Trump’s anti-science, anti-truth belligerence is damaging America – and the world

This month, for the first time in its 175-year history, the editors of the deeply serious-minded Scientific American have endorsed a presidential candidate, in defence of the integrity of, and respect for, science.

The editors are not taking sides between Republicans and Democrats. They are confronting what they regard as an existential challenge to fact-based policymaking. “Trump’s rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the US,” they said. “The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September.”

But they also attack Trump’s undermining of scientific institutions, such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency, his abandonment of the Paris climate accord, and his replacement of scientists on agency advisory boards with industry representatives.

They cringe at Trump’s fondness for “physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies”, and his ignorant – and possibly vain – rejection of mask-wearing as a health strategy that “would cost next to nothing”.