Scientific American isn't a social media platform; by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them. Would you be ok if they published an opinion piece bashing evolution and defending creationism?
Major news orgs publish op-eds they disagree with all the time. They label them as opinion.
It's actually unfortunate if publications decide only to publish things they agree with because that fails to acknowledge they could be wrong.
Evolution and creationism are settled wars (as far as science is concerned) and wouldn't be interesting to readers. It would be interesting to read a serious assessment of, say, the Covid lab leak theory.
> by publishing these opinion pieces, they implicitly support them
This would seem to be true if they tend to run opinion pieces that are all from one "side". If they ran pieces that espouse conflicting viewpoints, it would not imply that they support all of the opinion pieces they publish.
From the look of it, they stick to one team. They wouldn't be taking this heat if they had a broader diversity of thought.
Depends on what you consider diversity of thought. "Bashing evolution" is not diversity of thought, it is crackpottery. Diversity of thought exists in opinions about, e.g. what evolutionary mechanisms are most important, how to interpret old evidence, what are the best opportunities for new research... A Creationist will look at that and call it "all one team" because none of them believe the universe is only 5000 years old, but that's nonsense. It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out.
I expect them to publish op/ed pieces they believe their subscribers will find interesting. As long as they're clearer labeled as opinion, what's the problem? Op/ed pieces have been part of journalism pretty much forever.
Should it be impossible to have a rigorous scientific method for reporting and peer review in the news section, while advocating for certain actions or perspectives in the opinion page?
If someone sends me a Wall Street Journal news article that reports on facts, I can trust it, even if their opinion page is intellectually bankrupt.
A lot of people really don't understand the difference between science and opinion, and that's exactly what's gotten us into the trouble we're in today.
If you include enough opinion pieces on highly controversial subjects and always from the same perspective your readers will start noticing. Just because they are opinions it doesn't mean that people can't deem them ridiculous.
Especially when some other outlet reports "Scientific American says XYZ". Readers will absolutely treat this as if there are scientific underpinnings. They will give it more credence than a regular opinion piece. The vast majority of them will never know it was even an opinion piece in the first place.
I would guess that if you asked 100 random people who had heard of Scientific American, many/most would say that SA publishes science and has no Opinion section. Before this dustup, I would have been in that camp.
I wouldn't call them far right; for example, they consistently posted articles about the culture of US police brutality, cops killing people on a hair trigger long before it became mainstream a few years ago.
It would be nice to add some evidence to justify the character assassination. I browsed the recent articles and it didn’t seem filled with titles targeting trans rights. Perhaps you’re thinking of a specific one?
