The Last Word

Everyweek in the New Scientist magazine I always end up skipping straight to the ‘Last Word’ column. The ‘Last Word’ is a small section of the magazine in which scientist from across the world try to answer questions from members of the public. These can vary from intelligent questions which are quite difficult to answer such as;

Why is it when two people walk together they often subconsciously start to walk in a synchronised manner?

To highly amusing, silly questions such as;

Why is snot green?

The highlights of the ‘Last Word’ column were, last year, made into a highly successful book aptly named ‘Does anything eat wasps?’ This was so well received by the general public that the follow-up ‘Why don’t penguins feet freeze?’ has just been released.

Even though these books are presented in a light-hearted and jovial manner I believe they actually represent a very good piece of science communication and further aid the publics understanding of science.

Why? One might ask. It is precisely this type of informal scientific writing which intrigues those who relish wit, insight and scientific curiosity, yet may not want to read the complex, and sometimes slightly boring articles in the New Scientist or Nature. These books are definitely a ‘wise, weird and wacky compendium that is guaranteed to amaze, inform and delight.’

Chris McLeod

SciPod – New Scientist Podcast

With the use of iPods and other MP3 players on the increase, it is of no surprise that the science world has started using ‘Podcasts’ as a way of communicating science to the public. An example of a science magazine employing this method of communication is the NewScientist.com Podcast – or SciPod.

SciPod is a weekly podcast which is available for download on the New Scientist website. The programme consists of four or five pieces of science news which correspond to articles in the upcoming issue of New Scientist magazine - published the following day.

The informal style of the programme makes for easy listening and the language used make the more detailed aspects of the science easy to follow. The topics are often related to current issues, allowing listeners to learn more about subjects covered briefly in the news, such as climate change, obesity, etc. The variety of subject matter is broad, with different areas of science being included in each programme.

SciPod is an effective audio programme for communicating science to the public, in spite of the cheesy music and tag-lines such as “SciPod - it’s not just a podcast, it’s the very essence of happiness!” With specialist subject matter explained in layman terms and in digestible chunks of about 7 minutes per topic, SciPod is a good overview of the week’s science and technology news that engages the listener’s interest and may also encourage listener to pick up a copy of the magazine to found out even more, which, in my opinion, indicates that SciPod has successfully served its purpose as an effective form of science communication.

Cheryl Lai

The New ‘Scientist’

Who is the intended readership of the New Scientist magazine? Most of you have presumably at least flicked through a copy of the New Scientist; what did you think of it?

I personally think it has an identity crisis. On the one hand the public think of it as an up to date technical magazine where as those in research see it is dumbed down ‘popular’ science. It fits the later by trying to engage the public by being interactive like many other general science providers. Therefore it provides a website which includes podcasts, blogs and such like.

The problem in engaging the public seems to be that the content is too specific for those who not have none or little scientific background and hence understanding more than just the title becomes difficult. From my experiences the majority of the articles I can only get the gist of because there is a lot of presumed knowledge by the writer. Also a lot of stories covered do not necessarily have practical implications yet and therefore may not be of interest to the general public.

To gauge scientists points of view Alice recommended to me this discussion list (see point 12) which discusses the New Scientist usefulness to the scientific community. There are a range of views with some very interesting points. The majority seem to think that New Scientist is not an accurate report on research in their field and therefore are not trusting of the rest of the text.

To summarise I think the New Scientist is perfect for those scientists who wish to keep tabs on what is going on outside their field as the text is not up to date as a journal but also not so detailed. Though the last page of the New Scientist would certainly suggest that it does have a readership which extends outside the scientific community since ‘The Last Word’ has even been published in book form.

submitted by Sarah Clayton

happy birthday

Happy birthday New Scientist.