Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, the magazine is much smaller now; the page count is down. I think this is true for many magazines today. Second, many articles are no longer written by scientists but by the magazine staff. The articles seem dumbed down. I used to relish the challenge of an article on a topic that I did not have background for. Over time, I could get farther and farther into the articles on the same topic as my understanding improved. I don't have that challenge with the current Scientific American. Finally, some articles are designed to trap the unwary reader. An article on unmanned, AI weapons stands out. The article starts out throwing possibility after possibility at the reader as an argument against researching these weapons without any judgement at all as to how improbable the scenario is. As an example, the article stated that these weapons would be "exactly like" Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Terminator". The article relies on the reader reacting with emotion instead of thinking things through. At the end of the article, numbers of organizations and numbers of people who have pledged not engage in this research are given to present the reader with an impression of a large, worldwide movement against this research. But the article doesn't say who the people are and what kind of organizations have made this pledge. Are they the political organizations arguing against the research? Would these organizations have engaged in any weapons research at all, let alone research on this topic? Are the people listed researchers in unmanned weapons? Are the people simply members of the organizations counted already? There are other deceptive sections of the article; these are two that I remember off the top of my head. Critical reading and thinking should be part of reading any article, scientific or otherwise, but to have to step back and analyze deceptive arguments are not what I expect from Scientific American. I can't really recommend this magazine. The loss of a fine source of scientific Information leaves me wondering where I can find the type of writing that used to be.