Science Journals

The ideological activism of the medical and science journals has not slackened. An editorial in The Lancet (once again) extols redefining climate change as a health issue to allow technocrats to exert greater control over policy — and along the way even extols Greta Thunberg as an exemplar of the cause. From “Climate Change and Health: 10 Years On, What’s Next?”

Health has become a key aspect of climate policy. COP28 had the first official Health Day, elevating health in climate negotiations, and climate laws referencing health rose sharply after 2016. The Countdown has helped to drive that change, growing into a network of regional centres across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Oceania, and Small Island Developing States that produces locally relevant indicators and evidence that have shaped policy and held governments to account.

Despite their efforts, the editorial grouses, things are only getting worse. Blame the usual suspects!

Mainstream bioethics is left-wing politics by another name. Practitioners therefore often seek to expand the jurisdiction of the field to push their favored political agendas — for example, to issues of war and peace.

In the latest example of this tendency, an influential journal just published a piece of advocacy for transforming general practitioners into instruments of fighting climate change. Specifically, the authors of the article urges doctors to nag their patients into reducing their carbon emissions. First, the authors acknowledge that the primary role of general practitioners currently is to focus on the medical issues of each individual patient, not to promote societal reform:

The General Practitioner (GP) is expected to operate with a wide sphere of interest, exploring the wider determinants of health and illness in their patients. They may use a biopsychosocial approach that attempts to navigate the relationship between the individual, their wider social network, and psychological experiences [1]. Axiologically, however, GPs are still expected to primarily confine their scope of concern to the patient immediately in front of them; the professional role of the GP is hitherto considered as being to care for the patient as their ‘first concern’ [2], and only in rare cases should they subordinate that patient’s interests to wider concerns.

I am so used to ideologically extreme and transgressive articles published in science and other professional journals, that when one publishes commonsense commentary, I think it should be applauded. As most readers know, there is a great advocacy push underway to have AI declared to be — or soon to be — conscious and hence, entitled to “rights” as “persons.” (I have responded to this advocacy on several occasions.) Now, an article in Nature — written by three academics — strongly rebuts that blatant anthropomorphism. From “Three Reasons Why AI Is Not Conscious and Perhaps Never Will Be”: Between us, we’ve spent decades studying consciousness from diverse scientific perspectives: experimental neuroscience, theoretical neurobiology and philosophy of mind. On the basis of this work, we Read More ›

It’s hard to get beyond the World Health Organization’s woke, but an article in the New England Journal of Medicine manages that task. The question involves the definition of “infertility.” To the NEJM authors’ consternation, the WHO has embraced an objective, scientifically based approach to diagnosing the condition. From “Who Counts as Infertile: A Missed Opportunity” (citations omitted):

In 2017, the WHO collaborated with international reproductive-medicine groups on an edition of a glossary related to infertility and fertility care. That document defined infertility as “a disease characterized by the failure to establish a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse or due to an impairment of a person’s capacity to reproduce.” The WHO has emphasized the importance of equitable access to fertility care globally, but its formal definition of infertility continues to exclude same-sex couples and to rely on intercourse-based framing.

Infertility is a biological condition. The WHO’s approach seems a good way to identify the inability to have children without expensive tests.

The world’s two most influential professional science journals probably are Science and Nature. But they no longer limit their jurisdiction to science. Both are now highly ideological to the extent that each has now lent its august pages to boosting the “nature rights” movement.

Science pushed “nature rights” back in 2019. Now Nature has jumped on the bandwagon, publishing an advocacy piece to coincide with Panama’s pushing a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature” in the United Nations General Assembly.

The article’s title starts out making a hubristic assumption: “Nature has Rights: It’s Time the World Recognized Them.”

Really? Since when? Based on what? Says who?

JAMA Pediatrics has published a depressing study that shows that girls ages 10–14 have caught up with boys of that age when it comes to suicide rates: In 2017, the suicide rate of 10-to-14-year-old boys was twice that of girls (male-female ratio=1.98). By 2024, however, the suicide rate among boys was only 4% higher than that among girls in this age group (ratio=1.04). Gender disparities in suicide trends since 2018 appear to be responsible for the narrowing gap, as the suicide rate for boys decreased by 35% from 2018 to 2024 while the suicide rate for girls increased 13%. From 2007 to 2024, the suicide rate for 10-to 14-year-old girls [per 100,000] more than quadrupled (from 0.51 to 2.28) while the suicide rate Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith spoke with Todd Wilken on the Issues, Etc. radio program on September 8, 2026, to discuss the latest proposal in Nature to require scientists to register with the government. Smith spoke about the danger this poses to free inquiry and the scientific method. “But what you see instead now too often in science is a suppression of different opinions because many in science have confused scientific policy and ideology with the scientific method,” Smith explained. “So some in science have moved from science to scientism where it becomes a form of belief as opposed to a method.” Smith and Wilken also discuss recent developments in assisted suicide, including the money being made from it and the way Read More ›

The Jason Arday scandal was a tragedy because it resulted in the death, probably by suicide, of a disturbed man who lied and plagiarized his way to the highest levels of academic celebrity at Cambridge University. Everyone should mourn that outcome.

But too many among the liberal intelligentsia seem intent on conjuring the wrong causes for the mess their own attitudes created. Rather than recognizing the potentially dire individual, institutional, and societal consequences that can result from elevating people beyond their actual capabilities, the editors of Nature instead castigate Cambridge for turning on Arday when his fabulism and egregious academic wrongdoing became undeniable:

Arday’s fate is distressing, and especially so for Black scholars and those from other communities that are under-represented in academic research, many members of which report feeling vulnerable and unsupported at this time. There is systemic racism in academia. It is an unwelcoming place for many who enter it through hardship and struggle, as Arday’s story illustrates. It is not acceptable that these barriers persist. On top of this, scholars from Black and other under-represented communities fear that the intensity of attention Arday faced could one day be focused on them. The question many are asking is: ‘Could I be next?’

Nature — the most prestigious science journal in the world — has editorialized in favor of requiring scientists to register with governments as a condition of participation in the sector. Here’s the context. South Africa has legislation pending that would require scientists to register with a government body or face significant legal consequences. Nature applauds the authoritarian idea. From the editorial (my emphasis): What do engineers, environmental-health officers and health-care workers have in common? These occupations can, in some instances, be practised only by people who have registered with a relevant professional body. This typically requires candidates to pass qualifying exams and adhere to a code of practice that includes sanctions for violations. The process is intended to create the highest standards of quality, Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith appeared on the Vicki Mckenna Show on August 28, 2026, to discuss the debates occurring in bioethics and medical journals to make previously unthinkable things acceptable and regularly practiced. For instance, they discuss how treating gender dysphoria in young children with puberty blockers was once unthinkable, but after being debated in the professional journals, it has been widely accepted. Now, bioethicists are proposing that the “dead donor rule” should be done away with in order to harvest organs. Read “‘Death by Organ Donation’ Pushed in Prestigious Medical Journals”