Popular science has always promulgated culture.

If you're only complaining now, it's just because you don't like the culture SA is promulgating today.

I don't disagree that SA has a lot of nonsense in it, but that's a long trailing symptom. We've been in a time for a while now where easily observable facts are untrue and manufactured fictions are true, as long as it follows a self-serving narrative.

Helmuth became editor in chief of SA in 2020 -- well after reality stopped mattering pretty much anywhere.

No doubt a publisher trying to keep a traditional publication afloat in the internet age noticed. (And no doubt the publisher has noticed it's now time to flip the politics the other way, hence Helmuth is out.)