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The Anti-Trans Obsessions of “Skeptic” Michael Shermer: Hallucinating Imaginary Demons to Empower Actual Villains, Once Again.
I want to demonstrate to Michael Shermer that it’s possible for men like us to not talk about trans people constantly. If I can do it, so can he.
The post The Anti-Trans Obsessions of “Skeptic” Michael Shermer: Hallucinating Imaginary Demons to Empower Actual Villains, Once Again. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
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“There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives”
Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, is very impressed with Michael Shermer. His upcoming book is titled Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, and according to its description, it “explores why truth deserves our attention, how falsehoods take hold in the public’s imagination, and how we can resist manipulation through reason, evidence, and open inquiry.”
However, despite that grandiose title and haughty description, Shermer has a long history of fearing fake foes. He always sees danger in the same, wrong places and in the process, always enables the real, obvious threat. Put another way, this famous “skeptic” routinely hallucinates imaginary demons in order to empower actual villains.
In 2013, for example, Shermer wrote an article titled The Liberals’ War on Science that warned of “Orwellian-named far-left groups as Science for the People.” Shermer wrote:
There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives, documented in the 2012 book Science Left Behind (PublicAffairs) by science journalists Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell, who note that “if it is true that conservatives have declared a war on science, then progressives have declared Armageddon.”
While “Armageddon” from “far-left progressives” sounds spooky, others recognized that there were more credible threats to science at the time. Law professor Jonathan Zasloff wrote a rebuttal titled False Equivalence Watch: Michael Shermer that said:
This is really quite pathetic. The argument is not so much false (which much of it is: liberals overwhelmingly support wind power subsidies, for example), as it completely misses the point. You can find nutcases on all parts of the political spectrum: but only on the Right can you find that these nutcases dominate politically.
Even Shermer must concede that the people he is talking about are “far-left progressives.” What power do they have? Whom do they influence? Who listens to them? Well, no one, really.
On the Right, however, not only have the nutcases taken over the GOP, they essentially are the GOP. Climate denial is the sine qua non of GOP leadership. In the 2010 election cycle, for example, not a single Republican nominee for a Congressional seat was willing to accept the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Did any Democratic candidate listen to “Science for the People”? Had any of them ever heard of Science for the People? The website listed for them is inoperative. This is evidence of the liberal war on science?
Enough time has passed to judge who was right. Were far-left progressives the grave threat Shermer made them out to be, or have the nutcases taken over the GOP? This is not a hard question. While it’s not clear that Science for the People has harmed a soul, the right-wing attacks on science have filled cemeteries, not that Shermer experienced any of this of course. Like all useless pundits, famous for their “heterodox” opinions not their accomplishments, Shermer was entirely sheltered from the consequences of his misguided warnings.
“Biological men cannot get pregnant. But biological women who identify as men can get pregnant. Are they actual men? No. They’re women. But I want to be tolerant and accepting of everyone however they identify, so I go along to get along.”
However, rather than retreat from public commentary and quietly try to learn from his fear of harmless adversaries, as an actual skeptic or really anyone with integrity would do, Shermer continues to publicly fret about imagined bogeymen. Today, Shermer has moved on from Science for the People and instead is deeply concerned about which set of gonads entitles people to say which things.
Here is how Verma could have answered Hawley's question:
"No, of course not. Biological men cannot get pregnant. But biological women who identify as men can get pregnant. Are they actual men? No. They're women. But I want to be tolerant and accepting of everyone however they… https://t.co/xVjauWi1ur
— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) January 16, 2026
That’s right. With all that’s going on in the world today, Shermer feels semantic issues regarding trans people are a significant problem. Someone out there said men can get pregnant and Shermer, who claims to be tolerant and accepting of everyone however they identify, can’t let that linguistic travesty go unexposed. He simply cannot keep his thoughts- and allegedly other things– private.
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