How Do You Keep Up With Science Developments?

malraid writes "As a nerd who used to love science back in high school (specially physics), I now find myself completely disconnected from any and all scientific developments and news. How do you try to stay up to date with scientific developments? Science journals? Whatever makes it into Slashdot's front page? Books? Magazines? I'm looking for something engaging and informative, for not something that will require me to go and get a PhD just to be able to comprehend."

Comments

The Internet, where else?

[BWJones]

Seriously though, the Internet is actually where just about everybody goes in academia to stay on top of the latest research and most areas of focus have their own resources like PubMed for biomedical research.

Also, a good way to make sure you keep up with the absolute torrent of work out there (slowing due to budget cuts) is by keeping a blog generated around the area of science interest you have. Webvision http://webvision.med.utah.edu/ is such an effort to keep up with the latest and greatest in vision research. While this one is tuned to be slightly more accessible to the general public, it has not been uncommon for other lay individuals to rapidly become "experts" in their fields through their blogs. This high school kid, Sawyer has established a blog http://www.talkingspaceonline.com/ that already has him winning awards and getting international accolades from folks like Xeni Jardin and Miles O'Brien.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[jhoegl]

While I agree with your post and hope that it continues. The internet cannot contain all the information.
Due to the corporate mentality of I.P. and the subsequent patent/copyright laws that go with it, not everything is on the internet.
The medical field for example has multiple white papers, theories, and discoveries hidden behind a wall of corporate "foundations" that require $$ to gain access to.
Something that is the exact opposite of what the internet was originally intended.
Perhaps one day these barriers will be broken, but until then journals and subscription requirements will be required for some of our higher level knowledge.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[gilleain]

Or science blog-aggregators:

http://cb.openmolecules.net/blogs.php

(for chemistry). I suppose that there are notable individuals as well, like http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ (PZ Myers).

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the POINT.

There isn't one good site.
There are very specialized sites, and a shitload of shitty blogs.

I want something like this magazine, as a website: http://www.spektrum.de/artikel/1116381
(German edition of the Scientific American, but with a long pre-S.A. tradition.)

Maybe a bit more physics-centered. But that's my personal preference.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[gilleain]

Actually, not pharyngula. If you want atheist polemic (and I say that as a non-believer) then fine. If you want actual science, maybe not.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Ihmhi]

that already has him winning awards and getting international accolades from folks like Xeni Jardin and Miles O'Brien.

A nod from the Chief Engineer of DS9? That's quite the seal of approval!

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Chalnoth]

Well, PZ Myers at Pharyngula does do biology-related science periodically. But yes, he doesn't post about science nearly as often as he does about things like creationism and really loony religious behavior.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[zAPPzAPP]

I've got a subscription for that magazine. The thing they do for most topics, is to either let the actual scientists doing the research, or often a university prof. with competency in it do the actual writing. As opposed to an employee of the magazine doing a write up of someone else's papers for example.

I can imagine, that this approach means, you will have to be very selective about the topics you can cover. There will not be a suitable expert for every topic on hand, and if there is one, it might still take some time to get the article from them.

This works for the magazine with a monthly release cycle and a limited number of pages to fill per issue. But on a website, it will be hard to maintain this standard and wait maybe months until finally reporting on something, that you could just have linked to, or covered briefly much earlier.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call those "fish in the barrel" sites. They stomp on the extremely religious or loony politicians. Wow. That's real hard. (eyeroll) Yes, Michelle Bachmann is a fool. She's eleven states away from me. What would he like me to do about it?

I mean, I'm in the guy's camp when it comes to theology, but just sitting there and calling religious leaders idiots isn't really compelling content. If you raise the issue of how productive such activity it, they his circle of commenter turn on you and circle the wagons. The whole cracker controversy was just baffling.

*shrug* Really just a waste of time. The posts are either amateur class religion bashing, ideological piffle or summarized science from better sites.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Will.Woodhull]

I want something like this magazine, as a website: http://www.spektrum.de/artikel/1116381 [spektrum.de] (German edition of the Scientific American

That approach seems so 1995 to me.

Somewhere between 1995 and 1999, I dropped my subscriptions to Scientific American, Nature, Smithsonian, etc as I realized that my problem with staying on top of stuff was no longer a matter of using effective pipes to get the information. I could rely on Slashdot and similar forums to stream all kinds of topical stuff past me. What I needed was an effective technique for determining out of all the little bitty pieces going by, which ones would be worth following up on.

I now scan each week probably around 1,000 discussion threads on Slashdot and several similar but more focused forums in my areas of interest (politics, CG, bicycling, kayaking, ecology, etc), looking for new buzz words, phrases, or concepts that jump out as interesting. Then doing some very aggressive googling on these to see where they go. This amounts to maybe 15 or 20 minutes of coffee break time each day scanning the forums, but I am not reading for content and usually not participating. Just scanning, like walking past the vairous booths at a crafts fair. When I come across something of interest, I might spend anywhere from another 5 minutes to an evening following up with Google and the avenues that Google opens up. Mostly those avenues either lead to territory I have already mapped well enough to suit me or to dead ends like World Of Warfare trivia.

But sometimes the approach pays off in a big way: following up on the buzzword "biochar" for instance has been very useful. The idea that significant carbon sequestration could be done on the cheap by home gardeners while also improving their gardens is very interesting. Who knew that a gram of charcoal had the effective surface area of two tennis courts, and could therefore act as a long term reservoir for N, P, and K, while simutaneoulsy removing that gram of carbon from the ecosystem for several thousand years?

Re:The Internet, where else?

[Plugh]

20, 50, and 100 years ago, Scientific American would have been the obvious choice. Now, unfortunately, SciAm is the "no-brainer" choice :P

Re:The Internet, where else?

[kanweg]

The objective of patent law is to share information and make it available to society. Even in the US patent applications are published after 18 months these days. They're all free to read and download, no subscriptions no fuzz. You can search them in various ways and there may even be a specialized translator facility helping you to read them in a language you can understand.

Bert

Re:The Internet, where else?

[jc42]

Due to the corporate mentality of I.P. and the subsequent patent/copyright laws that go with it, not everything is on the internet. The medical field for example has multiple white papers, theories, and discoveries hidden behind a wall of corporate "foundations" that require $$ to gain access to.

So how is this anything new? I remember a few decades ago, when I was a grad student, trying to get at the latest research in several fields. I was effectively blocked at the source by the subscription prices of the relevant journals, which together cost much more than my income allowed. But there were the academic libraries, right? Well, not necessarily. Unless you passed the relevant tests, you were often not allowed access to those inner sanctums, and couldn't read their copies of the journals. Academic libraries routinely restricted access to their own department's students.

This has always been especially true in medical fields. For example, in the 1980s my (future) wife was a grad student at Harvard and BU in economics, with a specialty in medical information. At both universities, she found that her access to the medical libraries was seriously restricted. She wasn't a medical student, after all, and econ students clearly had no "need to know" actual medical information. Even when she managed to get access, doing so often required far more time than the actual reading, and often required the repeated intercession of her profs.

The Internet has opened things up a bit, but we still have a long way to go before a lot of important information is available to someone without the major amounts of money needed to get past the checkpoints.

(This was in the US; YMMV at schools in other countries.)

Re:The Internet, where else?

[BrokenHalo]

Try Nature and Science to start.

Or one can always go to New Scientist. You won't find anything in great depth there, but you will find starting points to look up and find good and recent research.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[RockDoctor]

But there were the academic libraries, right? Well, not necessarily. Unless you passed the relevant tests, you were often not allowed access to those inner sanctums, and couldn't read their copies of the journals.

[SNIP]

(This was in the US; YMMV at schools in other countries.)

Well it was certainly very, very different in the UK, or at least in Scotland. The university at home in Aberdeen had then (and still, I think, has) an open access policy in that it is open for anyone, literally anyone, to come in off the street and use the material on the shelves. The only times that I've heard of people being barred from entry has been a couple of the local winos and nut cases who have in the past damaged books. "Kilted Steve", I'm talking about you, you insane fucktard!

Obviously, you're not allowed to remove books from the premises without having an account with them. That cost, per year, about £35 (â38 +/-, $ ??) last time I looked, plus a £50 (~â55) deposit against any accidental damage, and mine is due for renewal some time soon. I could charge it against expenses, but the paperwork is more hassle than it's worth.

Hardly prohibitive.

I guess that Harvard etc are private businesses that receive no public funding, so are an example of the inherent benefits of capitalism over socialism.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[RockDoctor]

Something that is the exact opposite of what the internet was originally intended.

The original intent of the Internet was to provide a resilient way of interconnecting computer networks. What passes on those networks wasn't considered as part of the "problem", but considering that the military were a substantial part of the development groups, then command & control, launch instructions, etc were fairly high on the list of types of traffic.

I don't see how that is exactly opposite to controlling the distribution of information. Please elucidate your logical steps between these points.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[jc42]

I guess that Harvard etc are private businesses that receive no public funding, so are an example of the inherent benefits of capitalism over socialism.

Yup; Harvard is a private university, and most of its libraries are inaccessible to non-Harvard people. BU (Boston University) is also private, and is a bit more welcoming, but not much. But the "private" part isn't all of the story. I attended several American "public" (state-owned) universities, and while they were more open than the typical private university, they still erected barriers to the general public. As a student, I had numerous instances of being denied access to parts of various departmental libraries. This depended a lot on the department, though, and there were a lot of libraries where I could just walk in and read anything I wanted, no questions asked.

One thing that's different about the Internet is that it appears to (but doesn't) solve the basic barrier with traditional libraries: Most of them are a long distance away. Yes, there is "inter-library loan", but this tends to apply only to fairly common books. If you're looking for something rare, they are often not willing to ship it; you must visit the library to see it.

The Internet potentially solves this. But in many cases, and with most technical journals, there's a "paywall" in the way. Buying a subscription to all the members-only sites online is often beyond the financial capabitities of all but a few. We may solve this eventually. And some technical journals have already started to make material over N years old available to the general public. But this is countered by others that are restricting access. The New York TImes just did this. Though the NYT isn't what you'd call a technical journal, they are a "publication of record", which has legal meaning in the US, and a quick check I did recently showed that their paywall did block my access to things that (in the print form) is public information.

Another problem is the limited digitalization of a lot of material. Some time ago, I wanted to read some music-related material that was left behind by a musician who died about 50 years ago. I found that her papers had been donated to a state historical museum. It had an index of her material online -- but none of the actual documents. I can probably take a 2500-mile trip to the museum to view them, but that appears to be my only access. They have no plans for copying them, much less putting them online.

OTOH, some scholarly fields have been greatly enhanced by the Internet. There are a number of online collections of ancient documents, sometimes in poorly-understood languages, and these have attracted "amateur" historians and linguists who have helped greatly in the transcriptions. One that got a lot of attention a few years back deals with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contains images, transcriptions and translations of may of those documents. These relics were previously totally unavailable to the public, including most scholars, and the documents' "owners" objected strongly to the online copies when they first appeared. There are similar online projects around the world. A lot of Mesoamerican material, especially including Mayan writing, have been put online, and again "amateur" linguists and historians have helped materially in decoding its contents. Google "Mayan writing" for lots of links to information on this.

So the Internet's effectiveness at eliminating the traditional barriers to information is currently in a "mixed" state. There's a lot of information available in seconds that used to take long trips to distant locations to access. But online organizations are experimenting with ways of limiting access to paying customers. And there's a lot of material that will never be online in our lifetime.

