Science Editor Claims Fox Told Him Not to Discuss Climate Change

Scientific American Editor Michael Moyer was invited to discuss "futuristic trends" on "Fox and Friends," but says a network producer asked him to replace a planned discussion of climate change with another topic.

Moyer said on his blog Wednesday that Fox News had contacted him two days ago about coming on to the show to discuss what he thought would be trends 50 years from now.

"I said that it’s a fool’s game to guess at what technologies are going to exist in a half-century," wrote Moyer. "Instead I [said I] could do a 'trends for the future' in science. About the only interesting thing that the scientific community is sure will happen in the next 50 years is that climate change is going to get worse, and that we’re going to have to deal with the impacts. So I put that as one of my talking points."

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But then, he told Business Insider, he got an email back from a producer who asked him, "Can we replace the climate change with something else?"

Suzanne Scott, the senior vice president of programming at Fox News, said in a statement that "there was never an issue on the topic of climate change ... to say he was told specifically not to discuss it would be false."

So instead of talking about climate control, Moyer discussed future possibilities including genes to cure disease, more Earth-like planets, cheaper trips to space, and robot transportation.

"I understood that there was little chance the topic would make it into the show, but I’m not going to self-censor myself from the get-go," Moyer said.

Moyer said a recent study by The Union of Concerned Scientists examined how cable news programs regard climate science, and concluded that "Fox hosts and guests were more likely than those of other networks to disparage the study of climate science and criticize scientists.”

But Moyer said he had also gone on the show to discuss other topics "because they are genuinely interesting, and I love to share cool science with whomever will listen. I thought the segment itself went well."

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