GIGO

The Beginning

Welcome to the test issue of the "New Zealand Science Monthly". It's been a labour of love putting this together, although there's been a fair degree of masochism involved too.

We undertook this because an idle question became an obsession: "Why is there no general interest science magazine in New Zealand telling us about what is happening in our own backyard?"

We still don't know the answer to that.

There's plenty of material out there announcing research at MIT, new discoveries in Cambridge and technological developments as close as Sydney. It gets reported in the newspaper from time to time and, if we're lucky, we get to see some of it on TV.

When it comes to New Zealand science and technology, there tends to be a great gaping void. I don't think it's because nothing is being done here. New Zealanders have been discovering and inventing things ever since the first bit of No. 8 wire was produced.

I only have to look at the ever-increasing stack of material on my desk to convince myself that we have science and technology news that is exciting and interesting. The sad thing is it seems to stay in the labs and scholarly journals rather than being recognised by the country as a whole.

I don't believe the lack of New Zealand science news is because there's no public interest in science and technology. The DSIR survey mentioned in this issue shows that over a quarter of a million New Zealanders frequently read magazines devoted to science and technology. The Australian show "Beyond 2000" is one of the highest-rating programmes on television.

Perhaps it's part of the old self-deprecating colonial mentality, but surely we've outgrown that by now. Perhaps it's because there's a certain reluctance among researchers to talk to the media. I can understand that, because much in the way of `science' reporting is garbled, misconstrued or just outright garbage.

We hope to change that with this new venture. It's been very gratifying to see the support and good wishes coming in and I thank you all. Ministries, professional associations, educators and scientists have all welcomed the idea of this magazine.

We have had great support from the universities, individual researchers and the editors of those scholarly journals mentioned above. Our thanks to you for your willingness to be a part of this.

As this is a test issue, we hope to get some response from you as to how we're doing and what you think we should be doing. There's a survey in the centre pages to get you going, and we'd welcome any suggestions, ideas, news, information sources and the like.

We hope that we will be able to live up to your expectations. It'll be a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.