Scientific American is supposed to be about…well, science. But one of our readers sent this bizarre recommendation from the magazine arguing in favor of universal basic income payments from the government. Admittedly, this was an opinion piece (why does a science magazine publish opinions?) but the topic isn’t based on “science” and it isn’t backed up by the evidence. The premise of the non-science article is that giving people money won’t reduce their work incentive – when the whole story of the U.S. economy over the past three years has been the disappearance of workers due to high government benefits.

Here are a few other recent gems from Scientific American: