly in political matters, as it claims. In fact, the journal’s publication guidelines are arguably contributing to the politicization of multiple scientific fields.

Last August, Nature stated it would reject “research [that] may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups” because “science has for too long been complicit in perpetuating structural inequalities and discrimination in society.” Contrary to the traditional aim of science to embody an impartial search for the truth, the journal’s new publication criteria do not take into account whether research results are true, if a hypersensitive left-wing academic somewhere might potentially label them offensive.

The accuracy of a study confirming that morbid obesity is harmful to health would not prevent a retraction if a scholar in the field of “Fat Studies” calls the research insensitive toward the portly. Not wanting to risk triggering potentially career-ending retractions, many academics are likely steering clear of submitting research results that fail to confirm the priors of identity-politics-infused leftism. This would systemically bias the canon of scientific knowledge leftward, which seems to be the whole point.

“Fair or not, endorsing political candidates tarnishes science journals and introduces explicit political considerations into the scientific process, something which everyone, right and left alike, should lament and resist,” Winegard said.

Last September, Nature once again “sparingly” dabbled in politics by claiming the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court was fighting a “war on science” because of rulings that Nature’s editors opposed on issues like abortion, gun rights, and environmental regulations.

And in 2020, Nature devoted an entire three-part podcast to justifying the journal’s decision to stay active in politics. One of the interviewees, Arizona State University professor Daniel Sarewitz, argued in the podcast that “actually good politics is more important than good science.” At the end of the series, the host concluded that it is important for scientific publications “to look beyond just the pure output of research.”

First published in 1869, Nature is among the most read, cited, and prestigious academic journals in the world. That makes its fall into partisan hackery all the more tragic. Getting published in Nature can play a critical role in scientists’ careers. But political gatekeeping seems to be replacing the journal’s former methods of quality control. All those who believe, contra Sarewitz, that good science is in fact more important than partisan loyalties should decry the continued politicization warping academic research.