We'll see how it all plays out. Or maybe our descendants will.

Re:The Internet, where else?

[RockDoctor]

Several fairly "situation normal" points in there. Someone, somewhere wants to make money off of anything they possibly can ; film at eleven.

As a student, I had numerous instances of being denied access to parts of various departmental libraries.

We didn't do much of "departmental libraries" at all. Two libraries on the main campus (regular books and antiquarian books, to a fair approximation) serving the subjects taught/ researched at that campus ; a secondary library at the site I was on (not a campus - no accommodation - but about 8 departments in one building) serving the departments in that building (various life lab-sciences, anatomy, engineering , geology ; an odd mix ; not designed, but "Topsy-ed"). Some departments had a small library of their own, but mostly that was populated with reprints that had been sent to staff at the department over the decades and other such cruft. I was tasked with clearing out my department's "junk room" one week, which is how I managed to get autographs of a pre-war Everest mountaineer, and the "father of radiometric dating".

Of course, the individual departments aren't really set up for handling a flux of visitors, whereas the libraries are (permanently manned front desks, that sort of thing ; signs for the toilets instead of you being expected to know).

the basic barrier with traditional libraries: Most of them are a long distance away.

18 minutes door-to-door to walk ; 25 minutes to use the bus ; 10 minutes to drive plus another 30 minutes to find somewhere to park (by design ; personal vehicles were banned from the main campus and the secondary site had parking for about 5% of it's staff and 0% of students)

I attended several American "public" (state-owned) universities, and while they were more open than the typical private university, they still erected barriers to the general public.

Given the amount of "we pay for it ; why cant we see the data" cawing I hear here, I'm surprised that this would be allowed to happen.

Yes, there is "inter-library loan", but this tends to apply only to fairly common books. If you're looking for something rare, they are often not willing to ship it; you must visit the library to see it.

Works pretty well here. It costs you either the price of the postage (including insurance for rarer/ larger volumes), or the cost of licensed photocopying, so it's not particularly cheap. But compared to hitch-hiking the length of the country for a couple of days reading ... well often the ILL was a better use of time. I tried getting an ILL of the 'Mona Lisa' once, but they didn't seem keen to send it to a post box in the rough part of town. Don't know why.

These days, if they've not got it already scanned, they'll probably scan and index an entire volume whenever it's requested and then print off the article in question. Saves money in the long run.

We'll see how it all plays out. Or maybe our descendants will.

Yours may.

Keep it simple

[Garridan]

Just read slashdot.

Re:Keep it simple

[LyndonL]

I just use an RSS reader (Google works for me since it syncs over all my PCs and Mobile) and then I have feeds for: Popular Science (Popsci) Gizmodo Gizmag Slashdot obviously The RSS tells me when I have and haven't read an article so I can keep up with where I'm at.

Re:Keep it simple

[Nasajin]

I just come here and hit F5 as fast as I can, just in case I miss something.

Re:Keep it simple

[xTantrum]

ahh yeah. how about don't do that. start here. Then just browse and follow your interests, wherever it may take you.

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

Slashdot is a great community for smart people. But, with respect, a person can be smart in one area but be embarrassingly ignorant in almost everything else. Slashdot is strong in technology and select physical sciences - perhaps to a fault. But those of us who've participated here for a while can relate a few cringe worthy episodes involving context in the biological sciences, history/geography, social/cultural awareness, etc. There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

Don't get me wrong - on most subjects, my personal views align more often than not with what I see on slashdot. But I experience intolerance/extremism and narrow-minded ignorance here more often than I would like from my own camp, and I am embarrassed by it. Slashdot is enjoyable as thought provoking entertainment that at times can be delightfully silly. But I would not trust Slashdot as a serious way to keep up with science developments.

Re:Keep it simple

[serviscope_minor]

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

True to a point but your own post goes some way towards proving you wrong. Yes, slashdot does have biases. However, it is a much more open discussion forum than any other website I have visited and there are usually people either playing devils odvocate for the hell of it, or who simply hold different views. There are enough moderators that these views can and do become visible, too.

This is the reason I keep coming back here. I have actually had my opinions changed by slashdot discussions before.

As for keeping on top of science without ploughing through all new research by hand, it's probably worth using a mix of things like New Scientist, SciAm and yes, slashdot (for physics, engineering and tech).

Re:Keep it simple

[Ihmhi]

Slashdot is bad with current stories, especially with their bias towards advertising. Had it been a magazine, it would have had one story in 1666 and then a few hundred years of dead space.

Re:Keep it simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the Bible and nothing else. I have no idea what this Slashdot thing is but God told me to post this comment.

Re:Keep it simple

[garaged]

If you want to be that accurate, not even journals will do for you, more often than it should be scientist report errors or plain lie about findigs of their research, I think it happens much less on certain theoretical physics areas, but for instance it happens a lot on chemical simulations, and A LOT on biology and chemistry experimental areas.

That is the areas I have experience on, but I could bet the same thing happens on most science fields.

Re:Keep it simple

[Dystopian Rebel]

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

I am not a USian and so tremendous explosive pressure threatens to alter my cranial structure when I read the above sentence.

Fanaticism itself is a bad thing by definition. But what is a "fanatical liberal"? I infer that it is someone who favours the "West" and fears both the Chinese and the US Republican Party (GOP).

Re:Keep it simple

[Dystopian Rebel]

You?

Re:Keep it simple

[fredrated]

"ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision."

Are you seriously proposing that the GOP has something siginficant to say about science, as in contributions? After all, that is the topic of this thread. Please link to a serious contribution to science made by the GOP, and how it was attacked on Slashdot with "a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant".

Re:Keep it simple

[cervesaebraciator]

Or to try and stay true to form, just read Slashdot headlines. This way you'll not only be able to stay on top of the latest science news, but you'll also have the added advantage of being able to believe that by next year we'll have a solar/fusion/fuel cell/algae powered world, with flying cars, the cure to cancer, a massive hangover on champagne bottle bosons, and Linux on every desktop. Thus, you won't have to have your child-like optimism shattered every time you RTFA say lines like, "with more funding", and, "by our current projections, in as little as fifteen years."

Re:Keep it simple

[ginbot462]

IT probably is the strongest field at slashdot.

Re:Keep it simple

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I'm not going to waste my time this morning trying to dig up a specific example with links, but your assertion that the GOP has never contributed to science is a pretty broad brush to paint with. The GOP, more often than not, is very in favor of Department of Defense spending and other military-esque type spending bills. The GOP members often funnel off, literally, billions of dollars to various defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, L-3, etc.

Whether or not I think those companies, the DOD, or the military are "good" or "bad" entities is irrelevant. What I can say, for certain, is that each of those entities have previously, and continue to, contribute to science, research, development, and engineering. Hell, the internet was a Department of Defense project. PGP was developed in the U.S. Navy if I recall correctly. Lockheed and Boeing have continued to push the envelope in aeronautics and astronautics.

So yes, in general, the GOP often takes a Luddite-style stance on science when it involves social issues (teaching creationism as science, etc.). But to say the GOP never contributes to science is pretty wrong. The GOP often back some of the largest government expenditures to various institutions that do, in fact, advance science.

Re:Keep it simple

[nbauman]

Are you seriously proposing that the GOP has something siginficant to say about science, as in contributions?

They once did. I admit it was over 30 years ago.

Re:Keep it simple

[Toonol]

Wait, wait, wait...

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions

"Liberal" and "pro-western" at the same time? Is that even possible?

(for defensive purposes, I should let the mods know I'm kidding...)

Re:Keep it simple

[sik0fewl]

That's not necessary! If it's important enough, they'll post it twice!

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

I believe you are asking a genuine question rather than trolling, so I'll put some effort into answering you seriously. As I reflect on the source of your confusion, I must confess that I am guilty of some gross generalizations that would be difficult for a "USian" I think I'll start using that term now to accept. It was late when I wrote out my thoughts last night so I apologize if I failed to put it into the proper contexts. I suppose it would have been more appropriate to rephrase the part you referred to as "fanatically liberal and/or fanatically pro-west in their tendencies." the GOP of USA and the Chinese just happen to be examples of many organizations that find hostility here. Others include trade groups that figure into copyright policies, religious organizations of all types, I'm sure others can cite more examples. I don't have as much political/cultural awareness to speak comprehensively and in depth on this particular aspect of the discussion to the point of providing copious citations. However, one example comes to mind involving US diplomat John Bolton's remarks during an interview during a European newscast. When asked why support a certain foreign policy measure during the Bush Administration, his response was something along the lines of "You have to be loyal to your party." Mr. Bolton happened to be a Republican working for a Republican president. But the same sort of blind political allegiance also affect supporters of ideas that are popular here on Slashdot. And the effect is the same - the Greater Good in The Big Picture is a casualty in a personal fight picked by someone with an agenda. In Global politics, ordinary citizen on both sides suffer for the ideals of a small group of power wielder. On Slashdot, intelligent discussion is squashed by those seeking to push their own views on others.

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

hmm...
I would humbly say that your reply, does more than my original post to prove me wrong. It shows that in this format of an open discussion forum, there are tremendous opportunities for unrestricted and intelligent conversation. But to address (s)he who asked the original question, the moderation system is *NOT* sufficiently effective to make slashdot a source of reliable/authoritative science news and developments. For example, is the interest in gaming and sci-fi here an accurate reflection of serious science development in society at large? I suppose one can argue about whether geek culture is a part of science literacy, but I digress. I personally don't feel that mass moderation has been particularly effective at which stories are selected for display on the front page. Having said all that, I am inclined to agree with your concluding comment: that a spread of different publications will satisfy the original question nicely.

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about Who's More Pro-Science, Republicans or Democrats?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk

Re:Keep it simple

[SuperTechnoNerd]

This is not too bad: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Re:Keep it simple

[interkin3tic]

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions

Scientists are overwhelmingly liberal. 52% identify as liberal vs only 9% as conservative. That has also been my personal experience. I'm not sure what constitutes "fanatically liberal" in your opinion, but I run into far more commenters with conservative views here on slashdot that I do in the scientific community. If slashdot is "fanatically liberal" then information coming from scientists would have to be even more so.

Re:Keep it simple

[fredrated]

So what you are saying is that, when a company study that was funded by a vote that included Republican representatives voting yes (proxies for the 'GOP') comes up with science, that science is attacked on slashdot by liberals because the science was funded (in part) by votes of Republicans? You have got to be kidding me, I have never seen even one example of such an absurdity, much less a tendency. If you can't point to even one example then I call nonsense.

Note I am not claiming that the GOP has not contributed to science in the left-handed way of voting funding for science projects, I am claiming that such science has never been derided by liberals simply because Republicans voted for funding, which is the essence of your claim.

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

fanatical as in blind allegiance without rational thought. I repeat that I myself try to be progressive in my world-view and agree more often than disagree with the prevailing sentiments on Slashdot. What I am criticizing is the level of uninformed reactionary expressions that fails in adding to the discussion on these forums. Too many start typing here itching for a fight without a competent comprehension of what it is they are against and even less clue of what alternatives or counter arguments may be in order. I have nothing against holding a firm political view. But I do have more respect for convictions held with substance in mind. If you speak but doesn't give any thought to what you are talking about, you are less than stupid, you are a dangerously foolish voice that soils whatever discussion you bother to engage in.

Re:Keep it simple

[shutdown -p now]

Oh c'mon. A true geek would write a web scraper that'd constantly go over the site and present all new comments in all stories as a single RSS feed. ~

Re:Keep it simple

[Hognoxious]

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

Toys containing lead were common in the West almost a century ago.

