Professional skeptic Michael Shermer takes a swipe at Malcolm Gladwell in his Scientific American column this month, calling him a journalist “unconstrained by research protocols” and describing Outliers as a “self-help” book.

Shermer apparently thinks that it’s genius, not 10,000 hours (or circumstance or culture), that makes people exceptional, and cites authors who think so, too. (Scientific American is still in Luddite land when it comes to the web, so no link possible). Well, Wikipedia does describe Gladwell as a ‘pop sociologist,’ but I think the battle lines are drawn… 3:32:10 PM

Why are science magazines so clueless about electronic delivery? I subscribe to the print edition of Scientific American, but that doesn’t give me access to the articles in electronic form (even though I’m registered on their web site as a print subscriber). They require I pay a second subscription to access the same content that I’ve already paid for (I couldn’t cut and paste Michael Shermer’s comments, above, so wound up retyping and paraphrasing – both sub-optimal practices).

New Scientist is even worse: there is no way to get their electronic content without also receiving the print magazine. Period.

Given the carbon footprint, not to mention the cost, of printing and delivering hundreds of thousands (possibly millions, in SciAm’s case) of magazines, you’d have thought these science- and tech-savvy pubs would be leading the charge into the networked world.

I am quite happy to pay both pubs whatever the going freight is to sustain their editorial operations – indeed I’ve been a life-long subscriber to SciAm. Both publications’ editorial pages certainly stood up strongly against the seriously misguided ‘environmental policies’ of the previous two American administrations. So, what’s up with their e-delivery? A case of ‘Do as I say, not as I do?’… 7:19:18 PM

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