Tuesday, February 24, 2009

An Open Letter To Popular Science

Dear PopSci,

Why do you allow scam artists to advertise in your magazine? Are you really so hard up for money that you need to allow these people to share space with you just to survive?

You have published articles about how bad science does bad things for people, and then right at the end of the magazine you allow a scammer to purchase a full page ad telling people how they are drinking filth and how the only pure water they can count on comes through them.

Your sister magazine, last month, did multi-page piece on which "As Seen On TV" products were bullshit and yet at the end of the magazine there are ads for penis growth pills and fake natural cures. Why don't you go after your own advertisers if you want to pretend to care about your readers getting scammed?

I remember back in 8th grade It used to be amusing to flip to the back of your magazine and see what crap idiots were being scammed into spending money on. Over the past couple of decades you have become more than a magazine of "possible future cars" and you have started publishing articles on real science, real trends, real inventions and real science.

I don't expect you to do the Good Housekeeping thing. You don't have to verify and give a thumbs up to every product you have an ad for in your magazine, but when you put your sights on real science and allow ads for "Magic Sex Pheromones" - you come off looking like douchebags.

The worst part is that you will break up your major articles so that people are forced into the quack medical ads, or scientific conspiracy theory ads, if they want to read the rest of a really good story on global climate change.

Yes I know this helps you sell ads. But maybe you'd sell ads to the right people if they didn't have to associate themselves with worthless coins collections, crappy watches, penis growers, water purifiers and miracle heaters that must break the laws of physics to do 1/2 of what the ad claims.

Get your act together.