However adding ground up plastic to baby milk is something they came up with all by themselves. Blavo, China!

Re:Keep it simple

[Nasajin]

F5, F5, F5, F5!

Re:Keep it simple

[zmughal]

I'm actually working on that. It would be nice to have a Slashdot API.

On the other hand, Reddit is actually very easy to work with. They have a JSON URL of the comment thread available for every story.

Journals, websites....

[Nikker]

Where ever you can get it. Sciencedaily.com is one and a subscription to Science (AAAS) is another.

Re:Journals, websites....

[tick-tock-atona]

Sciencedaily is good, but the sheer volume of content is very difficult to keep up with.

I personally like arstechnica's science coverage. Their articles are *always* well researched and written and usually very interesting. http://arstechnica.com/science/

Re:Journals, websites....

[drinkypoo]

They have a link for RSS feeds (too bad they don't just incorporate them into pages like RSS was meant to be used, so people would see them) so you can just integrate them into your reader. They only gave me headlines and a sentence but that's enough to pique my interest, or not.

Re:Journals, websites....

[A nonymous Coward]

Blaaaah to Science. They can't separate their organization's goals (political correctness overkill) from the science reporting. Try nature instead.

Science News magazine

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

sciencenews.org

Slim weekly, decent reporters.

Re:Science News magazine

[frovingslosh]

Absolutely. Read it before it hits Slashdot (sometimes days before) at that site. The paper mag is well worth the cost also if you don't like trees.

Re:Science News magazine

[Anarchduke]

I like sciencenews.org, but I also like http://www.sciencedaily.com/ as a good source on a variety of science related subjects.
Oops,I almost pulled a Palin and typed "sciency".

Re:Science News magazine

[John_Sauter]

I also like Science News. I've been a subscriber to the magazine for many years. Their web site is actually http://www.sciencenews.org/, and you can subscribe to the magazine from https://sciencenewssubscriberservice.com/promo_pages/gen_order/OrderForm.php.

Re:Science News magazine

[CraftyJack]

Yup, Science News is your best bet. My non-science family members love their gift subscriptions. They also like talking about what they read, which leads to actual discussions.

As an American

[Riktov]

Here are some great science sites that I, and many of my fellow countrymen, can recommend.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php

Re:As an American

[Anarchduke]

No I think he was actually looking for real science, not pull-it-out-of-your-ass bullshit science.

Re:As an American

[H0p313ss]

Well played Riktov, well played indeed.

Re:As an American

[DrBoumBoum]

I think you got wooshed.

Re:As an American

[Anonymous Coward]

With a 3 digit UID, he's as close to Allah as you will ever get.

Re:As an American

[cbarcus]

Science is a relatively recent human development, and our mentality is still very much in transition from one that is religious and superstitious, to one that is rational, impartial, contemplative, curious, humble, and never satisfied. The above post is a good example of what is currently seen as a cognitive disease of ignorance, which unfortunately has likely propagated due to our failure to reduce the cost of energy.

I hate to have to repeat what is indisputable fact, but Evolution and Global Warming are not seriously contested within Science. The Universe is currently estimated to be about 13 billion years old, while the Earth formed some 4.5 billion years ago (knowledge made possible by advances in physics). Most life began about 500 million years ago with the Cambrian Explosion, most likely instigated by a dramatic increase of oxygen in the atmosphere. Humans evolved as a particularly virulent branch of hominids, and we as a species are most notable due to our advanced culture, which I am sad to add is still not sustainable.

What is not particularly well known is how serious the Energy Crisis is, how it is affecting the economy, and what is likely to be the only practical solution in the short term. The central issue with energy is how much one gets out of what one puts in. This principle is known as Net Energy. Our return from our energy system has probably been in decline for some 40 years- or about the time when domestic US oil production peaked. Since then, on essentially borrowed time, we have failed to come to terms with this problem. As energy becomes more expensive to harvest, more of the economy must be devoted to harnessing that energy. To further exasperate things, the dominate form of energy today, fossil fuels, basically involves taking what was once sequestered from the atmosphere, harvesting it for energy, and releasing a particular byproduct back into the atmosphere (CO2). This gas acts in such a way as to cause the climate system to retain more energy, which in turn alters the weather. Long-term, the effects are very likely to be catastrophic for civilization, which has largely adapted to inhabiting coastlines.

Since renewables solve, in theory, the carbon problem, many have seized upon them as the solution. What they do not solve is the net energy problem, so while you can “farm” energy in a bewildering variety of ways, they are fundamentally energy sparse, and so energy will remain expensive, regardless of what is done. This conundrum has basically driven our society over the edge with one side trying to impose an unworkable solution on a completely non-compliant and denying opposition.

Nuclear energy remains the only source with the energy density to solve this problem. Unfortunately, the current technology is expensive, fault-prone, inefficient, non-scalable, inflexible, and dirty, all of which has fuelled detractors. Many nuclear alternatives have been proposed, but they remain to date completely unproven (FocusFusion, General Fusion, TriAlpha) or distant and expensive (ITER, NIF).

We do have a technology that is proven, affordable, clean, flexible, efficient, and scalable, but we have to do some work to get it ready for commercialization. Back in the 60s, some intrepid scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratories invented an amazing machine that used a liquid fuel based on U-233 that could be produced from the abundant element thorium. The beauty of this invention is that it solves many of the problems that plague our current technology, delivering an inherently safe and super efficient source of energy that will last indefinitely. China already announced earlier this year that they are pursuing Green Nuclear, and it would be prudent for us to join the Thorium Race at this juncture. Doing so almost guarantees that we will eventually have the resources to end poverty, provide social services to everyone, ensure world peace, and have flying cars! This isn’t science fiction, but it could be our reality if we act with intelligence.

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

Troll comments and +5 funny rating aside, many scientists would agree (either publicly or anonymously due to fear) that human caused global warming IS a hoax.

Especially after the emails were released exposing the hoax. Remember?

I for one would like to keep up on REAL science, not pseudoscience fraud.

As for the answersingenesis site ... I know what I believe.

Re:As an American

[belthize]

Especially after the emails were released exposing the hoax. Remember?
 

Yep, it all started when they found that CIA agent dead in the lake, the dolphins disappeared and we all thought the world was going to end.

Re:As an American

[SlashV]

many scientists would agree (either publicly or anonymously due to fear) that human caused global warming IS a hoax.

[citation needed]

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

many scientists would agree (either publicly or anonymously due to fear) that human caused global warming IS a hoax.

[citation needed]

Let me google that for you.

http://goo.gl/4jCmQ
http://goo.gl/hCTQK
http://goo.gl/RyfZf
http://goo.gl/GWcP9

And another: http://goo.gl/PN8mU

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

another link re: global warming

http://goo.gl/wb6nZ

Re:As an American

[arth1]

Why, one way of keeping track of emerging technologies could be to subscribe to a fundie or tea party newsletter and see what they object to this week.

Re:As an American

[SleazyRidr]

I remember emails being released. I don't remember exposing any hoaxes though... Perhaps you're confused.

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

I remember emails being released. I don't remember exposing any hoaxes though... Perhaps you're confused.

http://goo.gl/ocYqZ

Re:As an American

[SleazyRidr]

This isn't Twitter, you could post the full URL.

To answer your actually point, I could suggest this site:
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/10/29/who-said-what-answering-ross-mckitrick%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cresponse-to-misinformation-from-deutsche-bank%E2%80%9D-part-ii/
which answers the first of the emails listed in that article, but you clearly stopped paying attention a few months ago, so I won't waste any of my time answering the other points.

Re:As an American

[NoOneInParticular]

Why are you posting shortened links on a website? You are not on twitter, you do not have to care about a limit. Anonymous links: I guess all of them go to goatse or two girls, one cup. I'll pass, your point is lost.

Re:As an American

[NoOneInParticular]

The link goes to http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/. Parent doesn't realize he's not on Twitter.

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

One of the links I posted caused slashdot to complain that it was "too long", so I shortened them. Sorry I offended you.

Re:As an American

[flappinbooger]

I don't use twitter. /. complained a link was "too long" or something so I thought I'd try out google's new link shortener. So neat and tidy!

Re:As an American

[Anarchduke]

Yes it was a very adept trolling. Even though I couldn't accept that he was being serious, I couldn't help myself. I had to respond.

Ted

[Neil Boekend]

I'd advise Ted. The short films are quite comprehensible.

Re:Ted

[syousef]

I'd advise Ted. The short films are quite comprehensible.

TED was great but it's not what it use to be. Nor are most of the podcasts I use to listen to like Astronomy Cast and Radiolab.

Re:Ted

[WillDraven]

Yeah, I used to watch every TED video in Miro, but I started having to wade through too much crap and now I've fallen so far behind it would take me a few weeks of watching videos and nothing else to catch up.

Re:Ted

[realityimpaired]

Depends on why you go to TED, I suppose. I watch most of the videos, because it's interesting to see how some people are tackling certain problems. There was a very interesting post a few weeks ago about building a car for a blind person to drive, for example. Not one that drives itself, but one that uses alternate methods to convey visual information to the driver so that he can drive without his eyes. It's not really very informative about the state of the art of robotics or artificial intelligence (which are the two main technologies they're using, along with tactile displays), but it is an interesting discussion of a practical application of these technologies, and is worth the watch.

I still prefer print media for keeping up with the latest developments in science, actually... magazines like SciAm keep it readable for the average person, you can also go with something like PhysOrg if you want it slightly higher brow. Nature has always been a good publication, and the New England Journal of Medicine is a pretty good read if you want to keep up on what's happening in medicine. If you want something more esoteric, like what's happening with the state of the art in quantum physics (hint: not much in the last 30 years, since none of it can be proven experimentally yet), you can probably find specialized journals for those, too. For a more general and broad approach, however, the ones I mentionned above would be a good starting point. :)

http://www.eurekalert.org/

[ihaveamo]

I read http://www.eurekalert.org/. Fantastic stuff.

you don't need a PhD to get a BSc

[lanc]

I recommend online studies.
No, not those online degree spams. But for example on www.studyastronomy.com I found that being able to choose the courses I'm really interested in (mostly cosmology/astronomy) while taking just a single course a year instead of four if I want to, puts the fun right back into studying the subject I'm interested in.
Just my 2 EUR cents.

new scientist

[thephydes]

is amongst the most accessible (easiest to understand) general coverage science magazines. Scientific American is amongst the least accessible of this type imo. The zinio http://zinio.com/ subscription to New Scientist is less than half the shelf price, and can be read on your computer or an ipad (don't know about other e-readers)

Re:new scientist

[dadioflex]

Beat me to it. Of course there's also the New Scientist website.

Re:new scientist

[Dandelion Whine]

Their news feed is a good start. http://feeds.newscientist.com/science-news

Re:new scientist

[dcmeserve]

Scientific American is amongst the least accessible of this type imo.

Not sure what you mean by "accessible", because I find it very readable in every subject area -- physics, biology, geology, what have you -- even though I have little or no training in any of those beyond some basic high school or college classes. (my degree is in C.S.)

And I still find new ideas and concepts in there that just knock my socks off -- the small-molecule theory of the origin of life, for example. This even though I've been reading it and Science News for nearly 30 years now.

Re:new scientist

[John Hasler]

> Not sure what you mean by "accessible"...

