"I am a person who believes in evolution and I subscribe to Scientific American, but still I found this editorial smarmy, condescending and arrogant.
This is their lame-ass attempt at clever way of diffusing the very accurate charge that their magazine has grown unbearably political over the last few years. (Did you miss their tribute to congress's non-partisan champion of science - Henry Waxman a few months ago? Or their "strictly science" article that dismissed missle defense as an utterly unworkable system designed only to enrich the supporters of the Republican corruption machine.)
Instead of responding with this insulting misdirection, they should answer the question many of their readers want to know - Do they intend to be a science publication or a political publication?
Actually, in their snitty way, I guess they did answer it. I'll not be renewing my subscription."
I was going to start a new thread about Scientific American and their bias in their current issue, but found this old thread.
"Planet earth at a crossroads" is the Sept issue.
They have a whole issue chock of full of faves like the ol' reliable Amory Lovins touting the clean, green wave of the future, fatuous concerns over this or that problem with the modern world, and advocating their own favorite solutions.
Liberal social engineering at its best/worst, a mix of common sense pablum down to advocates' blind-sighted monomania (Amory Lovins is 80% the latter in my book).
They preface it with the usual snitty editorial saying that their critics who say they are engaging in too much advocacy can go stuff it.
The lowlight for me was an issue last year. On the cover, they had a headline along the lines of "The Greatest Unanswered Questions in Physics - An Interview with [some hump whose name I don't remember.]"
So I'm thinking that it is actually going to be the type of article that got me to subscribe in the first place. I got as far as the introduction ("The Bush Administration is screwing up scientific dialog") and the pull quote was about the need to teach only evolution in school science classes.
You know, stuff about the greatest unanswered questions in physics.