Science Digest

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Science Digest was a monthly American magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from 1937 through 1986. It initially had an 8 x 5 inch format with about 100 pages, and was targeted at persons with a high school education level. It contained short articles about general science often excerpted from other publications in the style of Reader's Digest.

In November 1980 the magazine was expanded to an 11 x 8 inch format with full-length articles and color pictures targeted at a college educated reader. It was issued bi-monthly with circulation of about 500,000 copies. At first it tended to favor breathless cover lines, and often turned to pseudoscience topics, including spontaneous human combustion and UFOs. But in reaction to brisk competition from the similar Discover and Omni magazines, it became a serious enough publication that it, and not the New York Times, first broke the discovery of great voids in the universe discovered by Geller and Huchra at Harvard. The change did not seem to help, however, given competition in the same subject areas by Discover and Science '8X, and the magazine ceased publication in 1986.

The magazine briefly re-appeared as a quarterly in 1987; returning to the original small "digest" format, with many short articles and snippets of science information. This final relaunch lasted only one year.