Usually that means dumbed down to the point of being content-free and consisting mostly of science reporter speculation about the wonderful consumer products that will ensue. And photographs, of course. Every article must have at least one photo no matter how irrelevant.

Re:new scientist

[fuzzywig]

Another vote for New Scientist here, imo it strikes the right balance between accessibility and depth.

Re:new scientist

[triplepoint217]

I use google reader (though take your pick of rss readers) and set it up to receive feeds from New Scientist, Scientific American, Not Exactly Rocket Science (Ed Yong's excellent science writing blog), ... (I also have some some things you won't have access to unless you are at a university: science, nature, and some more specialized bio stuff on my feed), these give access to a bunch of good articles even without paying anything. If you are on Google+, I also suggest following Ed Yong, he posts a lot of cool and interesting stuff.
(Disclaimer: I am in the middle of a Ph.D. in physics, so while I have tried to pick out the more approachable stuff, I make no guarantees that some of it may go over your head)

Re:new scientist

[rocket rancher]

Scientific American is amongst the least accessible of this type imo.

Not sure what you mean by "accessible", because I find it very readable in every subject area -- physics, biology, geology, what have you -- even though I have little or no training in any of those beyond some basic high school or college classes. (my degree is in C.S.)

And I still find new ideas and concepts in there that just knock my socks off -- the small-molecule theory of the origin of life, for example. This even though I've been reading it and Science News for nearly 30 years now.

Until recently, perhaps the last two years or so, SciAm pretty much was the way you've characterized it -- readable and informative to anybody with a four-year degree in a scientific discipline and curiosity about accomplishments outside their discipline. But that is no longer the case. The articles changed in tone -- to me they are trying to adopt Wired's pop-geek approach, compromising the technical depth of the articles to increase their entertainment value. I dropped SciAm because I (usually) want to be informed more than I want to be entertained. When I do want to be entertained, Wired trumps SciAm hands down.

Re:new scientist

[wytcld]

New Scientist doesn't cover science as such. Instead it runs with a lot of stoned-Freshmen-at-midnight just so stories about "Free will is an illusion," and similar specious claims. For instance, on today's website we can learn "How the universe appeared from nothing" and ponder "Existence: Am I a hologram?" They go far out into the realm of scientism, of fantasy. Indeed their most popular article now is "Existence: Why is there a universe?" That's a delightful thing to get the children asking, and may even lead some of them towards science (or religion, or something), but it's not a scientific question. How are you going to design the experiment of not having a universe to compare that condition with having one?

There's some real science reported on there too. But it's all with the same style and depth of reporting that considers "Why is there a universe" a scientific question. These are very silly people, reducing all to fluff, with the greatest pretense, basically making of "science" a new religion to enforce their prejudices - and doubtless doing all this by no free will of their own whatsoever.

Re:new scientist

[gyroidben]

I have a subscription to New Scientist and think of it as the scientists equivalent of a celebrity gossip magazine. You definitely don't ever believe the title on the cover is a fair summary of the actual research it's talking about. Nevertheless it is a good way to keep up with fields in different areas than one's own and it is a very easy read. Also it is that it's insanely cheap. An annual subscription can usually be had for about US$1.50 an issue. The result of this is that the science journalists don't have a whole lot of time to spend really understanding the research behind the articles they are writing. I think they do a pretty good job considering they have maybe two weeks to write an article about something that would really take years to get a proper grip on.

Re:new scientist

[alleycat0]

I second the suggestion. New Scientist is awesome - it covers every science subject under (and well beyond) the sun, and does so in a manner that is technologically sophisticated, yet well within the reach of any reasonably well-educated reader. The weekly print version is admittedly a bit expensive (especially for those not in the U.K.), but much of the content is covered for free at their website (www.newscientist.com).

Re:new scientist

[CreatureComfort]

Yep, Scientific American is as sad and pathetic as the name implies.

Everything wrong with American science education and the general level of science awareness and knowledge of the American populace is distilled and fermented (that MUST be where the delay comes from) then spewed onto the pages this once great, but not any more, rag.

Re:new scientist

[Toonol]

I view Scientific American as a tragedy. It was great a few decades ago; it's now marketing-driven crap, no better than Discovery or Popular Science. I loved that magazine as a child, re-reading articles that were miles above my head over and over, trying to puzzle out what they meant. Now I avoid reading it. Sensationalist tripe.

Re:new scientist

[dcmeserve]

The articles changed in tone -- to me they are trying to adopt Wired's pop-geek approach, compromising the technical depth...

There have been formatting changes numerous times since the 90's (in both SciAm and Science News). Certainly, SciAm in 1990 looked much more like a dry technical journal than it does now. But having gotten used to each new change, I'm not convinced that it's really being dumbed down. There's more (or different) decoration around the articles, but the content of the articles is still quite rich, generally. In fact, I can't even think of what the change was 2 years ago that you're talking about...

Re:new scientist

[jafac]

I subscribed to Sci Am for 15 years, up until around 2000 or 2003 or so, back when they changed ownership, and the overall quality of articles went on a rapid decline. Around that time is when all of these competing publications started to appear, so I know that I was not alone in my disgust.

Science podcasts

[emurphy42]

• This Week in Science
• The Future and You
• Changesurfer Radio

TED has already been mentioned. There are some others out there, I'm sure.

Re:Science podcasts

[SlashBugs]

Also, have a look at The BBC Science and Nature Podcast Directory.

I particularly like "Material World" and "Science In Action". "The Inifinite Monkey Cage" is a science-based comedy show; not much good for education, but definitely worth a listen.

The Nature Podcast is an excellent guide to the week's science news. Because of the bredth of subjects that Nature covers, the podcast is aimed at an intelligent general audience and so assumes very little prior knowledge. Similarly, the Front pages of Nature are aimed at non-specialists and definitely worth your time.

Re:Science podcasts

[Myopic]

I also recommend podcasts. I used to listen to TWIS, but honestly I didn't like the personalities. I enjoy the following, in enjoyment-order:

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
RadioLab
Skeptoid
Astronomy Cast
60 Second Science
60 Second Mind
NOVA Science Now
QuackCast
Science Friday Podcast
Nature Podcast
Planetary Radio
The Naked Scientist

I listen to a shit-ton of podcasts, because it fits my lifestyle. I listen on the way to work, on the way home, during work, while taking walks, while riding my bike, while building stuff (hobbies), while doing yardword. I just love radio programs, without the radio commercials. I hope podcasts start offering a freemium model, where I can pay a nominal amount to get rid of the ads. How much is each podcast ad impression worth? A few cents? I'll double that!

Podcasts

[emurphy42]

• This Week in Science
• The Future and You
• Changesurfer Radio

TED has already been mentioned. There are some others out there, I'm sure.

Not possible

[lazy_arabica]

Sorry to say that, but just reading sensationalist headlines, or even more "in-depth" explanations from knowledgeable scientists won't allow you to "keep up with science developments". Sure, you may learn (for example) that the Higgs boson has been found (or not), but you won't know:

- How.
- Nor which role it plays in the standard model, besides that "it allows to explain why some particles have a mass".

I fail to see what differentiates such knowledge from the belief our ancestors had that earth was flat, heavier body fell faster in vacuum than lighter ones, or that our body was filled with "humors", an unbalance of whom caused illnesses. Sure, we all think modern scientists are more trustable than the scientists of these times, but that does not change the fact that our belief in latest science developments are not more grounded than were the beliefs of the past.

Re:Not possible

[boristhespider]

In which case those of us in active research have failed.

How would you prefer this to be addressed? We normally try and be open about how we research, why we research, the techniques that are used, the conclusions that can be drawn, flaws with the model, alternative explanations, and our level of certainty that we're right. We also try very hard to make sure that that last is quantifiable and not just some subjective feeling.

(In reference to the Higg's boson discoveries, for example, the last I knew (and it's not my field) they were claiming roughly 3.5 sigma or so. That's a nice discovery, given that one sigma is a standard deviation. In cosmology we tend to believe something if it's at 3.5 sigma... and particle physicists laugh at us. We *have* to do that because of a lack of data; they don't. They want to push it to 5 sigma or so. This holds in other fields. People try and actually quantify how sure they are that this result is better than some control. In cosmology there's even a trend to go further and attempt to quantify whether this *model* is better than another.)

What would you like improved so that we're not as bad as the mediaeval scientists?

Re:Not possible

[lazy_arabica]

Actually, I'm not saying that you failed. I'm just saying that believing in science is no better than believing in anything else. For us mere mortals, it's not possible to "keep up with science" as we'll never understand the scientific background of these new discoveries, nor what they fully mean.

I /do/ believe in the scientific process, and I'm sure you guys are much more rigorous than mediaeval scientists were :) I'm just saying that for many people, geeks included, science is just a new religion. Keeping up with the "dogma" is a noble goal, but it doesn't make you really understand modern science.

Re:Not possible

[boristhespider]

Hmm OK. Thanks for the response, I don't know if I came across as over-defensive while I'm actually interested in knowing whether we're communicating properly with the people who pay our wages.... Then would you say that things are open enough that someone wanting to understand how the conclusions are drawn can find that out?

I know in my field that to do that in full would be *extremely* tough -- the example of redoing the WMAP CMB angular power spectrum is a real one. There's a Chinese team, just two people, who took the raw time-ordered data and went through the entire process a couple of years back. The reaction in my university, and amongst anyone else I've talked to about it, is blank astonishment that they'd even do it. It seriously must have taken years. It's brilliant that they did it (although the prevailing belief is that they made a slight mistake at one point, which produced their only significant difference from WMAP; if they did that's hardly a surprise and quite excusable, and if they didn't then they should probably make more of a deal about it) but it's amazing. I don't have the time, or the ability even, to go through that process. Other fields can't be any more accessible. I'm really just asking whether further and more detailed information is easy enough to find, or whether there's a massive, unbridgable gulf between the basic "This happens! Ain't it magical?" level and the hardcore specialist journals.

Re:Not possible

[boristhespider]

Oh, hang on, my CMB angular power spectrum response was to someone else. (And I think I *was* being a bit over-defensive there. All he was suggesting is that it's not real science if you can't get the data and reproduce it... at least in principle. And I totally agree with that.)

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2352470&cid=36905322

Re:Not possible

[lazy_arabica]

Well, I'd say it is possible (it surely is, as some people actually do it !), but is indeed extremely hard.

Attaining the level of a master degree in any field seems possible to anyone with the required intelligence and power of will. The real gap might lie somewhere between master degree and PhD. At this level, the resources are pretty rare and sparse, and there is no easy entry point. It's quite understandable, as there are much fewer PhDs than BSc's, so few books are written for this audience. Also, I believe the field is not always cleared enough to be explained in one, standardized way like undergraduate or even graduate-level science: the didactic tools, standard exercises etc. might not always have been built - but that's only my impression, I might be wrong. And at this level, it's usually expected that you'll be guided in the field by some older, more experienced scientist, who knows what's most important and what you have to study first to understand some concept.

Re:Not possible

[boristhespider]

To be honest, I'd say even at PhD level, anyone with reasonable intelligence and dedication can get a PhD. Not in every field (I'd never be able to get a PhD in pure maths or computer science, let alone in comparitive theology), but in *some* field that fits their interests. As you say, though, resources are very scarce in anything other than some areas of the sciences, and competition can be fierce. It doesn't get better down the line, either. There are too many PhDs being produced for the number of post-doctoral positions, and too many young post-doctors (each costing more than a newly-qualified PhD due to their experience) for the same posts, and then too many of them for the 5-year/tenure-track positions and too many of *them* for the permanent posts. There's a cut-off at each step.

