> Which was, frankly, shocking to see coming from Scientific American, something I had assumed was a respectable scholarly publication
TBF SciAm has been popsci since the 50s (before that it was mostly about new patents apparently, the original styling was "The Advocate of Industry and Enterprise" and the "Journal of Mechanical and other Improvements").
It's never been a scholarly publication per se, though it used to be pretty respectable in the sense that reading sciam is what you'd do if you were well-read middle-class and weren't going to read the papers and reports straight but wanted to keep abreast of the major stuff. The "level of depth" so to speak has varied a lot since it switched to popsci. But the recent years are some pretty damn shallow levels.
TBF SciAm has been popsci since the 50s (before that it was mostly about new patents apparently, the original styling was "The Advocate of Industry and Enterprise" and the "Journal of Mechanical and other Improvements").
It's never been a scholarly publication per se, though it used to be pretty respectable in the sense that reading sciam is what you'd do if you were well-read middle-class and weren't going to read the papers and reports straight but wanted to keep abreast of the major stuff. The "level of depth" so to speak has varied a lot since it switched to popsci. But the recent years are some pretty damn shallow levels.