Rating: - Scientific American Magazine
Scientific American is a monthly magazine written to anyone comfortable with the scientific lingo on any of a wide range of research subjects. It shows what's going on at the forefront of science breakthroughs and what they could mean in the marketplace when completed.It offers a periscope view of these topics written by the people doing the research, in as clear and communicative a way as can be. Every issue boggles the mind, is actually an understatement.
Rating: - Great magazine!
Great magazine for those who want science for the layman. Closer to a scientific journal than Discover, which I also receive and enjoy. A good combination for receiving scientific knowledge in these increasingly dark ages.
Rating: - Terminally dumbed-down
Yes, I'm one of those who sadly dropped my subscription over a decade ago, when the magazine abandoned content written by scientists in favour of populist journalism written by staff.
Before that, I had been a faithful subscriber and enthusiastic reader since the early 1970s.
I now subscribe to American Scientist. I'm not a scientist, but I like my updates on science to be dinkum, as we say in Australia.
Rating: - Less depth, but still good
Scientific American was once a great magazine, but now it is just a good magazine. I read Scientific American as a teenager in the 80's, I read it as a student and as an engineer in the 90's and I am still reading Scientific American and subscribing to it. Even today I enjoy reading Scientific American very much, but I am not pleased with the fact that the depth of the articles has decreased.
In the olden days the writers for Scientific American were not afraid of putting mathematical formulas, algorithms, in depth analysis, and statistics as well as references to research articles in their articles. Today's Scientific American is not written by scientists, but by journalists and free lancers.
It used to be that scientists and engineers interested in fields outside their own areas of expertise were the magazine's target audience. Now, however, Scientific American is aimed at general readers who are interested in science. Scientific American is now looking more like Discover magazine. In my opinion Discover magazine and Scientific American should complement each other (in depth reading vs. light reading) and not be so similar.
Another wrong turn that they have taken is that they have become slightly political with a noticeable left-wing agenda. For example, the attack on Björn Lomborg should never have occurred and would have been unthinkable 15 years ago. Scientific American should be apolitical in my opinion. I understand that these changes were made for business reasons.
However, the illustrations are great, the topics are varied and include, for example, medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, artificial intelligence, economics, geology, archeology, and social science. I am interested in all of these subjects, but I enjoy reading about physics, cosmology and artificial intelligence the most. I always find something interesting to read in Scientific American. I highly recommend Scientific American even though I would like them to take one step back with regards to the depth of the content.
Rating: - Great magazine
This is one of my favorite magazines. I heard about this magazine from several of my professors, they used articles as examples in their lectures.
- Scientific American Magazine
- Terminally dumbed-down
- Less depth, but still good