Even highly-respected peer-reviewed scientific journals make mistakes. The beauty of science (and scientific publishing) isn't that it's always right, but that

Even highly-respected peer-reviewed scientific journals make mistakes. The beauty of science (and scientific publishing) isn't that it's always right, but that it's willing to admit it was wrong (given sufficient evidence or reasoning). Scientific American has very high standards. They do extensive fact-checking, even for columns that don't matter as much (such as David Pogue's). Many of the longer articles in Scientific American are written by the scientists who did the work, often stuff that was previously published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The Scientific American version is written for a generalist audience. Scientific American, the magazine, rarely breaks major sensational science stories. It's not their mission. You say you "recommend avoiding these sources [such as Scientific American] entirely." What do you recommend instead? Reading peer-reviewed journals? Who can read those, other than the specialists? I recommend reading Scientific American, alert to the possibility that something may be wrong. Because there's no such thing as a scientific publication that's always 100% right.