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A Website with Real Science News?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-the-facts-ma'am dept.

TechnoSophos asks: "How can I get the real scoop on the latest scientific research? The fourth-grade-reading-level newspaper version of the story is rarely accurate, and is too focused on the wow factor. On the other hand, neither searching for arbitrary strings, nor browsing by journal or even topic is particularly effective if the task is simply staying up to date with the latest news. I don't need gorgeous graphics, nor do I need someone with a Bachelor's in Literary Criticism telling me what the research is about. I just want the cold, hard facts -- lots of 'em."

17 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. ScienceNews by Disoriented · · Score: 4, Informative

    ScienceNews

    I used to get the print version of their weekly pamphlet. It's aimed at the science-knowledgeable public.

    1. Re:ScienceNews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      This site is pretty good:

      http://www.sciencedaily.com/

  2. Science and Nature by pz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Subscribe to Science and Nature. Both of them have encapsulations and summaries with implications on the hottest articles published in each week's issue. Both have on-line versions. Also, Scientific American can be good (once was great) for perspective articles by world experts.

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    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  3. RSC and ACS by Frumious+Wombat · · Score: 4, Informative

    The home pages for the Royal Society of Chemistry http://www.rsc.org/ and the public face of the American Chemical Society, http://www.chemistry.org/, as well as the American Physics Society http://www.aip.org/. It's a lot of foraging, but it will get you the technical gory details. If your local library has it, Chemical and Engineering News has roundups both in the front of the magazine, and in a one-page science-technology roundup. The rest of the mag is pretty much chemical industry, but has articles on particular areas at times.

    As a previous poster mentioned, Science http://www.sciencemag.org/ and Nature http://www.nature.com/ are good all in one stops.

    Personally, I start every monday lunch off with browsing the table of contents of JACS, J. Phys. Chem., Organometallics, Inorganic Chemistry, and J. Org. Chem. If you're not a chemist, these will probably bore you to death, but it's where I get my science news from, other than the Tuesday NYT.

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    the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
  4. EurekAlert! by xirtap · · Score: 4, Informative

    I usually check out EurekAlert! every once in a while. I find it decent and think it might be the thing you're looking for.

  5. Some sources I use by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's some of the sources I use...

    For general stuff, News@Nature is fairly good, although much of their content requires a subscription.

    There's also a few blogs I regularly read which are quite good at offering in-depth analysis of recent scientific news in specific fields:

    * Space science: Planetary Society's blog (note that the main author, Emily Lakdawalla, is on maternity leave, so at the moment there's some guest-authors of varying quality)

    * Biology/evolution: Carl Zimmer's The Loom

    * Pharmaceuticals: In The Pipline

    * Future tech trends: http://futurepundit.com/

  6. Biology News by Zouden · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're after biology news, try http://biologynews.net/

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    "A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
  7. 2 sites I can recommend by hargettp · · Score: 3, Informative
    I subscribe to their news feeds, too (can't recall if their RSS or Atom): Enjoy!
  8. Seed & Sciencenblogs by Rheingold · · Score: 2, Informative

    I like Seed and Scienceblogs myself.

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    Wil
    wiki
  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Science News dot org by bscott · · Score: 2, Informative

    For years I've subscribed to 'Science News', a slim weekly publication with wonderfully concise articles covering most if not all branches of science. They've been publishing since 1921 and are pretty highly regarded in the industry. It's written for the scientist who wants to keep up on what's going on outside their specialty, or anyone educated enough to not need the lowest-common-denominator language required by the mass media outlets. They have a website at http://www.sciencenews.org/ but I find the paper version worthwhile to have in my car so I can skim a few paragraphs at stoplights, or while otherwise stuck in traffic...