It wasn't entirely what I was meaning, though. It's ultimately unrealistic for a layman in a field to be able to reproduce, or even entirely understand, a scientific report. I'm out of my depth if I just go and talk with people down the hall, and we're all theoretical cosmologists. When I'm visiting other universities I get to talk to people doing another part of astronomy, and I'm floundering even more... Expecting someone who hasn't been steeped in this for the last 14 years to understand would be pretty silly of me.

I was meaning whether there's a feeling that the tools and explanations are there at each level of sophistication -- so that you can read a brief press release, go into more detail, go into a bit more, and find an explanation at roughly the level of sophistication you're looking for, and the feeling that you *could* eventually be able to reproduce the results. Basically, whether there's an openness and a communication, or whether it looks like we're living in a locked world and occasionally throwing out crumbs to the public while we scoff the cake.

Re:Not possible

[serviscope_minor]

I'm just saying that believing in science is no better than believing in anything else.

Science demonstrably works. The world around you has been built by scientific advancements. None of the "anything else" can claim that.

science is just a new religion

No, it isn't. You can use science to find out stuff. It may not be new or interesting to other people, but you can still use science to go and find it out.

but it doesn't make you really understand modern science.

Some science is more accessible than other science. My maths isn't good enough to understand the standard model, but that's one small part.

Not having time, skill or inclination to prove everything form first principles myself is not the same as blindly adhereing to religion.

Re:Not possible

[Myopic]

I blame the science reporters. If I hear the word "God particle" one more time I'm going to march into the New York Times building and (figuratively) firebomb their science department.

Yeah, science is done in the open... in science journals. Sorry, I'm not going to read science journals to learn about science any more than I'm going to read the proceedings of the CFR to learn about foreign policy. Luckily, the world now has science blogs, which do a good job of reporting science. There are a lot of them, though, so it's hard to keep up.

Re:Not possible

[Myopic]

You can use science to find out stuff.

Agreed. Nobody ever prayed their way to the surface of the moon. I'm baffled that the world is still dealing with this level of superstition. HELLO, PEOPLE? WE'VE BEEN SHOWING YOU SCIENCE FOR LIKE THREE HUNDRED YEARS NOW! GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Sheesh.

Re:Not possible

[boristhespider]

Hell, *I* don't read science journals...

Don't be too harsh on the reporters. Yes, "God particle" is exceptionally annoying but I get equally annoyed by people calling the baryon acoustic oscillations "wiggles". What are we, children? FUCK OFF. And unfortunately this is something that's come out of the community itself. It's very irritating. We've even got a big survey called WiggleZ. It's like we're a pack of morons.

Re:Not possible

[Brucelet]

The difference is that ultimately, science is open source, and so others can find out how discoveries were made. It might take a lot of work, you might have to pay to read some papers, and you might not personally have the technical know-how or required equipment, but it's possible to reproduce any results you read. And every so often, when another team tries to do so, results don't hold up and new discoveries are discarded.

Re:Not possible

[BJ_Covert_Action]

... but that does not change the fact that our belief in latest science developments are not more grounded than were the beliefs of the past.

Wake me when the beliefs of our ancesotrs in the past allow us to land a spacecraft on the moon.

See, the problem with your post is that it completely ignores the fact that humans have undeniably progressed since when we believed the Earth was flat. That progress is evident in the fact that our "belief" in modern science has allowed us to do things like design commercial air liners, cure smallpox, provide electricity to every home in most first world countries, and talk to other humans on the other side of the world instantly via the internet.

Having "faith" in science is not a matter of faith at all. It is an observation of the reality which exists around us, and realizing that without science no part of our modern society would exist.

So, no, keeping up with science is not a belief, it's a recognition of reality.

Re:Not possible

[Myopic]

A couple thoughts:

First, "God" is undefinable. Nobody agrees on what it is, so we don't need to argue about whether it exists, because we can't even agree on what it would mean for it to exist.

Second, the existence of some kind of "God" is a very, very minor superstition. Although it sort of seems like the greatest superstition of all, it's really not, for the reason above: if we can't say anything about God, then it's hardly much of a superstition.

Third, almost everybody who goes on and on about "you can't disprove God" is actually also defending a whole set of other beliefs, but uses the "God" thing as a feint, a cover, because it's not actually tenable to defend those other beliefs. It is those beliefs which are the "level of superstition" to which I object. Any act of a God which affects the natural world is within the realm of science: if it affects matter or uses a force or results in any physical detectable change to the universe, then science can measure it. Do you believe in a God which affects anything in the universe? If so, I say that is an untenable claim, both from a scientific perspective as well as a philosophical perspective.

So, blah blah blah, I don't know what "your religion" is, so I can't say whether science has invalidated it. But I can assert that science has invalided every religion I have ever heard of, and every religion which has any dogmatic claims whatsoever. If your religion is one of those, then it is invalidated by science. If it's not, then your religious beliefs are so miniscule that they wouldn't rise above the "level of superstition" to which I object.

Re:Not possible

[rocket rancher]

You can use science to find out stuff.

Agreed. Nobody ever prayed their way to the surface of the moon. I'm baffled that the world is still dealing with this level of superstition. HELLO, PEOPLE? WE'VE BEEN SHOWING YOU SCIENCE FOR LIKE THREE HUNDRED YEARS NOW! GET WITH THE PROGRAM! Sheesh.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I think you are being a tad disingenuous. Indeed, as someone once pointed out, it's better to light a single candle than to stand there and curse the darkness, so 300 years of (relative) enlightenment is a *good* thing. However, I think you do grasp, unlike whoever originally made the candle remark, just how fucking many people there are that have a vested interest in maintaining the darkness for as long as they possibly can.

mags

[bhcompy]

Been fairly happy with Discover Magazine.. cheap to get with regular deals and has some good stuff. There are all sorts of others too

Discover Magazine

[bar-agent]

Discover magazine serves my science news needs admirably. I see a lot of people recommending online sources, but really, reading things online sucks.

Science News

[AstroMatt]

Science News is good if you like printed material. It's bi-weekly and gives moderate detail. http://www.sciencenews.org/

You really can't, for free

[Joe Tie.]

You can keep up on a superficial level with the links people provided. But it's all basic science via "cause I said so!" It's not really science if you can't get full access to, well, the experimental data that makes it science. And the majority are still locked up, with high fees if you're not getting access from some paying service. It's true that a lot are free through various means, but for the most part it's a safe assumption that they won't be.

Re:You really can't, for free

[boristhespider]

Jesus. He said that he wants to keep up to date with developments, not reanalyse the fucking data himself. What do *you* do when we release a new CMB angular power spectrum? Do you run off to NASA and download the entire WMAP raw data stream and then sit there and go through the entire analysis, from pipeline and beam correction through to foreground removal and then the full analysis of the cleaned sky? That's a two- or three-year job, on top of about 7 years training.

Christ almighty.

Re:You really can't, for free

[boristhespider]

Sorry, I'm being way over-defensive here. If I understand your point properly I totally agree - science means someone should be able (in principle) to take the data and reproduce the results, or to *re-take* the data and reproduce the results. In practice that's basically impossible, but in principle, I totally agree with you.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2352470&cid=36905508

Reddit!

[MrQuacker]

More specifically: www.reddit.com/r/science

Re:Reddit!

[spinkham]

And r/askscience, which is a forum to ask scientists questions. Lots of fascinating stuff in there, not all news, but most of it new to me.

My daily pop science rounds...

[graveyhead]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
http://www.physorg.com/physics-news/
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/

Startswithabang especially goes into some very nice details about astrophysics topics and has some smart people commenting.

Depends on interest level and area

[interkin3tic]

I am a PhD student, so my specific topic I have a very high interest level in obviously. I have a google alert and an alert from pubmed (digital database of biomedical research) for certain key words on that very narrow topic. Partially so I my knowledge of that area is up to date, and partially because I'm worried someone else will publish similar conclusions to the ones I'm coming to.

If you have a broader, but still specific field you're interested in (like cell biology, or astrophysics), you might just skim through a relevant journal. There are several free online ones, like Plos one. Some other journals have highlights pages, with brief summaries of some of the most interesting research. They have very dense research articles in them written for experts in those particular fields, but the first parts of the printed journals are written for a general science audience. They'll have the highlights of the most interesting research and explain the significance, some interesting editorials. Some of that content is available for free on their websites. I don't see much use in getting a printed version delivered to you, but maybe a local library gets a copy. But if you know you're more interested in one general area that just "any science" then maybe work on regularly skimming the relevant journals.

Science at large, mostly slashdot. I seem to recall seeing some real fluff pieces, or fairly inaccurate posts on general science blogs like new scientist, but the real reason I don't frequent such websites is because I don't have much interest in such a wide scope of science. In high school I liked reading some introductory books about physics or ecology, but now if it's not cell science I feel like a fish out of water, I just don't have the background. Maybe I'm getting more closed minded. I hope not.

Re:Depends on interest level and area

[tibit]

I'm worried someone else will publish similar conclusions to the ones I'm coming to.

That's what science is about. The opposite is what Feynman was lamenting about, and I agree with him. It'll be splendid if you come up, independently, with same conclusions as someone else. Especially if each of you gets it from your own data. Science in general could use some reproduction of experimental results. There's plenty of results, especially from data coming from high-priced equipment, that has only ever been done once, and no one can get funding to reproduce it on different equipment, or under more controlled conditions, etc.

Re:Depends on interest level and area

[interkin3tic]

It'll be splendid if you come up, independently, with same conclusions as someone else

I think I misstated. I should have said "worried someone else has independently gotten the same results as me and will publish first." That may be good for science to have repeatability, but it sure wouldn't be good for me personally.

Re:Depends on interest level and area

[tibit]

Why? Last time I checked, plenty of Nobel prizes were awarded when numerous people arrived independently at the same results. So what if someone publishes it a month or two before you -- it's not like you could redo all the research in that time frame if it's really that significant, so any claims of you cheating are out of the question. I think the community is wise enough to accept that clever people may think alike and people do discover things concurrently? How would it be bad for you personally?

Re:Depends on interest level and area

[interkin3tic]

I think you overestimate me. If someone scooped me when I set up said google alert, I would not have been one or two months behind, I would have been a year or more behind. Also, while the nobel-prize level stuff is important enough to publish independent confirmation in a high-ranking journal, I doubt publishers would be interested in publishing confirmation of my little obscure area of cell biology. I think I'd have an even harder time getting it published than I am now, and as it is, we're not talking about first or second tier journals in the first place.

I read "Science"

[hey hey hey]

I subscribe to the journal Science. While I admit the actual research articles might as well be written in Linear B, the news articles, and the in-depth sections in front are written assuming the reader is intelligent and educated, but just not an expert in the particular field. It is such a joy to read articles that aren't aimed at the lowest common denominator!

I'm sure Nature, or other similar quality journals, would work as well (I choose Science, mostly because I found a subscription card for them).

Re:I read "Science"

[zrbyte]

Since my workplace has a subscription, I usually read Nature. But Nature News is also highly recommended and free: http://www.nature.com/news/index.html

Re:I read "Science"

[drooling-dog]

Cannot second this enthusiatically enough, and ditto for Nature. If you really want to be a science geek, these are the places to go. I'm no PhD - not even an MS - but I've subscribed for over 25 years and still spend about 5 or 6 hours a week reading it. I also recommend stretching yourself a little by reading some of the research papers in areas that interest you especially; over the long haul it will pay off to get beyond the baby-talk.

