Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, has resigned. Here's why

Laura Helmuth resigned as editor-in-chief of Scientific American after a series of expletive-filled posts were posted on her Bluesky account.

Paul D. Thacker posted the posts on his X account, in which she apologised “to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists,” and upbraided high-school classmates for celebrating Trump ’s win.

Helmuth deleted the comments and offered an unconvincing apology for her “offensive and inappropriate posts”.

The editor of Scientific American rejected the article on the grounds that sexual harassment and the phenomenon of abused children growing up to be abusers are less of a problem than most people imagine.

The editor asked me to submit an entirely new column on a completely different topic, which was ultimately published.

Authors extrapolate from the almost certainly false idea that prehistoric women hunted as much as men did to the conclusion that “nequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.

This is pure blank slate pablum, which can be controverted by a single observation: As she herself has admitted, Venus Williams would not be able to beat any of the top 100 male tennis players.