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    Perfectly Normal Industries
  11. my longlist by senahj · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdot wants more characters per line Sky above 37Â375"N 122Â2222"W at Sat 2005 Jul 2 20:11 Slashdot wants more characters per line ScienceDaily Magazine -- News Summaries Slashdot wants more characters per line BBC NEWS | Science/Nature Slashdot wants more characters per line Science News Online Slashdot wants more characters per line Molecule of the Day Slashdot wants more characters per line The Loom Slashdot wants more characters per line Cosmic Variance Slashdot wants more characters per line Scientific American news Slashdot wants more characters per line Sciencegate Slashdot wants more characters per line New Scientist Slashdot wants more characters per line LiveScience Slashdot wants more characters per line Science And Politics Slashdot wants more characters per line Chris C Mooney Slashdot wants more characters per line symmetry Magazine Slashdot wants more characters per line Discover Magazine Slashdot wants more characters per line Mathematician OTD Slashdot wants more characters per line Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Home Slashdot wants more characters per line Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: Home Slashdot wants more characters per line ESA - Cassini-Huygens Slashdot wants more characters per line NASA - Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn Slashdot wants more characters per line HiRISE Operations Center -- HiROC Slashdot wants more characters per line Cassini Saturn Slashdot wants more characters per line CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Slashdot wants more characters per line Saturn Today Slashdot wants more characters per line HubbleSite - NewsCenter Slashdot wants more characters per line MESSENGER Web Site Slashdot wants more characters per line Deep Impact: Your First Look Inside a Comet! Slashdot wants more characters per line Pluto, Charon, and other Kuiper Belt Objects including, Sedna, 2003 UB313, as well as Asteroids and Comets. Slashdot wants more characters per line Nature Slashdot wants more characters per line Pharyngula

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    Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check ...
  12. ScienceDaily by Max+Threshold · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/ The articles are based on press releases, but they reference the original papers if you want to read more.

  13. google scholar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    for engineering try google scholar

    scholar.google.com

  14. ScienceWeek has no peer by guanxi · · Score: 2, Informative
    ScienceWeek (http://www.scienceweek.com) is by far the best resource I've found. They print summaries of important research that strike the perfect balance (for me): It's written for an interdisciplinary audience, so you don't need subject-specific knowledge to understand it, but it's written for scientists, so it omits all journalistic fluff and focuses on the content, and it's succinct, which is essential because I have no time. Here's an excerpt from the latest edition:

    1. ATMOSPHERE: ON THE ICE AGE CYCLE

    The following points are made by Didier Paillard (Science 2006 313:455):

    1) The exposure of Earth's surface to the Sun's rays (or insolation) varies on time scales of thousands of years as a result of regular changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun (eccentricity), in the tilt of Earth's axis (obliquity), and in the direction of Earth's axis of rotation (precession). According to the Milankovitch theory, these insolation changes drive the glacial cycles that have dominated Earth's climate for the past 3 million years.

    2) For example, between 3 million and 1 million years before the present (late Pliocene to early Pleistocene, hereafter LP-EP), the glacial oscillations followed a 41,000-year cycle. These oscillations correspond to insolation changes driven by obliquity changes. But during this time, precession-driven changes in insolation on a 23,000-year cycle were much stronger than the obliquity-driven changes. Why is the glacial record for the LP-EP dominated by obliquity, rather than by the stronger precessional forcing? How should the Milankovitch theory be adapted to account for this "41,000-year paradox"?

    3) Two different solutions are available. The first involves a rethinking of how the insolation forcing should be defined ...


    The rest is here: http://scienceweek.com/2006/sw060811.htm

    Unfortunately, they've cut back to 4 summaries per week. Also, the website design would have been ugly in 1994 -- all bold Times. (why?) But ignore that; nobody matches its content.

  15. BadScience by jeremymiles · · Score: 2, Informative
    Not exactly what you asked for, but Bad Science has some great criticism of science reporting in the news - tends to have a UK slant, which might put you off.

    Many of the commenters seem to know what they are talking about as well. (Just like another website we could mention.)

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    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
  16. SciTech Daily Review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.scitechdaily.com/

    This site links to a huge cornucopia of science articles. Check it out.

    There is a similar site for arts: Arts & Letters Daily at http://www.aldaily.com/