No knock on SciAm, New Scientist, and some of the other popular mags; they do a good job of introducing general ideas, but if you have a half-decent math background, their avoidance of math is often a real barrier to understanding, especially in the physical sciences.

Re:I read "Science"

[cashman73]

Both Science and Nature have pretty good iPhone/iPad apps which make reading the latest news on the go quite easy. Slashdot also does a pretty good job at highlighting some of the bigger stuff, though there's no iPhone app yet (but there is an Android app). I'm also a chemist, so I usually read anything on the ACS Publications website, focusing on the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and Biochemistry. I also read Chemical & Engineering News, and they have an email option and a Facebook presence, which makes it easy to access.

Re:I read "Science"

[Xtifr]

I used to have a roommate that got Science. My assessment was similar to yours, for the most part. But then, one day, I saw a four word headline on an article. Just four words, and not only did I not know what any of them meant, but stare at them as I might, I could not even figure out which was the verb! So I tried to read the article. When I finished, I finally knew...which word was the verb. Oh, and that all four words probably had something to do with biology. That was it—all I got.

After that humbling experience, I went back to Science News and SciAm. They may be a little too dumbed down at times, but at least I can spot the verbs 100% of the time. :)

Re:I read "Science"

[pz]

Science (at least the article encapsulations) has been my bedtime reading for a very long time. It all started when I was a child and my father had personal subscriptions to Science and Scientific American. I still recall the feeling of accomplishment and pride as a kid when I was able to slog through a full research article in Science for the first time. My children are going to benefit from the same exposure, but I'll probably add Nature. And both in print form.

Why print? Because a web site is ephemeral. If you don't know about it, it does not exist. A printed journal is in one's immediate environment persistently and, with luck, will be eventually picked up by any sufficiently curious child.

I live in Vietnam...

[wisebabo]

so keeping up with science developments is really just restricted to what I can get over the Internet.

That said, I've found the best site for news is sciencedaily.com. I found it because it was rated one of the top 100 web sites on the Internet I think by PCMag. It's really good at giving a very comprehensive (they must have several dozens of articles a day) run down on what's going on in a fashion that's accessible to the intelligent technical professional.

If technology is your thing then I'd recommend MIT's technologyreview.com. It's articles are a little more in depth and focus also on societal implications of the technology being discussed.

Finally, if you're a space nut like me, I'd recommend spacedaily.com (published by the same people who do science daily). Again it's a "just the facts ma'am" web site that is clear and to the point.

There are many other good sites but these give me what I want in the least amount of TIME (which is to me a very precious resource!).

Journals online & from libraries

[gzipped_tar]

Since you're especially interested in physics, I'd recommend magazines like Physics Today, which I guess is accessible from decent libraries in both online and dead-tree formats. It's not a research journal and is intended for the general audience, but is somewhat more advanced than the material you usually find online. The American Physical Society also carries an on-line journal "Physics" which is free to read and provides a view into what physicists from around the globe are doing. It provides commentary and explanations to notable articles published in the Physical Review journals that are only open to subscribers.

You may also want to check some open-access journals such as the New Journal of Physics, and the upcoming Physical Review X (no content yet). But reading "real" research papers doesn't usually makes you feel it's "engaging"..

Re:Journals online & from libraries

[gzipped_tar]

By the way, don't forget arXiv, if you're really interested in the actual research. It is where people upload the preprint versions of their papers so that they can be accessed by the public. However the articles are (mostly) unedited, raw material not yet passed peer review. It does contain some noise and rubbish, but you can get a pretty good impression of what the scientists are doing by having a look at it.

Re:Journals online & from libraries

[boristhespider]

A quick correction: arXiv is the site where people post preprints, which are the versions of papers that they submit to journals. Many papers are revised once -- the authors upload the version of a paper accepted by a journal. The changes are often very minor apart from formatting. There are badly-written papers on there (and an increasing amount where someone hasn't used a spell-checker, or evidently even re-read it) but the very vast bulk are just the submission-quality paper. What a lot of authors do is prepare the preprint using the same style-file as the journal they'll submit to, meaning that the article on the arXiv is likely to be very close to the published version. Authors will then add a journal reference when the paper is published.

There's no cachet in submitting dross to a journal and expecting it to be smartened up through peer-review. Referees are busy people, refereeing out of a sense of duty to their field. They have neither time nor interest in polishing someone else's work. Likewise, journal staff are overworked and want to devote their time to dealing with the formatting, the type-setting, the layout and the image quality of a paper. They've got absolutely no interest in correcting badly-written, badly-spelled papers -- and no interest in cleaning up horrific formatting. People are aware of this, so generally what hits the arXiv is clean enough to pass through referees, editors, sub-editors and type-setters without being held up at any step.

In my field, at least, the arXiv is the first stop to find a paper that was published from about 1997 onwards. (It was there before, but in the mid-late 90s it became hard to find a paper that wasn't on the arXiv.) Only if that fails do we go off and look elsewhere.

MIT Technology Review and The Economist

[jmcbain]

As a CS PhD myself, I also feel the need to keep up with the general sciences. My favourite sources of science news are two magazines: MIT Technology Review and the technology section of The Economist. Both are extremely well-written and distill recent cutting-edge science down into laymen's terms. Both have great websites and great iPad applications. The Economist additionally has a Technology Quarterly issue once every 3 months (duh) that should definitely not be missed.

For Computer Science-related technology articles from research labs and academia that's written for laymen, IEEE Computer Society's Computer magazine and the ACM's Communications of the ACM are great.

If you want something a bit more dumbified, then Wired magazine is very good. I've been subscribing for over 10 years and just recently switched over to an iPad subscription.

Re:MIT Technology Review and The Economist

[gilleain]

the technology section of The Economist. The Economist additionally has a Technology Quarterly issue once every 3 months (duh) that should definitely not be missed.

Agree with this; Economist does a good review (possibly with a free-market slant, but hey :) and can be balanced with the New Scientist. I don't really like the american one ("Science"?) but that might be a cultural thing.

Re:MIT Technology Review and The Economist

[epine]

That's pretty much my list exactly. Wired has a nice piece from time to time, but when I start to click links at Wired randomly, I punch myself in the head and say "OK, back to work now." I regard the good stuff there as nostalgia pieces. It functions like the writing in Playboy used to then it descends into the gadget version of Maxim. Wired has an article about death (or grim ways to die) just about always. As Vonnegut used to say, death makes everything more profound.

I'm such a science junkie that my orbit includes many repeats. This isn't always a bad thing, though. Right now edge.org has a book abstract that repeats an older TED talk.

The Annual edge.org Question Center is good if you like straw polls on how real scientists are viewing the world. (You must, or what are you doing on this thread?) If the guy banging on about haecceity appeals to you, also you'll like aldaily.com, which unfortunately has changed a lot and is turning into a TL;DR waterdrip torture for unemployed humanities students to spend long afternoons to imagine having a job they trained for. You'll come away with a whole new appreciation for topic sentences. Some of these articles consist of one False Cleanerfish after another, until you're whittled to the bone.

A little bit of intelligent !science helps retune the filters.

Not Even Wrong is a nice place to visit to see what happens to people who spend their whole life training to construct theories about phenomena the world can no longer afford to measure. If you squint at the Higgs, the fine print reads "No new particles next 10 orders of energy magnitude." Freud has fallen out of fashion, but string theory has picked up the slack. Turns out falsification has budgetary constraints. Who knew?

Re:MIT Technology Review and The Economist

[jmcbain]

Maybe you missed the part where I wrote that I have a Ph.D.? Intelligent people use Apple gear. If you don't have an iPad, then that says more about you and where you stand in society than anything else.

Stick all these in your RSS

[Sarusa]

This is the best website for science news for reasonably educated but not specialized people: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Science News has a website - http://www.sciencenews.org/ and a weekly magazine which are always good, if overly sober, though the magazine doesn't have near enough content to cover everything that happened that week.

New Scientist is a weekly mag that has drifted towards Omni or PopSci lately ('IS SENSATIONAL THING TRUE? (...no)'), but will still keep you up to date on most happenings including things you might miss online. http://www.newscientist.com/

Scientific American is a monthly mag that's a bit too political but has some good articles: http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Then there's Discover Magazine, which is a step down from either but has some good blogs: http://discovermagazine.com/

Live Science is a further step down, a good site for training wheel science: http://www.livescience.com/

I won't recommend the mag Science, because even though it's The Magazine, it's not suited for the dabbler.

My balanced suggestion is add the news feeds for all of these to your RSS reader (like Google Reader), click on what looks interesting, and subscribe to New Scientist in print or on Zinio and read it every week.

Slashdot and Ars Technica

[Max Romantschuk]

Reading both feeds me with enough scientific articles for my limited appetite... Ars has some surprisingly in depth stuff at times.

Quirks & Quarks

[psychonaut]

For the last thirty years I've been getting my weekly dose of science news from Quirks & Quarks on CBC radio. Shows are available for download or streaming online as soon as they air, and their online archive of episodes goes back to 2000.

Good summaries

[Ceyx]

I like:

http://physicsworld.com/
http://www.physicstoday.org/

They are good a summary of current work but still easy to understand.

Email newsletters are convenient

[azoblue]

Science news delivered periodically to your inbox. Some of them are customizable, so you can receive updates only on topics of interest to you.

Highly recommended:
American Scientist
Physorg

Also interesting:
Spaceweather
Nasa Science News
Nasa Earth Observatory
Discover Magazine

I imagine there are RSS feeds for most of these as well if you prefer that format.

No one else gets "Nature"?

[dltaylor]

The nice part (which definitely is NOT the price for a personal subscription) is that the front has readily-accessible news articles, the middle has the "some math helps for the physics" research papers and inside the back cover are "speculative fiction" short stories ranging from good enough to AWESOME.

I wish they'd publish the short story wherein a reindeer-drawn sleigh makes a forced landing on an RAF base, which IMO, is the best Christmas story ever.

John Baez

[FrootLoops]

I love the mathematical physicist John Baez's stuff. (He's the singer Joan Baez's cousin.) He has a blog and a bunch of stuff on his web page including several hundred issues of This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (be warned: it's incredibly mathy, and high-level). There's tons more on his web page that's just plain interesting. I love that you can tell from his horrible site design that it was made by someone who's interested in content rather than fluff.

update: No one else gets "Nature"?

[dltaylor]

There's a copy at (Harnessing the Brane-Deer):

http://www.concatenation.org/futuresindex.html

IEEE spectrum, New scientist

[NtwoO]

Two mags with nice info.

I read /.

[X10]

I used to read New Scientist. Now I read /.

RSS

[amn108]

Slowly but surely make yourself familar with publications (websites) on Internet that you think you like. Find their RSS feeds and subscribe to them using your favorite RSS aggregattor application. That way you'll always have a list of what's going on, from (mostly) independent sources and without having to manually walk through a set of websites, although you can always do that too.

So, in short: websites of your liking / relevance + RSS = answer to your enquiry

RSS feeds

[EnigmaticIndustries]

I mostly use the one from Science Daily,

Some sources

[BenBoy]

Net: scitechdaily.com Mag: scientific american (dumbed down these days, but still a good read), the magazine "science", the magazine "nature" (both hard reads, but if you bull through, you'll be rewarded) podcast: Science Friday, RadioLab (sometimes science-y, always fun). I like working my way through the web of associations on amazon between books I've enjoyed (say "parasite rex") and books I might like ("Fever" (about the history of malaria)). Ask a friend what his/her cool ref's are ... start a salon where people bring in cool stuff they've read about.

