New Scientist Last Word Posts New Reader Questions — SkimNews
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- New Scientist's Last Word column, a long-running reader Q&A series spanning everyday minutiae to astronomical hypotheticals, publishes two new reader questions this week.
- Robert Morley of London submitted the question asking why dogs generally follow instructions while cats largely ignore them.
- Mark Smith of Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, submitted the question asking whether humans will ever build a space telescope that can see as far as the big bang.
- Last Word invites readers to submit answers or new questions by email at lastword@newscientist.com, requiring concise scientific enquiries about everyday phenomena.
- The column prohibits AI tools including ChatGPT and Claude from writing questions or answers, with any AI-authored submissions to be withdrawn.
Why it matters: New Scientist's Last Word explicitly names ChatGPT and Claude as banned AI tools for its reader Q&A submissions, with AI-authored entries withdrawn on detection — a stated policy that formalizes human-only authorship for a column where AI-generated text could otherwise pass undetected.
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