JACK SHAFER: Unnatural Endorsements. Scientific journals may have erred when they decided to endorse Biden for president. “If Nature’s Biden endorsement had little or no effect on readers except to make some Trump supporters disdain Nature in specific and the scientific establishment in general, why did the publication endorse any candidate? One more time, the question is there for the taking by all publications, not just Nature. In many cases, editorials — especially editorials of endorsement — exist not to persuade readers of a viewpoint or a candidate’s soundness, but to feather the nest of the editorialist (or his publisher) for a moment or two with the illusion that he has struck a blow for all that is right[.]”