Michael Shermer

t SA Perspectives Houston, You Have a Problem In retrospect, the missteps that led to the loss ofthe space shuttle Columbia seem so obvious. In every one of the 113 shuttle flights since the program began in 1981, small pieces of insulation foam peeled off the vehicle's external tank during...

] SA Perspectives In Science We Trust As a year for science, 2002 was marked by many wonderful accomplishments, and our inaugural listing of the Scientific American 50, beginning on page 23, celebrates dozens. But much of the public may also remember the year for blemishes on the scientific...