Talk:Scientific American/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Bias

Any wonder that the editor who called this liberal political magazine [and no, "liberal political magazine" WAS NOT a joking reference, despite his editing] "one of the most respected science magazines in the world", on the strength of a blog citation, no less, is a self-described npr/cpb-ite and supporter of other leftist causes?

Any wonder wp has a reputation that's been described as "notoriously unreliable", among other things?

Answer: No, in both cases.

Thus, his revisions should be deleted.

D59g (talk) 15:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The above comments, and the middle two paragraphs of the "Scientific and political debate" section, are simply an expression of a long-running political attack on Scientific American magazine by those of right-wing persuasion. Those comments contain no balancing perspective, so they give the impression that it is a fact that there exists left-wing bias in the magazine.

Those two paragraphs should be deleted, or given in a balanced context.LimitingFactor (talk) 16:32, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Circulation

Could we include circulation figures? Especially numbers before and during the John Rennie period when it made a steep decline in objectivity. --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrego (talk • contribs) 18:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

The December 1985 issue lists the total number of copies at 787,404, which is slightly above the value listed in the article. Apparently, the militancy that SA has acquired since that period has not hurt circulation. The Evolution Revolution (talk) 06:49, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Burke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian)

was he major contributor once too, i liked these articles very much

ps. i sort of agree with above, I do not think Einstein would joke as such as Greene, Krauss etc...

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.116.75.194 (talk) 06:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's delete the Criticism/Controversy box

The Controversies section is an interesting and useful contribution to understanding the nature and role of SciAm. It does not mean that the facts about the magazine's existence are in dispute. Let's delete the warning box at once. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Discovering Archeology

What relationship does DA have to SciAm? I've seen it described as a "sister publication". I can find no further information about it. Does it have a website? Drutt (talk) 00:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Scientific?

People have various concepts as to what is "scientific". If we define "science" as "knowing things as they are", then so called science or specifically "material science" is just a subset of "science" which has to explain absolutely everything in existence. Modern science (material science) can answer only the "how" questions (in physics, chemistry, biology, mechanics etc.) but cannot answer the "why" questions (which are often the subject of religion [defining religion is not easy]). The subject non-overlapping magisteria has to be considered, as science knows very little about consciousness, emotions, the purpose of life, etc. and nothing about the soul (defined at the moment as the non-material "particle" necessary for life) and... God. 59.95.11.206 (talk) 17:19, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

File:Sci am mar 2005.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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Not a scientific journal

I think we need to mention that Scientific American is NOT a scientific journal. It causes confusion unless List_of_scientific_journals page is seen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abhishikt (talk • contribs) 18:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, SciAm is a respected popular magazine dealing with science, and arguably does it better than anyone else, but it has never claimed to be a scientific journal and certainly isn't one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There are countless accounts on the internet on the steep decline of the magazine. Which does coincide somewhat with the change of ownership. I think it should be noted in the article. It was at some point a magazine that most scientists would love to be a part of. But not anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.114.157.156 (talk) 05:45, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

in particular, a lot of these accounts may be found on Amazon, in reviews with 1 and 2 stars http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-American-1-year-auto-renewal/product-reviews/B002PXVYPU/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 . A good mag for smart people ran into the ground by dumb leftists. 76.119.30.87 (talk) 01:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

censored Talk sections

Talk page has been tampered with to remove criticism sections "decline of SciAm" and "SciAm and frivolous content". They may be found in an earlier revision http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Scientific_American&oldid=435346781 76.119.30.87 (talk) 02:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

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Change from weekly to monthly

The article notes that Scientific American began as a weekly publication. It would be helpful to add when it changed to monthly. Pha telegrapher (talk) 22:36, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Year Info for first Editor should not be his birth-death . But the time he was editor.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.131.28.25 (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Intensely problematic use of the term "alleged"

I was browsing the Scientific American article and found myself in the "controversy" section, where some language misuse caught my eye. I will mark up the section of interest below.

"Although the alleged incident had occurred about a year earlier[...] Zivkovic responded on Twitter and his own blog, admitting the incident with Ms. Byrne had taken place. His blog post apologized to Ms. Byrne, and referred to the incident as "singular", stating that his behavior was not "engaged in before or since."

Due to the allegations, [...] Following Zivkovic's admission, several prominent female bloggers, including other bloggers for the magazine, wrote their own accounts that contradicted Zivkovic's assertions, alleging additional incidents of sexual harassment. A day after these new revelations, Zivkovic resigned his position at Scientific American, according to a press release from the magazine."

In this current climate of sweeping cover-ups of sexual violence against women, particularly by men in positions of influence and power, and resulting controversies, I see this as a gross misuse of language. I am asking the wikipedia community to understand the impact of colloquialising words like "alleged" to discredit assaults that many perpetrators and legitimizing institutions will never confirm. If Zivkovic admitted the incident, there is no place for the word "alleged" to discredit its reality or its harm. The two presidential forerunners are currently on the hook for "alleged" sexual assaults.

