An incredibly thought provoking Scientific American article about science and politics...

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10. You would have to know the old SciAm.

I first subscribed to the magazine in 1970. It was a completely different animal which served as a readable digest of top-tier research projects happening around the world. It was prestigious and respected. The Amateur Scientist taught you how to build a homemade apparatus to measure gravity waves. Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games introduced the public to Martin Conway's Game of Life, which has had a profound influence on growth algorithms and societal modeling. But you had to be a little smart to begin with.

When OMNI Magazine went south in 1995, SciAm made a very concerted effort to nab their readership. It turned into pseudoscientific tabloid in the space of about six months, and I cancelled my subscription.

Now, you get shit like this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=are-ufos-lighting-up-the-skies-over-2008-08-29

When I see something as arrogantly and blatantly misinformed as the comment in your excerpt I feel I can't rely on them anymore. That's been the case for a while.