Social Media

[bmo]

Seriously.

Create twitter and facebook accounts

Use these as "rss feed" of people/agencies you follow that post to them.

???????

Profit.

--
BMO

Captain Obvious strikes again!

[Qbertino]

Errrm, ... Nature magazine? Just get a subscription.
Sorry, but this seems so much like a blatantly obivious no-brainer to me.

Re:Captain Obvious strikes again!

[A nonymous Coward]

Absolutely. It avoids the political correctness of Science, and you read it as a website, not that awful zinio software you have to install on your computer. But things may have changed since I last tried Science.

I just

[Anonymous Coward]

do drugs

Journals

[glwtta]

The old fashioned way: scan through the abstracts for about a dozen journals in molecular biology, genetics, and comp bio (most journals have handy feeds for new articles), and, at least theoretically, read the papers relevant to my work.

It's sometimes informative, less often engaging, but (apparently) doesn't require a PhD.

For non work-related stuff I enjoy the Discover blogs.

Internet....

[tonio_d_monio]

Slashdot, Gizmag, Engadget, Howstuffworks and national geographic. At least these are the free ones over the net... If you'd like more, New Scientist is good too altho you have to pay for it.

Surprisingly, Fark

[adenied]

As odd as it might seem, the Geek tab on Fark actually tends to get a lot of very interesting science articles. Half of them make it to the front page too it seems. Buncha nerds over there.

Next Big Future

[Dean Edmonds]

http://nextbigfuture.com/

Brian's copyediting is atrocious, but he stays on top of a wide range of technological developments.

Perhaps this will help

[hyades1]

Here's a few I use all the time:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

http://www.pandasthumb.org/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

http://scienceblogs.com/channel/24-hours/?utm_source=globalChannel&utm_medium=link

http://sciencehack.com/

BBC Science in Action

[hamster_nz]

The BBC Science in Action podcasts are good listening. Find them on iTunes.

How do i keep up with technical material

[skubeedooo]

I once did a PhD in theoretical physics and I'd like to keep up with important new developments. I always found that it was better to read the actual papers rather than some leaky abstraction in a blog, but now I have another job I don't have time to look through *all* the different articles and trawl through the citations.
So, my question is this...is there some kind of pagerank or suggestion service for reading articles on arxiv?
I'm thinking something a bit like reddit, where it maintains a global score of each article as well as tracking what you read so it can suggest what to read next based on what you liked. Citations don't quite do this as they only point backwards.

brain vs PhD?

[Siara]

You just need a brain to comprehend stuff, not a PhD. However, being enrolled into a University enables you to read for _free_ all the scientific journals you like (Science, Nature, PNAS, JACS and whatever else) to get more details on what you are reading on pupular science ones. And you can even become the one that writes those articles :o)

Pick quality news sources

[Jazari]

If you're just interested in keeping up in general, then you need good news sources. I like The Economist's science section ( http://www.economist.com/science-technology ), and Slashdot. Just by reading those, you'll never miss any major developments.
You can also watch the occasional TED lecture ( http://www.ted.com/index.php ).

It's all about the blogs!

[Chalnoth]

One of the primary problems with the popular media, is that it tends to be overly-sensationalistic. Every time I read a popular news article, I am extremely skeptical. This is largely because when it is an article about something which I already know quite a lot about, very often I find it is overblown at best, completely wrong at worst.

As a result, these days I try as much as I can to get my science information directly from scientists and science writers whom I trust. And that means blogs. There are three good science blogs sites I know of:
scientopia.org
blogs.discovermagazine.com
scienceblogs.com

Basically, I'd suggest browsing them a bit, finding some particular authors you like, and follow them. I'd particularly suggest Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science for frequent information about general science. I follow Scicurious at Neurotopia for neuroscience and just generally weird stuff. I follow Cosmic Variance mostly for their coverage of high energy physics, as well as the occasional cosmology post. Pharyngula is fun for biology (esp. cephalapod biology) as well as general ranting about the anti-science crowd. MarkCC at Good Math, Bad Math is good for math and programming-related stuff. And there are many, many more.

The really nice thing about blogs is that they form a conversation, so even if there is a mistake in one post, very often it is followed up on later, either by other bloggers or by the same blogger. This fact allows you to trust the information on these blogs much much more strongly than you can ever trust the popular news media. But, of course, this does require that you carefully select which blogs you follow, and are discerning in reading their arguments. If you're able to do that then blogs are by far the most reliable place for news about science for the popular audience.

Re:It's all about the blogs!

[renhwa]

This is definitely true -- bloggers are often scientists writing directly from the source, so you tend to get news that is both accurate and very current. Another site to try is:
http://www.science20.com/
For example, try:
http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor
for an excellent particle physics blog. Tommaso will tell you everything you need to know about the Tevatron and the LHC!
Also, a shameless plug for a friend: check out http://www.factodiem.com/ for really interesting science-y articles about science :)

latest information on all the sciences

[paul42w]

http://www.physorg.com/latest-news/

ScienceNews

[cyberfringe]

I've been getting the print version of ScienceNews (bi-weekly) for 40 years. The online version http://www.sciencenews.org/ is just as good. There are many other good sites out there of course. This is one I can vouch for as a scientist without hesitation.

Slashdot

[drinkypoo]

I count on Slashdot to let me know about all the new solar technologies that will never see the light of day.

High-density science news, not 'simplified'

[argStyopa]

http://www.sciencenews.org/

26 issues a year, maybe 12-14 pages each. Extremely good information across all the fields of science, essentially synopses of all the cutting-edge stuff because if it's interesting you're going to dig into it on the web anyway. Serious coverage, not simplified for 'popular consumption'. Usually one or two focus articles on something of particular significance, these run a couple of pages.

Read it at online - I think pretty much everything in print is there.

Reading

[meiao]

the articles at Slashdot. Oh, wait...

Feeds is all you needs

[Sockatume]

Technical: Most of the good journals have excellent RSS feeds, with the full abstract and the ToC graphic, so follow the feeds for the journals in your area and make sure you go through them completely at least once a week. I get about 1000 new abstracts in that time, including a shedload of PNAS, Science and Nature stuff that's totally irrelevant but it only takes about 30 minutes to skim for relevant stuff. Even if I'm away from my institutional access, I can mark the abstract in my aggregator for future reference (stars on Google Reader, for instance).

For general news: podcasts and/or magazines, basically anything that acts as a digest. If you try to keep up with the broader news by following all the primary sources, you will exhaust yourself with boredom. SGU's a good, entertaining podcast.

Science Sources

[elkriver50]

sciencenews.org - best overall for concise coverage (reading the print version for almost 50 years); newscientist.com - unique articles, can be a bit sensationalistic; physorg.com - details; sciencedaily.com - details; NY Times Science section; sciam.com - Scientific American

Do not forget Physorg.com

[chriscozi]

The regular website is soso but the iPad and phone version rocks out. Multiple subjects constantly updated highly readable. Very similar to an rss feed but better.

The New York Times

[Sir_Kurt]

I suggest you get either an online or dead tree subscription to the NYT. Excellent general science coverage. The NYT does the heavy work of gathering together the stories and sources. If you want to know more in depth about the story, use the internet.

Kurt

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

[definate]

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, GOOD SIR!

Slashdot is the last place to look...

[QuietLagoon]

Slashdot is far too filtered.

.
Some sites that are helpful:

Science News

Science Daily

New Scientist

Tons of Science Sites, Grouped by Method Used

[draggin_fly]

As websites, I browse for science:

http://www.newscientist.com/
http://www.boingboing.net/
http://science.slashdot.org/
http://www.nature.com/
http://www.sciam.com/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://discovermagazine.com/

and I include those in my newsfeeds along with the NIH RSS. Also in my feeds are

Flipboard Tech
Flipboard Wired Magazine
Flipboard Make Magazine
Hacker News
ProPublica
Gamification
Science Magazine

In Zite, I use

Science News
Gadgets
Technology
Alternative Medicine
Bioinformatics
Informatics


In Pulse, I go with Slashdot and also

Smithsonian Science
Cool Hunting
Slashgear
Discover Magazine
Wired: Science
and I have not used but intend to try the WebMD app.
I hope you aggregate and rank everyone's choices! I think some really good ones will come to the top that way.

Re:Tons of Science Sites, Grouped by Method Used

[draggin_fly]

And shoot, I forgot

http://www.nature.com/

What Marketing Agency is Poster Working For?

[fygment]

How did a such a patently obvious, dumb-ass marketing question like this get posted?

If you have to ask the question, you are not, nor ever were, a 'nerd'.

Re:What Marketing Agency is Poster Working For?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Or maybe he is just young and trying to find a way to learn some stuff. But hey, don't let alternate possibilities belay your condescension at all.

i used to

[nimbius]

use a site called slashdot that...

...oh wait, nevermind.

If your goal is to....

[DNAtsol]

If you're just looking to keep abreast of recent/current developments in your favourite science I'd recommend http://www.sciencedaily.com/. It's not comprehensive but it does highlight some of the coolest stuff going on that is of probable interest to edumacated types rather than the great unwashed herds of popular Everyman news about the latest diet pill to lose 50 lbs while eating nothing but pizza and cheeseburgers.

New Scientist

[Midnight Thunder]

I have a subscription to the New Scientist. The magazine is easy to read and keeps me updated on what us happening in general. Beyond that I turn to the Internet or the odd specialised journal once in a while.

Arxiv, Science 2.0, etc...

[myrikhan]

I'm in the same boat. My first degree is physics, but now I'm doing my PhD is computer science. My particular interests are in particle physics, dark matter and astronomy/cosmology. The best place to scratch my itch I find is http://www.arxiv.org./ It's a preprint archive for physics, math, computer science and so-on. http://www.science20.com/ has some interesting blogs, but you have to be careful as there are a number of people there who use it as a platform to advance their own ideas. For more general science reading I have http://www.sciencedaily.com/ and http://www.astronomynow.com/ bookmarked. On the educational side I have Leonard Susskind's general education courses in physics bookmarked. They can be found at http://newpackettech.com/Resources/Susskind/.

New Scientist

[ridgecritter]

A "here's what's happening in science" weekly published in England. Look at a few issues in your local library, you'll like it. I've subscribed for over 20 years.

sciencedaily.com

[Acting Ordinant]

Try sciencedaily.com. The research results I read about there show up on Slashdot a day or two later, and then another two days later on mainstream news sources, if at all.

I usually just read /.

[Old Sparky]

But that's akin to chewing gum for the mind.

Physical Review Letters - Focus

[OwenTheContrarian]

PRL Focus is a condensed version of some of the more interesting submissions to the Physical Review Letters. Easy to read, usually understandable and has a wide variety of advanced subject matter. About four 'condensed' articles a month. Highly recommended.

Aggregation

[shdowhawk]

I agree that the internet is a fantastic place. But I will assume that when most people talk about "the internet" they are talking about sitting in front of a normal computer or laptop. I extend your list of websites and mention my favorite mobile app:

http://www.pulse.me/

Works on android, and iphones/ipads. I don't work for the company but this is one of my "highly recommended" apps for everyone to get. It's a news aggregator that lets YOU choose what feeds you want to have, as well as setting up "folder" like areas so that you can have an entire area of science stuff.

