Science Literally Called for the Trump Administration to be Ousted

But do Americans listen to science?

Every election cycle, politicians seek out and tout endorsements from various news agencies, activist groups, political organizations, and labor unions. Endorsements can be explicit or tacit, and for presidential elections, endorsements are rarely that surprising. However, in keeping with the form of an unconventional 2020, science has come out to condemn the Trump administration with both Scientific American and the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine advocating for replacing Donald Trump’s ‘dishonest’ and ‘failed’ leadership.

The Scientific American’s Endorsement

In its 175-year-old history, Scientific American has not once endorsed a presidential candidate. This means the publication stood quietly by during the trifecta of historically horrible presidents, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan, men whose ineptitude and personal flaws exacerbated the crisis leading to the Civil War and stymied Reconstruction after the war ended. Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives for his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. In their impeachment filing, House members claimed president Johnson brought “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and reproach” upon Congress. Buchanan, according to historian Jean H. Baker in her book James Buchanan, “came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history.” She wrote her book in 2004. So why would Scientific American remain silent during the elections of these men but feel ‘compelled’ to speak out against continuing the leadership of Donald Trump?

According to Scientific American:

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people — because he rejects evidence and science. 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. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges.

Their criticism of Trump’s leadership is important because they are limiting their observations to their area of expertise and not wading into other lines of rebuke. As Popular Mechanics might offer a blistering critique of one’s mechanical skills or Sports Illustrated might have notes on one’s ability to kick a ball, Scientific American has credibility when it says, “Trump’s rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S.”

Scientific American asserts Trump’s leadership has been a catastrophe because, although he was first warned on January 18th of this year about the gravity of the impending pandemic, he failed to develop and implement a national strategy. His failure to act resembles a similar failure of action by President Herbert Hoover, who didn’t recognize the severity of the US’s economic collapse and allowed the country to plummet into the Great Depression.

Scientific American also highlights how other countries were implementing testing and tracing programs back in January, while Donald Trump was lying to the American people, saying tests were available for anyone who wants one. This was not the case until well into the summer. Scientific American further excoriates the president for his negligence when he refused to recommend people wear masks in public, and he and Vice-President Pence made “it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances.” The magazine notes public mask-wearing would have likely saved 66,000 American lives, including Trump’s political ally Herman Cain.

The magazine holds Trump’s feet to the fire for misleading Americans while he knowingly contradicted facts and science, telling the country, “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us.” Scientific American’s condemnation of Trump notes a pattern of the president ignoring science and lying to the public about the disease’s severity. After a withering attack of President Trump’s dishonesty, malfeasance, short-sightedness, delusion, and ineptitude, the science journal goes on to endorse Joe Biden for believing in evidence, facts, and science.

Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions, and restore the role of legitimate science in policymaking. He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals.

The New England Journal of Medicine’s Endorsement

The New England Journal of Medicine’s editorial titled ‘Dying in a Leadership Vacuum’ doesn’t specifically name Trump, preferring to criticize US leadership in general, and reads like a report card written by an exasperated teacher who’s on the verge of telling parents their child is a moron. As with Scientific American, the journal focuses its criticism on its core purview, medical science, and the United States’ response to the COVID19 pandemic, terming the crisis ‘a test of leadership.’ The editorial begins by saying our leaders failed this test, and have, “taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”

The NEJM compares US COVID-related deaths to that of larger countries such as China, noting US deaths far exceed those of the more populous country. The journal attributes America’s staggering failure to curb the death rate to a long chain of ignorance, ineptitude, and apathy.

We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public.

While overall testing has increased in the States, NEJM points out the number of tests performed per infected person puts the US below countries such as, “Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.” Despite the technological and manufacturing advantages the US enjoys over many of these countries, we lag behind in virus containment, and a big part of that lag according to the journal, has been our lackadaisical and willfully ignorant behavior.

The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities…And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures.

The criticism is most scathing when the journal cites leaders politicizing medical advice to sow public distrust and denigrate medical experts, thus undermining both the recommendations aimed at mitigating the virus’s spread and the reputations of our world-leading disease response organizations such as The CDC and The National Institutes of Health. NEJM concedes some blame for the response falls to individual states, as the federal government abdicated responsibility to state governors, but then the journal makes clear this is ultimately an executive failure at the federal level, since “governors do not have the tools that Washington controls.” Instead of leveraging these tools, Washington has, according to the NEJM, relied on the advice of “charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.”

The editorial ends with a call-to-action, imploring the American people to change their leadership by ballot, stressing once again the abject failure of the current leadership’s response and laying some of the COVID-related deaths at the feet of this administration.

When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

Two leading scientific publications termed the Trump presidency a failure in its response to the administration’s greatest challenge and have called for new leadership to take its place.

The Impact of Political Endorsements

Do such endorsements matter? The short answer is maybe, but it depends. According to The Pew Research Center, “political endorsements generally have little impact on voter preferences.” The impact of an endorsement is dependent on how one perceives the endorser. If I say my friend Adam endorses Joe Biden, that means nothing to you because you don’t know Adam. If you hear Oprah Winfrey endorsed Biden, you might give that more weight depending upon your familiarity with Oprah.

