Disgraceful. The extent of academic social conformity is alarming. It's like a jr. highschool.

In a way not directly related to this posting, Scientific American has been deteriorating for the last 10 years, at least. Indeed, each month, I feel that SA has become more of a clone of Discovery.

More and more articles written by science writers rather than scientists. More and more articles specifically chosen because of their topical nature. More and more political advocacy and more and more emphasis on public policy and not on basic science. Lamer and lamer columnists (Martin Gardner how I miss you).

As a kid I read SA because my Dad picked it up at the newsstand every month. We flew SA airplane contest winners, and had soma cubes. I fondly remember Dr. IJ Matrix and his daughter Eva, and knew about split brain baboons, as well as continental drift. In college, one of the main texts for the first quarter of the Bio Core was a collection of SA articles on molecular biology. I bough GEB based on a Martin Gardner review, Phil Morrisons’ book reviews were great.

Now we get ever less intelligible string theory summaries and a PC columnist on third world issues.

I think you mean 'Discover'.

Discover used to be a fairly good layman's science magazine. After it was bought out by the people who make Maxim, its value has steadily decreased.

This is an important strategy to remember. When you're about to say something socially or politically unacceptable, always preface it with a rote condemnation of someone else associated with the same statement. If you're going to criticize Big Brother, it's best to start by listing all the evils of Emanuel Goldstein.

albatross: The character or the editor?

It's absolutely true that Scientific American isn't what it used to be - but having worked there, it finally occurred to me that that's deliberate. Dig through the Gutenberg project, you'll find that a hundred years go, Scientific American was very much the popular science pub that it's turning into today. With Discover completely falling off the wagon, I can hardly blame them for trying to occupy that niche.

As long as it maintains high quality and covers a broad range of subjects, I don't care too much about specifics of style.

SciAm might be trying to fill the void - but is there actually a void? Are the subscription numbers for Discover dropping as subscribers see what's been done? Presumably the changes were made with the intention of drawing in more readers - maybe that's happening.