Natasha Mitchell asks if scientists should take a position in the US election, on Science Friction this week, given the censorship, political interference and COVID-19 chaos.
The magazine’s editor in 2020 is brain scientist Laura Helmuth. On Late Night Live, she reveals the public reaction when for the first time, the magazine backed a presidential candidate in the upcoming election. She says President Trump has been catastrophic for everything scientists care about – for science, for understanding reality, for using evidence for making the world a better place, and so this makes Joe Biden the proper choice. Laura Helmuth says President Trump has contempt for science, contempt for climate science, cutting US contributions to global programs tackling global problems. He has abandoned advisory boards where scientists share their expertise with government.
Scientific American is 175 years old. 45 years ago, when The Science Show was born, Scientific American’s publisher was Gerard Piel. We hear an excerpt from his interview on the first edition of The Science Show in 1975 which illustrates his concerns for resource management and the pressures growing populations were placing on the natural world. (World population in 1975 was 4 billion. In 2020 world population is 7.5 billion)
Originally published by ABC