Your mission, should you decide to accept it …”—the thrilling line that opened every episode of Mission: Impossible, a wildly popular spy series that ran for seven seasons, from 1966 to 1973—was thrown out for years as a conversation starter whenever somebody was asked to take on a particularly challenging job.
One year ago, the editorial staff of The Scientist heard words to that effect just a week after being told that our 25th-anniversary issue, published October 1, 2011, would be our last. LabX Media Group didn’t send us a tape that would self-destruct 5 seconds after offering to continue to publish the magazine; instead, they listened to us espouse—passionately and at length—our goal of bringing our audience engaging, unbiased coverage of the most exciting events and discoveries shaping the life sciences. And they told us that our mission was theirs, charging us to carry on.
And so we have: ...