This is how i get my latest news. 5 minutes on a bus, waiting at a food place, sitting on the toilet, bored during commercials, etc... throw open the app, and get a quick view of the latest stuff from a bunch of different websites.

*note, when adding in news feeds, there is a section under "browse" called "trending". These will show the "top stories" for anything from business, to gaming and of course, science

Enjoy =)

Re:Aggregation

[beckerist]

I've thrown all the feeds from each of these sites into Google Reader. In no particular order:

wired.com
slashdot.org
spectrum.ieee.org
scientistscanvas.com
arxiv.org
techcrunch.com
techdirt.com
news.discovery.com
physicsworld.com
newscientist.com
physorg.com
nationalgeographic.com
scienceblog.com

I have plenty more. Any RSS feeder app works. You get some repeats but there's a constant stream of science news.

Read the journals Science and/or Nature

[algorimancer]

They're well worth a subscription, though if you're at a university you can probably see them for free. They both have very good online versions. These are the sources that most online stories reference, and they're quite readable -- though the papers can be a bit challenging. The format is a combination of news, review articles, and peer-reviewed papers. Issues come out weekly.

The Scientist

[pneum0nic]

The Scientist http://the-scientist.com/ is a good resource for the life sciences. Not too dumb, not too 'sciency'. It's a good read, with some pretty interesting articles.

Re:Lowest common denominator?

[Strange Attractor]

What is that?

The integer 1 usually works.

Some Specific Places on the Internet

[ideonexus]

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

Re:Naked Scientist Podcast

[c_jonescc]

Mod parent informative. The Naked Scientist is accessible to children, but constantly surprises me with what I learn, and I have a physics PhD.

Other great general audience podcasts:
Nature
Science
60 second science, from Scientific American
Science Fridays, from NPR

American Scientist

[602]

American Scientist is a beefier Scientific American. It has review articles on recent findings written for a scientifically educated audience, as opposed to SciAm, which is written for sixth graders and businessmen. It's what SciAm used to be a few decades ago. Published six times a year.

Re:American Scientist

[remote_bob]

Yep. The one general science publication I read religiously is American Scientist. Much less fluffy than Scientific American, and they have an excellent computer science author in Brian Hayes.

Re:American Scientist

[avandesande]

Reading the old 'amateur scientist' articles that explain how to build linear accelerators or lasers make me weep for SciAm.

Some websites

[bladesinger]

To original poster, I read the articles on: http://sciencedaily.com/ (all sciences- this is by far my favorite) http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing (computer science) http://mathoverflow.net/ (though this one is usually way above my head) http://extremetech.com/ (engineering) I also have Scientific American subscription, and although it occasionally has very interesting physics articles (the accuracy of which I couldn't tell you), I think there are better magazines.

s/book abstract/book excerpt

[epine]

No coffee beans in the house this morning, not even a bag of mixed dregs in the back of the freezer from three years ago. First time in maybe ten years I'm dreg destitute. I shook a quarter of a bean out from between the teeth of my coffee grinder and chewed on it, then ate a square of dark chocolate. It's amazing any word came out right in my previous post.

Arstechnica

[friedmud]

I'm a scientist... so I do read quite a few journals / journal articles every month... but only in my specific area. To keep up with science in general I like the coverage over at Arstechnica: http://arstechnica.com/science/

It covers a really wide range of topics and is generally very insightful. They also always link to publications on the particular subject so you can read more if the story really piqued your interest.

Re:Scientific American

[DaveAtFraud]

+1 on Scientific American.

I've been subscribing to the treeware edition since about 1980. I find the articles to be very approachable across a variety of fields. Besides the paper mag, the e-mail digests are great for keeping up with what's current. The editors of both do a fantastic job of picking out what's important so the signal to noise ratio is really good. The scope is also good since the coverage includes all fields of "science" as well as technology. Obviously, the treeware edition isn't free but it's definitely worth the price of a subscription.

Cheers,
Dave

review sections in Science and Nature

[peter303]

Although these magazines are more rarely stocked in public libraries after a decade of recession cuts. Unfortunately it cost significant dollars (> $100) to subscribe in print or electronically.

disappearing university libraries

[peter303]

Up to five years ago I'd stop by the local research university library to browse journals. But most libraries have gone all electronic to save storage costs. And its inconvenient to about guest accounts to access these journals. Even MIT turned the engineering journal room under the Great Dome into a computer lounge. In its heyday there were racks upon racks of science and engineering journals filling the dome. The remnant print journals, mainly society news monthlies, have been moved to a small side room.

There was ruckus last year when a local university decided to move 90% of its book collection to long term storage. The pleasures of "deep browsing" in the stacks are now very limited. You can get a hint a book exists from online catalogs or Google Scholar snippets. Then request the actual volume from storage which may take up to a week.

PhysOrg

[CreatureComfort]

One of my main sources is the RSS feed and website of PhysOrg. http://www.physorg.com/

Great breadth and depth across science and medicine. Very quick in getting stories out on new developments. And most of their articles provide links to the original research paper or news release.

APS Special Journals

[mdmower]

The American Physical Society has two publications which break down recent physics developments for students (high level of technical knowledge generally not necessary) and for researchers (but are generally approachable... you can get the gist of the topic).

Physical Review Focus (focus.aps.org) - "Sections from Physical Review and Physical Review Letters explained for students and researchers in all fields of physics"
Physics: Spotlighting Exceptional Research (physics.aps.org)

Science Daily Magazine

[djl4570]

My go to site for science news summaries is http://www.sciencedaily.com/index.htm. The stories usually have a link to the source and a journal article.

Science Blogging Aggregated

[Opyros]

http://scienceblogging.org/

This Week in Science

[bigsexyjoe]

I enjoy the This Week in Science podcast. Entertaining and covers a lot of interesting material.

don't skimp on ye olde science

[fred fleenblat]

If you find a contemporary publication you like, seek out some back issues and set aside some time to read the interesting articles in depth. Very rewarding.

suggestions

[NikeHerc]

1. Amplifying others' posts: arxiv.org.

2. Find used book stores that have a section on science.

3. Avoid Scientific American like the plague! It started falling apart in the mid-90s and, sadly, devolved into drivel and journalists' fluff.

Eurekalert RSS

[bill_mcgonigle]

Consume this with your RSS reader.

Re:get the real thing

[drjzzz]

re-posting after logging in (whoops)... I'll take dis/credit for this opinion:
Having been frequently disappointed - even distressed - by major errors in comprehension and comprehensibility when reading reports of news from my own field published in the regular press, even high quality media such as the NY Times, I must imagine that they also get it wrong when reporting other fields. So I would recommend reading the real thing - the journals Science and Nature are tops in general science - and trying hard to understand what they are communicating. These journals both have outstanding introductions to the top papers each issue. They also have first rate podcasts (free) that describe the findings and discuss them with the authors. For tracking my own field, I have standing searches on PubMed that deliver matches with links every week by email.

NOVA, Scientific American, Nature Podcasts, eZines

[virtualXTC]

I have a tiered science consumption starting with PBS / NPR.

PBS / NPR have a vast array of science based shows sources and if you are in Boston, there's 6 over the air PBS channels, so there's usually at least one with some science programming on it. My favs are Nova, Nova Science now, and Scientific American Frontiers and Science Friday

Nature podcasts offer alternative, slightly more bleeding edge world view, but tend to just be teasers.

Then there's the ezines everyone has been mentioning, my favs are: eurekalert.org; newscientist.com; sciencenews.org; and for engineering: gizmag.com

I use to try to watch the Ted talks but have found that the majority of them tend to be more of a sales pitch than actual new and engaging science and have since just let my friends filter them for me via the occasional post to their facebook page

Science Alert and NCBI

[quack.sawbones]

I am linked to http://sciencealert.com.au/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ which post things to my facebook news feeds occasionally.

SciVee.tv for videos, especially via its channels

[shmorhay]

If you have a high-bandwidth connection, and are interested in browsing science-related videos, SciVee.TV provides some nice content -- http://www.scivee.tv/ at the top level, and for its channels go to http://www.scivee.tv/channels .

The sites I use frequently

[Anonymous Coward]

I do my best to keep up with current scientific developments. Here is my take. I do, however, find repeats often and definitely speculation on various sites.

http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/ - A favorite
http://www.physorg.com/ - A favorite
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/index.html
http://www.wired.com/
http://www.sciam.com/
http://www.redorbit.com/ - Kind of hard to navigate
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/science/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/pages/Research.shtml
http://techcrunch.com/
http://www.tgdaily.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/
http://www.physicscentral.com/
http://www.scienceprog.com/
http://www.newscientist.com/
http://arstechnica.com/ - A favorite
http://www.metafilter.com/

Take what you want. trolls, troll away plz

Podcast advocate

[virginiajim]

I use Google Reader to gather data from any rss feed of interest and also download weekly about 60 podcasts from various sources each week using the Feedreader aggregator. I have to plug, in particular, podcasts (or videocasts) from This Week in Virology, This Week in Parasitism, and This Week in Microbiology, all available via a starting point of www.twiv.tv . (If you think Parasitism is not interesting, listen to TWIP 22.) The Naked Scientist based in Britain offers a nice weekly collection of news gathered from that area. The Australian Broadcasting Network at www.abc.net.au/radio/ offers podcasts about technology oriented towards that part of the world. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the BBC also offer podcasts which include new developments in all areas, but don't allow you to specialize in one area, such as medicine or computers. Futures in Biotech ( http://twit.tv/FIB ) has produced some terrific interviews in that area and Leo Laporte and his This Week in Technology does a few podcasts that offer more than his usual troubleshooting genre. http://www.podnutz.com/ is strictly computers, but three podcasts in particular are of interest as trendsetting. They are 274, 302 and 316. They deal with the development and growth of Lisa Hendrickson's career. She's a female computer troubleshooter who is rapidly building a large business that repairs computers remotely and worth watching and learning from as an example of how to grow a new business in the US. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute produces podcasts and videocasts about advancing technology Do a search for NIH Videocasts for presentations by this organization. Econtalk may not be strictly technical, but has outstanding interviews about developments and history that disproves that idea that economics are dry and boring. I've been saving a list of Best Podcasts for over a year and they number now about 90, but amount to over 2GB, so are not readily posted. I also have the addresses of podcasts that are plugged into the Feedreader aggregator that I'll try to add here in case that's of interest if the moderator agrees to include them. Several of these were worth noting, too, like NY Times Tech Talk and RadioLab: http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/ppq/56641.xml http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-5/asunto-del-dia-en-r5/SASUNTO.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/clickon/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cyberspeak http://feeds.feedburner.com/diffusionradio http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510030 http://feeds.feedburner.com/GlobalChallenges http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/healthc/rss.xml http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/HHMI_Lectures.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://www.materialstoday.com/rss/podcasts/ http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml http://dow

CSIRO science by email

[Married to Christ]

With all the patent revenue they get the CSIRO uses some of that to produce a pretty good (weekly iirc) email subscription service.
This is targeted towards kids (or the mentally retarded I suppose). Has some news and projects kids can do.

Science in the News

[orkayak]

I try hard to keep up. However, because of the time involved, I generally just rely on Science in the News Weekly (http://www.americanscientist.org/science/) via a email (http://www.americanscientist.org/subscribe/page/free-e-newsletters). For updates on Science in the News and American Scientist, you could follow @AmSciMag on Twitter.

I just can't keep up anymore...

[ConversantShogun]

...ever since they stopped making those 35mm "turn at the beep" film productions.