Susan Watts, Lawrence McGinty, Tom Wilkie, Bill O'Neill, Colin Tudge. The
list of New Scientist alumni is endless.
And it was wonderful to renew acquaintances with many of them at last
night's 50th birthday party for the scurrilous rag, which now sells more
than 170,000 copies a week. (I forget the exact number, maybe it was
180,000, a mere 70 per cent or more increase over the past 15 years.) The
publishing director puts a lot of the recent growth down to the fact that
people find New Scientist through its web sites and then sign up for the
magazine.
Whenever a reader complains of inaccuracy, they often mean that the stuff
they read fails to have all the provisos and qualifiers beloved of
scientists in their own usually turgid output. (I'm not complaining about
the crap writing of researchers, I earn a living rescuing it, but rare is
the scientists I will listen to when it comes to writing.)
In my day, the line was that New Scientist wrote physics for chemist,
biologists, geologists etc, and geology for chemists... I would be most
surprised if this were not the line today.
Today's New Scientist is not the sort of magazine that I would want to edit.
But apart from the fact that I don't want to edit any magazine, there would
be something terribly wrong if it were.
A magazine that fails to develop is doomed to failure. And a reader who
fails to develop new interests, and ways of looking at the world, is dull
beyond belief. (Do you still listen to the same music you listened to, say,
20 years ago?)
As the editor of New Scientist said at the party, the magazine has the great
virtue in that its subject makes it future proof. And that is something that
you cannot say for every area of science.
MK
_______________________________________________________________________
Michael Kenward OBE / Phone: +44 (0)1444 401064
/ Mobile: 07779 294 283
Science Writer & Stuff / Have words will travel
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Sent: 23 November 2006 15:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Does New Scientist help scientists?
Further to this, I think it's important to note the trickle-down
effect (legacy?) NS has had in the wider press. Many broadsheet and
other science correspondents (Steve Connor, Pallab Ghosh, Charles
Arthur et al) cut their teeth at the magazine, and for better or
worse the stylistic idiom they picked up there colours the way we all
read science in Britain.
Hugh
>Hear hear!
>
>I'm pleased somebody has spoken up for New Scientist. I personally think is
>an excellent publication but even if I didn't rate it at all somebody
needed
>to put the grumpy comments we've been getting into perspective. The
>responses so far seem to be addressing features rather than reporting and
>comment sections. It may be that the features are the least 'useful' to
>scientists qua scientists, but it would be a mistake to judge the utility
of
>the whole magazine by just one type of article. A large chunk of the
>high-quality science reporting and comment (as distinct from features)
we've
>come to rely upon is accounted for by New Scientist. Scientists should
value
>New Scientist simply because it helps to keep reporting standards high. Who
>else could you rely upon to place your field in its wider context?
>
>Adam
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Murphy Glenn
>Sent: 23 November 2006 13:13
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Does New Scientist help scientists?
>
>The pretext for this question was "does NS help scientists?"
>
>Most of the answers so far seem to have been to the question "does NS
>give you watertight, peer-reviewed, up-to-date information on work being
>done in your field, leading you to new avenues of inquiry?"
>
>I would argue that this is not the purpose of a generalist publication
>like NS. And I would also argue that it does help scientists, by
>providing a wider context for our work.
>
> True, NS might not tell you anything new about your own field - but why
>would you expect it to? The very nature of science determines that
>fields of study are divided and sub-divided until each individual ends
>up working on a very narrow, specific question or area of research. Once
>there, you become an authority on that area, and the longer you work on
>it, the more of an authority you become. Possibly THE authority,
>depending on how narrow the field is. (It's much easier to become the
>world authority on the breeding behaviour of one species of abyssal
>trench fish, for example, than it is to become the world authority on
>marine ecosystem evolution, worldwide.)
>
>Hence, it's easy to scoff at a NS article (about your, specific
>sub-field) as being "old news" or "outdated" if all you ever do is study
>that field and its developments. But unless you're so arrogant as to
>presume that you know everything about every field of science (and if
>so, please ignore my humble musings, as you are clearly a remarkable
>polymath the likes of which I could not even hope to understand)...then
>there is always something new to learn about other people's work (and
>possibly even your own), provided you're open to it.
>
>The way I see it, generalist publications like New Scientist have the
>near-impossible task of trying to keep pace with rapid, worldwide
>developments in an almost infinite range of infinitely-subdivided
>fields...and then writing something new and interesting about them that
>SOMEBODY OUTSIDE THE FIELD might want to read. I'm not talking about
>someone outside the field of science - just outside the scope of the
>article (be it marine ecosystems, abyssal trench fish, or whatever). We
>are all laymen outside of our own fields of knowledge. Anyone that tells
>you different is deluded or selling something.
>
>Personally, I've always found NS to be extremely engaging and
>interesting, and I feel that it helps by placing a huge variety of
>contemporary research in context. In doing so, it can also introduce us
>to associations between fields, and to the wider environmental,
>socioeconomic and political issues involved - making us think about how
>we feel about them. If you'd rather avoid dallying with these tedious
>trifles, then a good field-specific journal should provide a welcome and
>preferable haven.
>
>Regards
>
>G
>
>
>
>
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