A thread over in MPSIMS raised a question for me - and since I didn’t want to attempt to hijack this thread, I’ll start a new one here.
Basically, the other thread mentions the decline of Scientific American as a good science mag. That’s disappointing to hear - I was planning on subscribing soon. I haven’t read one in quite a while, so I wanted to get started again. Now I wonder if I should look for something else instead.
So, the question is: Are there any recommendations for a good, well-written and well-informed science magazine (for the non-PhD, anyway)?
I subscribe to “Discover” magazine. It’s like a science magazine for dumb people, like myself. No offense to anyone else out there who happens to also subscribe.
Actually, I like Discover, too, despite their recent features presenting wacko stuff under the rubrick of “fringe” research. My husband, a non-scientist, likes Discover, and it’s his subscription, but I read it cover-to-cover, too.
I recently got a subscription to SciAm, and was very disappointed by the quality compared to what I remember. Discover and SciAm both did big blowouts on genetically modified foods, and, hold on to your hats, I think Discover did a much better job discussing the scientific issues. Both had big splashy tabloid headlines (IS OUR FOOD SAFE?) but SciAm seemed more concentrated on the business side and political fallout, while Discover dwelt more on the scientific details–though, at a Mickey-Mouse level, of course, which is fine for me, 'cause IANA molecular biologist. In the end, they provided complementary coverage, but if I could only recommend one, I’d recommend the Discover article.
This is definitely IMHO territory, so hopefully the moderator will move this thread to its appropriate place. Anyway, I used to subscribe to SA and Discover, but no longer do. Both have gone down hill in a serious way: Discover was a pretty fun read in the late 1980’s, but now flirts with junk science; it’s basically just Popular Science with better photography. SA starting going down hill in the early 1990’s. Before that, it was actually considered a serious and prestigious journal by researchers & scientists, but has since become very left leaning / politically correct. Just my two cents.
I don’t know if you can really say that SciAm is much heavier than Discover anymore. It used to feature the ocassional equation, and references to journals listed at the end of each article. Nowadays, it seems aimed more at the business crowd than scientists or enthusiastic amateurs, with disturbing correlation between articles on Moore’s law and Intel ads. That kind of thing is almost on par the article-length info-ads by drug manufactureres in Discover. shrug Just my impression.
There’s always Prospect - not by any means a science magazine, but a British “intelligent essays” magazine which regularly includes authors like Tony Blair (he’s the Prime Minister and just drops in for a chinwag - is that cool or what?) and some more respected figures too. I first bought it because they were giving away a CD with the entire human genome listed on it. Never before have I spent £4 for such a thoroughly useless piece of software. What the hell am I going to do with it? Put it on a t-shirt?
Anyway, the magazine is so deep you’ll want to cry. It covers virtually every subject in the world, and certainly features only the very sharpest cutting-edge thought. I enjoy reading it and have never met anyone else who understands more than 30% of the main article. The others range in difficulty.
Kinda makes you appreciate the dumbass questions you have to write essays on, though.
… but I dumped New Scientist because it was full of fringe quackery and a disconcerting frequency of cases where the author failed to grasp the subject they were writing about. At nearly $100/year, it wasn’t worth it - besides, you can read most of it online.
I just let Scientific American lapse, because by the time I received it, I had read most of the news stories online weeks before. The features were only occasionally interesting, so I just pick it up at the newsstand when I see a story I like.
But Science News I continue to subscribe to. It’s a great overview of the week’s hard-science publications and conferences. It seems aimed at the high school classroom, and occasionally the writers try just a little too hard to make the stories “more interesting” with cute intro paragraphs. But the feature articles are always well-researched, and the writers always seem to have at least an adequate grasp of the science. For the price ($50/yr, less for longer subscriptions), you can’t beat it.
If you can only afford one, I recommend Science News.
But if money is no object, then the real science periodicals are the peer-reviewed journals, like Science and Nature. But their subscription rates are outrageous ($127/yr and $159/yr, respectively). I’ll read the abstracts in Science News, TYVM.
Well, I’m a non-Phd (although I do work in science), and I’m sort of partial to Nature. There are certainly a few articles that are incomprehensible to me, but many make for a good read.
I’ve been getting “Science” lately. Subscription is high, to be sure, as the magazine’s weekly, and technically you’re not just subscribing you’re joining the AAAS as well.
The full research papers which comprise the back half of each issue are pretty much over my head, but the overviews in the front more than compensate for that.
Note: Scientific American switched formats a couple of issues ago. The front articles seem shorter, the main articles have more of a computer focus and the editors like putting midsentence words in color for greater emphasis. Certain sidebar articles adhere to one sentence limits. Here’s an example:
…today in the USA!!!
I wasn’t familiar with Scientific American in the 70s and 80s; I found the 90s issues to be acceptable, though I would not have minded seeing an occasional equation.
Anybody wishing to subscribe to Sci Am should check out a recent issue first.
I’ve been reading Scientific American since I was a kid, so I’m probably being a curmudgeon here. Here’s the big problem:
I can understand most of it now. The first time.
For me, SciAm was the layman’s mental gymnastics: tough concepts distilled to college-level English, with illustrations to help you along if you got stuck. Sometimes they were even on the same page.
It was never easy; it was always a pleasure. I’ve only read the first two changeover editions, and not all the way through, but I feel a certain lightening up. This has obviously already been in the works via a number of subtle format changes over the past twenty-four months or so. I hate to say it, but the introduction of Burke’s column’s represented a significant departure from the SciAm I first grew to know and love.
And directly contradicting that lightening, I note the conspicuous absence of Philip and Phylis Morrison and James Burke.
What rocked about SciAm was that the articles were often written by the very scientists who came up with the discoveries, sort of like Melville writing Moby Dick while simultaneously publishing an article in Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine called, “What Moby Dick Is All About.” If SciAm gets away from that, fuck 'em, and their 150 years of great writing.
Okay, my spleen is vented.
Science News also rocks, and it’s a bi-weekly, so it’s always fresh. My two-year subscription cost me less than a hundred bucks. Short, but sweet, and no bullshit.
I get all three. I only understand about a third of any of them. But it stretches my mental muscles. Science Daily is one of the best rapid response on line sources I have found, and it is free. It also has a printer friendly option on every page, and it puts out a very good set of news from hard science sources. Searchable, Email forewarding, and has a fairly long article shelf life. At the price, it’s hard to beat.
Another vote for Science News. That little rag kicks butt! You can actually loan it to your co-workers and have a glimmer of a hope that they’ll understand the articles. Even if it is the only science magazine that you read, you’ll still be way ahead of the pack.
Oh, and I should have mentioned my favorite sources of science news online, as well:
[li]Eurekalert is a pretty comprehensive listing of the day’s Press Releases in science and medicine. Lots of medical news. And more often than not, when there’s a science story that makes the headlines (like the daycare/aggression study last week), you can read about it here first.[/li]
[li]I also like Pandia Newsfinder. It’s not as comprehensive or timely as the one above, but if I’m searching for a specific story or news on a specific topic this site is nice. (It’s not just a science site - it has a good science section, though.)[/li]
Other good sites are the New York Times (free registration required) and, of course, Slashdot.