Checking a few other articles from the Scientific American, they were equally poor or without substance. It's tabloid level journalism about science. They used to have a good reputation when I grew up, so it's sad to see how far it has fallen.

I believe ownership of SA changed hands some time in the 2000s, and the new leadership was targeting pop-science. They shifted views, so their competition stopped being actual scientific outlets/journals, and instead they started competing with I Fucking Love Science and other Facebook pages. They realized they could make more money pumping out quick, easy-to-consume factoids on social media than they ever did by putting actual effort into their product, so they made the financially-obvious choice.

Absolute shame.