Fixing this wording in the article alone will not solve anything, hence why I have not simply done it myself. I am hoping to prompt a conversation and careful consideration of our language use regarding assaults, victimhood, and believability in the future. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allegedlyfocused (talk • contribs) 23:36, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

No, it is not "intensely problematic." In fact, it is not problematic whatsoever. It is an accurate description. You sound like a far-left activist. Normal people are sick and tired of this ridiculous "language/tone policing" or whatever you people call this politically-correct activist nonsense. Knock it off. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dupessybil (talk • contribs) 15:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Ownership

The fact that it is owned by a megacorporation is important, and the way in which it presents its lineage to this famous, singular paper is problematic, misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.59.126.42 (talk) 23:07, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Political Bias

Allsides.com, a site dedicated to rating media bias is not 'a reliable source'? Seriously? http://www.allsides.com/news-source/scientific-american — Preceding unsigned comment added by DevWall (talk • contribs) 15:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing that it leans left, which is plausible. Misterniceguii (talk) 14:19, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Allsides and mediabiasfactcheck are both unreliable. --Hipal (talk) 16:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Explain why. While mbfc may be considered unreliable, allsides follows a strict methodology and is recommended by many scientific, high-quality sites. From what I see people tend to think that allsides is unreliable, because it doesn't confirm their viewpoint (everyone wants to think that their favorite news outlet is unbiased) and triggers cognitive dissonance. This is a perfect example on how confirmation bias can harm Wikipedia quality. Seriously, if allsides rates a outlet, it's a good idea to write about it: allsides is not reliable to write that "medium HAS particular bias", but it's ok to write "ACCORDING TO ALLSIDES medium has particular bias". Even more: in this case not writing about bias is a violation of NPOV. NebulaX64 (talk) 19:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
If both allsides and mbfc agree on the bias, then it's probably true. There are many news outlets, that are described as biased, by evidence similar to combination of these two, even more: there is no site that opposes alleged left-center bias of SciAm. Why do you consider writing about it wrong? NebulaX64 (talk) 19:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. See your talk page.
If you want to attempt to change the article in a piecemeal fashion, section-by-section or smaller edits, others may be able to spot content that should remain, and we can get into policy details bit by bit. However, if we can't agree on what's reliable, we're not going to make any headway at all. --Hipal (talk) 21:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I asked you to explain, why do you consider these sources unreliable; that's not the answer. NebulaX64 (talk) 22:04, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Quoting what I wrote on your talk page, "WP:RSP and WP:RSN are helpful in determining if a source is reliable." I've been cleaning these up for years now. That's how I found this dispute, doing routine cleanup of unreliable sources. --Hipal (talk) 22:14, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
RSP states that there is no consensus on the reliability of allsides, that's why I don't use it alone. AdFontes and MBFC are not recommended by RSP, as they are self published, however I didn't use them as reference, but as a support for allsides. While usage of allsides on Wikipedia is controversial, the unanimity of these sources shows that it can be used here, as the usage of sources without consensus on reliability depends on context. NebulaX64 (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for reading that finally. Using poor and unreliable sources to support a rewrite of an article is a waste of time.
Will you follow my suggestion, If you want to attempt to change the article in a piecemeal fashion, section-by-section or smaller edits, others may be able to spot content that should remain, and we can get into policy details bit by bit.? --Hipal (talk) 22:36, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I've requested article protection to stop the dynamic ip (NebulaX64?) from continuing to edit-war. I've requested help at WP:FTN because of the additions of FRINGE-related content. --Hipal (talk) 22:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I really doubt that calling SciAm left-leaning is fringe. NebulaX64 (talk) 22:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
AdFontes and MBFC aren't reliable, so they don't count as "supporting" anything. Even if allsides is reliable, one source saying something is hardly ever sufficient reason to make its claim one of the first things an article says. Additions sourced to personal blogs are not suitable. XOR'easter (talk) 16:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Summarizing: it's OK to write that certain medium is biased only if allsides agrees with other media-rating sites, as it's in this case. NebulaX64 (talk) 23:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

If you want to write about possible political bias at the contemporary magazine, there are good sources with which to do that. Here is one which talks about the Biden endorsement. This review of Shawn Otto's book also mentions the endorsement in the context of the politicization of science. As does this piece published in the BMJ. Here is one which talks about their unprecedented step of criticizing a sitting president. Basically, all the notice for "left-leaning" arguments come around US presidential politics, it seems. Of course, there is already a section that does this in the article, so I would suggest starting there. jps (talk) 12:05, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

That suggests to me that slapping on the "left-leaning" label would be even more Americentric than such descriptions typically are. XOR'easter (talk) 15:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Agreed. It's only in the American political context that a centrist like Biden could be associated with the left in any way. Generalrelative (talk) 16:59, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Ignoring economics, isn't he socially center-left? 31.60.24.69 (talk) 23:19, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Biden is a centrist in western Europe, on political scene of more conservative countries he is viewed as progressive. It's however better to describe it as liberal-leaning, as political left is too much associated with economical left. 31.60.24.69 (talk) 04:37, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
The point is that we have no basis for calling Scientific American "left-leaning" simply for endorsing Biden. We would need to see a good number of reliable, independent sources do so before such a characterization would be DUE. And so far the sources on offer are less than convincing. Generalrelative (talk) 06:27, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
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