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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Not to mention the fact that Nature is British. I suspect they see themselves as global (and therefore American, or at least entitled to comment on American domestic politics), but the journal is historically British, the company that publishes it is the London-based subsidiary of a German corporate parent, and the editor-in-chief and most of the editorial team are based in London.

Foreign endorsements almost always hurt the endorsee. The most notorious examples are Putin's endorsement of Donald Trump and Obama's endorsement of remain in the Brexit referendum - both elections were close enough that there is an outside chance that the foreign endorsement flipped the result in the opposite way to the one intended.

I would expect Science to endorse an American political candidate and (to a lesser extent, because Science is published by the AAAS but Nature is not published by the BAAS, Nature to endorse a British political candidate) if science was actually at stake - for example if one candidate was expected to dramatically cut science funding or introduce political litmus tests for receiving it. Nature sort-of endorsed remain, reflecting the (correct) views of the vast majority of British scientists that Brexit would be bad for science. But for Nature to endorse a candidate in a non-British election is stupid.