Science News media bias and reliability
Ad Fontes Media places Science News in the centre. We have seen it on 7 published stories of ours.
The short answers
Is Science News biased?
Ad Fontes Media places Science News in the centre. An outlet rating describes a broad pattern in its output, not every article it publishes.
Is Science News left or right?
Ad Fontes Media places Science News in the centre. In the three-way grouping used on story pages, that puts it under Centre.
Is Science News reliable?
The factual-reliability assessments we hold for Science News are Media Bias/Fact Check: Very high factuality. These are outlet-level assessments, not a guarantee that every report is correct.
What Science News has been covering
Our account of each story, written from every outlet that ran it, with Science News’s own report linked underneath.
The US Space Force has confirmed the deployment of weapons in Earth orbit, marking the first public acknowledgement of such capabilities. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink stated the weapons are intended for defence against hostile actions, though specific details remain undisclosed.
Science News reported it asThe U.S. has weapons in space. Here’s what that could mean (opens Science News in a new tab)
The United States has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in orbit. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the Space Force placed "space control weapons" to deter adversaries, drawing accusations from China and Russia.
Science News reported it asThe U.S. has weapons in space. Here’s what that could mean (opens Science News in a new tab)
OpenAI has announced that an internal AI model has produced a solution to the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of mathematics' seven Millennium Prize Problems. The company claims approximately 10,000 AI agents worked on the problem for 88 hours. However, mathematicians have expressed skepticism due to the lack of a publicly disclosed proof.
Science News reported it asAI may have solved one of math’s biggest puzzles, raising controversy (opens Science News in a new tab)
Bearded capuchin monkeys hunt small animals like lizards and rodents when plant foods are scarce, according to a study published in PLOS One. Male monkeys hunt more frequently and target more dangerous prey than females, and both sexes prefer the fat-rich brains and guts of their prey.
Science News reported it asMonkeys hunt small animals when fruit is scarce (opens Science News in a new tab)
Astronomers have identified a star, S301, orbiting the Milky Way’s central black hole at 25,000 kilometres per second, the fastest known in the galaxy. Its tight orbit may enable scientists to measure the black hole’s spin, testing Einstein’s general relativity.
Science News reported it asA record-breaking star could reveal how the Milky Way’s giant black hole spins (opens Science News in a new tab)
A University of Vienna study used brain scans of twelve dogs to show that happy human faces activate the temporal cortex and caudate nucleus, while anger, fear and sadness produce distinct neural patterns. The findings, published in iScience, suggest dogs can differentiate between specific emotions.
Science News reported it asSad or afraid? Dogs may be able to read your face (opens Science News in a new tab)
Scientists using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii have captured the most detailed images yet of the Sun’s visible surface, showing vortex-like plasma patterns ranging from 19 to 170 kilometres in diameter. The findings, published in Nature, could improve understanding of coronal mass ejections and space weather.
Science News reported it asThese tiny swirls on the sun could trigger solar flares (opens Science News in a new tab)
Who says so
One organisation has published a rating for this outlet. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the useful part and it is left standing.
- Ad Fontes MediacenterCheck it
How reliably it reports fact
A rating of the newsroom in general, by others, and a different thing from the Trust score we publish on each story, which judges one piece of reporting.
Very high factuality
- Media Bias/Fact CheckveryHighCheck it
Who owns it
- Society for ScienceIndependentdirect owner
Where it publishes from
- Publishes from
- Washington, District of Columbia, United States
- Official site
- sciencenews.org
- Seen publishing on
- sciencenews.org
- Access
- Free to read
- Wikipedia
- Entry
What we have seen ourselves
Counted across the stories this site has published, which is the only denominator a reader can check: every one of them has a page, and every page lists the reports it was written from.
- Stories
- 7
- Reports listed
- 7
- We could read
- 0
- First seen
- 4 August 2026
7 of those reports were paywalled or blocked to us. Our reading of this outlet is built on the 0 we could open, not on everything it published.
A blindspot is measured against one side of the spectrum. Science News is rated centre, so there is no side for it to be counted against and we publish no figure here.
Across the 7 stories of ours where at least three of the reports we listed carried a time, we logged no report earlier than Science News’s on 1 of them. Overall it filed a median of 16 hours after the earliest report we logged.
Measured 20 September 2026. Last seen in a coverage list 19 September 2026. Ratings pulled 5 September 2026.
Other outlets rated the same way
Publishers carrying the same published leaning as Science News, also publishing from United States, ordered by how often we have seen them on a story. Sharing a rating is not the same as being alike.
Think this page is wrong?
The leanings above are published by AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check, and we republish them rather than make them. If you think one is misapplied, the strongest place to say so is with the organisation that made it, and every verdict here links to their page.
What we are responsible for is everything else: the ownership chain, where Science News publishes from, which of our stories we have listed it on, and whether we have the right publisher at all. Tell us what is wrong and an editor reads it.
Report something wrong on this page
Anything we correct is written up in the public corrections log. We do not publish reader votes as a rating, because an unattributed rating is the thing this site exists to argue against.
Every rating on this page is a named third party’s published work, republished with its author and, where one exists, a link to it. Our own coverage record is the section we measure ourselves. Neither is a judgement of any individual report: those are scored story by story, and the reasoning is on our methodology page.