4 ms·

I was on the verge of subscribing to it not too long ago till I did some research. It seems to have moved into a more sensationalist click-baitesque sphere. A

I was on the verge of subscribing to it not too long ago till I did some research. It seems to have moved into a more sensationalist click-baitesque sphere. A shame, but I suppose from their perspective it must have been a case of "if you can't beat them, join them".

slyall 10y ago
I remember them being described as "The National Enquirer of Science" a good 10 years ago. Just today I was in the Library and looking at "Science" and "Scientific American" both of which seem to be a lot more "popularist" than I remember them from when i was a kid, but maybe I just didn't notice then.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  I'm planning on subscribing to one of these, currently favoring Scientific American after flipping through some copies at the library. What (if anything) would people recommend instead? I work as a scientist, so I don't want over-popularised clickbait.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    As a layman I find Scientific American goes into sufficient detail that I learn new things but is still approachable enough for me to grasp. They also seem to generally avoid sensationalist writing, providing plenty of caveats when discussing something theoretical or unproven.
dalke 10y ago
They are no strangers to sensationalism, even outside of click-bait. A 2009 cover was "Darwin was wrong." It was a sensationalist way to describe that Darwin's thoughts on a tree-of-life is incorrect, because there is also horizontal gene transfer. Not that it matters, as his proposal for evolution is based on the more general 'descent with modification'.
Jaruzel 10y ago
For many years I used to subscribe to them (both Digital and Print) and received my issues on weds/thurs every week through my letterbox. After a while, it became abundantly clear that the main articles were always 'leaked' to other news sites ahead of the issue publication (as a promotional thing I guess), and more often than not, I found that I had already read all the key information of the articles online up to 3 days before my weekly New Scientist hit the doormat. It led me to question what exactly I was paying for, so I canceled my subs. I did lose full access to their website, but as I'm just an armchair scientist, that's no real hardship to be honest.

slyall 10y ago

I remember them being described as "The National Enquirer of Science" a good 10 years ago. Just today I was in the Library and looking at "Science" and "Scientific American" both of which seem to be a lot more "popularist" than I remember them from when i was a kid, but maybe I just didn't notice then.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I'm planning on subscribing to one of these, currently favoring Scientific American after flipping through some copies at the library. What (if anything) would people recommend instead? I work as a scientist, so I don't want over-popularised clickbait.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  As a layman I find Scientific American goes into sufficient detail that I learn new things but is still approachable enough for me to grasp. They also seem to generally avoid sensationalist writing, providing plenty of caveats when discussing something theoretical or unproven.

dalke 10y ago

They are no strangers to sensationalism, even outside of click-bait. A 2009 cover was "Darwin was wrong." It was a sensationalist way to describe that Darwin's thoughts on a tree-of-life is incorrect, because there is also horizontal gene transfer. Not that it matters, as his proposal for evolution is based on the more general 'descent with modification'.

Jaruzel 10y ago

For many years I used to subscribe to them (both Digital and Print) and received my issues on weds/thurs every week through my letterbox. After a while, it became abundantly clear that the main articles were always 'leaked' to other news sites ahead of the issue publication (as a promotional thing I guess), and more often than not, I found that I had already read all the key information of the articles online up to 3 days before my weekly New Scientist hit the doormat. It led me to question what exactly I was paying for, so I canceled my subs. I did lose full access to their website, but as I'm just an armchair scientist, that's no real hardship to be honest.