There’s been much debate about whether Oprah’s endorsement in the Democratic Primary of 2007 for Barack Obama made an impact in his victory over Hillary Clinton. Pew Research indicated in 2007 that 69% of voters would not be impacted by hearing of Oprah’s endorsement of Obama. Of the remaining 30%, the results canceled out the impact with 15% saying it would make them more likely to vote for Obama and 15% more likely to vote against. They polled with other notable figures and celebrities and found your state governor likely has the most sway over your vote. However, even then the impact is canceled with voters being nudged in both directions equally.

Research suggests endorsements, at best, allow us to be lazy. Chef Gordon Ramsey gives you a restaurant recommendation for your next trip to London and so you book a reservation there without doing any research on your own. His trusted expertise saved you the hassle. Likewise, according to the 2003 paper Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence Over Political Beliefs, an endorsement provides you a mental shortcut, allowing you to make a quasi-informed decision without burning through too much gray matter. You’re a Democrat living in California and Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, endorses a local candidate. Even if you’ve never heard of the local candidate, you’re more likely to vote for that person. You align yourself with Governor Newsom and he aligns himself with that candidate. Therefore, through transitive property, you align yourself with this unknown candidate via Governor Newsom.

Thus, if you’re familiar with the endorser and feel they stand for the same things you do, then that endorsement might impact your vote. However, if you dislike or distrust the endorser, you may be impacted to vote in a contrarian fashion.

To complicate matters, September 23’s Quinnipiac University Poll stated:

Ninety-four percent of likely voters who selected a candidate for president say their minds are made up, while 5 percent say they might change their minds.

That poll is two weeks old and as of three days ago, over 4 million Americans have already voted. There are estimates that this election might be record-breaking in voter turnout, with over 156 million Americans casting a ballot. If 5% of voters truly remain undecided, then we’re talking about 7.8 million Americans trying to make up their minds. Given that the 2016 presidential election was determined by fewer than 80,000 people, this group of 7.8 million undecided voters might be important. Their impact will be contingent upon where they live. If they reside in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania, these voters and their 46 electoral votes will have a disproportionate say on who resides in the White House for the next four years. Are they the type of people who might be influenced by endorsements from scientific publications?

The Undecided Voter

My mother, who resides in Texas, has chosen the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1976. I consider her a barometer for middle American voter sentiment. She is a recently retired Baby Boomer. She has a high school education, married at a young age, and has three college-educated children. She worked most of her life as an administrative assistant in the healthcare industry and lived most of her life in Texas. She is an evangelical Christian who attends church every Sunday and reprimands me about my secular lifestyle. She tends to vote Republican but has often voted Democrat.

I say she’s ‘chosen’ the winning candidate in every election since ’76 because in 2012 she chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. However, as she stood in the voting booth, she decided she had to vote for Romney. Her office colleagues despised Obama, and even though mom liked Obama better, she voted for Romney so she wouldn’t have to lie about her vote to keep peace in the office. She voted for Trump in 2016, despite her not being thrilled with him and also assuming he’d lose. As of our phone conversation last week, she is leaning Trump, but she is begging for a miracle that would cause her to vote differently.

She admits Trump openly lies. She believes his handling of the pandemic has been inconsistent and a failure of responsible leadership. She disapproves of Trump’s extra-marital affairs and doesn’t see him as a good, Christian man. She thinks he should have his tweeting privileges revoked, and thinks he’s a terrible public speaker. The only thing about Trump she approves of is he is not Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Nancy Pelosi. She believes Joe is frail, had a stroke, and is mentally incapacitated based on what she’s seeing on the news. She has a visceral disdain for Pelosi and only a little less animosity for Harris. She worries Joe might die while in office and Kamala and Nancy would be in charge of the country, which in her words would be ‘a nightmare.’

Last week I mentioned to her Scientific American’s endorsement of Joe Biden, but she hadn’t heard of the magazine. I explained the significance of such an endorsement, but it didn’t matter to her. I went into some of the details the article listed about Trump’s failings and while she agreed with most everything I read to her, she still preferred Trump to Joe. She also stated this science magazine likely has a liberal bias. She sounded depressed but resolved to vote for Trump, only holding out a slim hope that Mark Cuban from Shark Tank might announce his presidency at the last minute. I told her it was too late for that.

“Well, if your science magazine had endorsed Mark Cuban, I would vote for him,” she said, wrapping up our polite weekly political chat.

That’s the likely answer to whether unheralded endorsements from Scientific American and The New England Journal of Medicine will make a difference. They will impact a voter if that voter is familiar with the publication and the endorsement serves to confirm the choice the voter has all but made. Otherwise, it’s more noise in a noisy, chaotic year.

It is important, though, to note the significance of traditionally apolitical organizations feeling compelled to lend their influence to change the leadership of our country. We’ve reached a point in which venerable institutions dedicated to objective reasoning, tested theories, and verifiable conclusions are telling us the Commander in Chief is not fit for office. Perhaps we’ve never needed to listen to science more than we do right now.