Science Journals

Editors of many of the world’s top scientific and medical journals are destroying or — better stated, perhaps — have destroyed the public’s trust in scientific and medical leadership because these journals can no longer be deemed objective purveyors of truth.

Nature and its associated science journals (Nature Portfolio), supposedly the most elite of the lot, are among the worst offenders. For example, in 2024 Nature endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in part because of her support for abortion. Nature also endorsed Biden in 2020. To say the least, blatantly engaging in partisan politics is not wise for a supposedly objective science journal.

It isn’t just politics. Ideological bias can also skew what should be scientifically objective studies, in favor of desired conclusions. In 2023, climate scientist Patrick T. Brown admitted in the Free Press to having tailored a paper he had co-written, to erase proper nuance. Why? He believed that Nature would not publish a paper that did not follow “correct” climate narratives all the way down the line. Brown warned that such ideological contamination of the scientific discourse has consequences:

The biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.

Nature is supposedly the most respected science journal in the world. But its reputation is sinking because it has become so overtly political, as with its decision last summer to endorse Kamala Harris for president. Now, in the mushiest softball Q&A one can imagine, the journal is boosting an anti-Israel protester and promoting her views on Israel’s war with Hamas. What’s the science hook? Well, there isn’t one beyond the protester’s being a doctoral student at MIT. From “Why this PhD candidate joined campus protests against the Israel–Hamas war”: Jessica Metzger, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, researches non-equilibrium statistical physics — the study of how matter, especially living matter, behaves. Metzger traces her love of scientific exploration to Read More ›