Customer Reviews
Less depth, but still good 
2008-02-18
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.
Great magazine 
2008-02-08
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.
Sadly, once good, now a pawn of the liberal elite 
2007-12-31
I once loved this magazine - my subscription has run out - I will not renew. Pay close attention to the reviews here that note that SA now uses its power as a Science Authority to support a political ideology and now ignores the value of open debate on scientific issues. Truly a sad development - I hope SA wakes up and returns to its egalitarian roots - big interests and money is not the answer.
Used to love it, now I've become disappointed with it. 
2007-09-05
I've subscribed to this magazine for around 15 years now, and I have always loved it. There is a great variety of science and technology subjects covered and the articles have always seemed to have the right level of technical detail for me.
Unfortunately this magazine has changed over the past year or two. The past six months have been so bad that I'm finally throwing in the towel and cancelling my subscription and looking for a replacement. Every issue now contains a steady dose of environmentalism that often only vaguely resembles science and could be better described as sensationalism. I've also noticed a recent trend of religion bashing, with the underlying message being that anyone who believes in God must be an ignorant rube.
It is really a shame because before this trend it was an excellent, un-biased magazine that was pretty much a perfect fit for me. Had I written this review a couple years ago I would have certainly given it 5 stars. Maybe in a couple years I'll check and see if they've gotten it back on track and removed much of the bias. This magazine has been around for over 150 years, so I suspect they are adept at change.
Superb recap of important happenings 2007-07-18
I am not a professional in the sciences which is exactly why this publication is so important. It provides timely articles, written in more or less layman's language, that are relevant to our world. Refreshingly, the reporting does not include so much of the political noise and nonsense that bombard from so many media these days. In addition, this magazine gives the reader access to the current trends in research, academia, and general tenor of scientific-related work itself. Due to the consistently excellent writing, photography, and accompanying footnotes of explanation, I must recommend this magazine to anyone remotely interested in our sciences but does not have a particularly strong scientific background.
Superb recap of important happenings 2007-07-18
For working scientists, especially in high-tech fields, there are only a few crucial nonjournal periodicals to pore over faithfully, and
Scientific American is one of them--its timely and technical features on everything from paleoarchaeology to neural nets set it apart from popular science magazines like
Discover.
Scientific American emphasizes a wide variety of emerging technologies, giving scientists a chance to keep up in an increasingly specialized professional world. Innovative and controversial developments such as gene patenting and the latest from the unified field gurus are front and center in every issue. It's not all business, though--regular features like Michael Shermer's "Skeptic" column, enticing book reviews, brain-busting puzzles, and James Burke's intellectual-historical meanderings add browsability to this enduring magazine, in business reporting the frontiers of scientific exploration for more than 150 years.
--Therese Littleton
Good overview, but facts not always accurate. 
2007-07-06
I enjoy the brief glimpses of relatively new scientific discoveries, but I've noticed when I research more on a topic the articles are not always accurate. The opinions are always slanted liberal, which is diappointing since I'd like both sides of issues. Sachs, in particular, has glaring inaccuracies in the last 3 issues. If the magazine is liberal biased, fine, I just wish they would be accurate. There has not been a good essay writer since James Burke. I try to skip over those now. Their essayists are not only inaccurate, but lousy writers and boring as well. I realize Burke is impossible to replace, but they could try a little harder! Scientific American is worth getting for overviews of science today, but keep in mind that the fact check level is about the same as tv news. Think of Scientific American as a stretched out tv news science section!
Keeping abreast with our life on earth 2007-05-12
For anyone who wishes to be more involved with our life on earth whether it be our planet and how it was formed or the health of our body Scientific American walks you down the paths of your interest with fascinating articles to captivate each of us.
Great magazine 2007-05-09
Classic monthly that I truly enjoy. Articles are not newsbites, but moderate-length texts written mostly by scientists involved in the actual research. It is refreshing to read "My team" or "I" researched this or that subject in the articles - unlike some mass-market science monthlies. The 'new' SA does go further now in explaining the basics behind a subject, with a phrase or word of background interjected here and there. I say, if you want pure science, read Science. This is a magazine for the somewhat better informed individual who wants to keep informed on many facets of science.
Pseudoscientific, Un-American 2007-04-02
(Pseudo)Scientific American's treatment of Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is nothing short of disgraceful. With this blunder, SA has seriously damaged their own credibility and exposed how politically motivated they really are. It is indeed sad that "science" has come to this. Please visit greenspirit dot com for more information on their bully tactics when faced with what should be openly embraced in science: dissenting opinion. I guess that by making increasing sensational and apocalyptic claims about the environment they think they can sell more magazines - clearly on this point they are right, which is why the magazine's title, "Scientific American", is indeed fundamentally ironic.
"Scientific American is behaving in a manner that is both unscientific and un-American. They should be promoting the free exchange of ideas but instead they are threatening scientists with lawsuits for daring to question their opinions. This reflects the unbridled conceit that permeates the extreme environmental movement today. They are convinced the world is coming to an end and no amount of facts or statistics will sway them from their self-righteous dogmatism."
- Patrick Moore, co-founder, Greenpeace
