American science editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth is leaving the publication less than two weeks after she shared several profanity-laced posts about the presidential election results on the social media app Bluesky.
“I have decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor-in-chief,” Helmuth wrote on BlueSky on Thursday. “I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go bird watching)….”
It was not clear whether Helmuth’s social media posts or responses to them played a role in her departure. Helmuth declined an interview request, saying she could not comment.
Scientific American did not immediately respond to questions about Helmuth’s departure, but its president, Kimberly Lau, said in a statement: “Laura Helmuth has decided to resign from her position as editor-in-chief of Scientific American. We thank Laura for her four years leading Scientific American, during which time the magazine won major science communications awards and saw the creation of a revamped digital newsroom. We wish her the best for the future.”
Helmuth became a target of some conservative commentators after a series of Bluesky posts on November 5, in the aftermath of the election. The messages have been removed from her profile, but screenshots have been widely shared.
In the posts, Helmuth apologized to younger voters, complaining that her Generation X was full of “royal fascists.”
“Solidarity for all whose meanest, dumbest and most fanatical high school classmates are celebrating their first results because they went to the moon and back,” Helmuth wrote.
In a subsequent Bluesky post, on November 7, Helmuth apologized and said she had deleted her election night posts, which she called “offensive and inappropriate.”
“I respect and appreciate people across the political spectrum,” Helmuth wrote, adding that the deleted posts were “a misrepresentation of shock and confusion over the election results.”
With Helmuth at the helm, Scientific American began supporting candidates for the first time in 175 years. The publication’s editors endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in September, writing that Donald Trump “endangers public health and safety and dismisses evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies.”
In a pre-election interview with The Editor’s Desk, a blog about writing and editing written by a professor at the University of North Carolina, Helmuth said that the editors of Scientific American decided in 2020 that it was their “responsibility to share what we know about our areas of expertise – health, science, environment, education, technology – and what is at stake for them in this election.”
She added that she supported an approach where journalists tell readers what they know to be true and how they determined it to be true, rather than telling readers “both sides” and letting them decide for themselves.
“There are not two reasonable sides to every story. We know that evolution is real and creationism is not; we know that vaccines save lives and do not cause autism; we know climate change is real,” Helmuth told the Edit Desk. “It would be malpractice to allow creationists, RFK Jr. or quote climate deniers in any reporting on these issues, except to point out that these issues are being politicized, but the science is clear.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Helmuth was talking about, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has made misleading and false claims about vaccines, suggesting they are linked to autism, despite multiple studies debunking this idea.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
