A third source of both subjects and material is the report of special studies in some field, the form of the report ranging from a paper read at a meeting to a treatise in several volumes.  These reports of experiments, surveys, investigations, and other forms of research, are to be found in printed bulletins, monographs, proceedings of organizations, scientific periodicals, and new books.  Government publications—­federal, state, and local—­giving results of investigative work done by bureaus, commissions, and committees, are public documents that may usually be had free of charge.  Technical and scientific periodicals and printed proceedings of important organizations are generally available at public libraries.

As Mr. Waldemar Kaempffert, editor of Popular Science Monthly, has said: 

There is hardly a paper read before the Royal Institution or the French Academy or our American engineering and chemical societies that cannot be made dramatically interesting from a human standpoint and that does not chronicle real news.

“If you want to publish something where it will never be read,” a wit has observed, “print it in an official document.”  Government reports are filled with valuable information that remains quite unknown to the average reader unless newspapers and magazines unearth it and present it in popular form.  The popularization of the contents of all kinds of scientific and technical publications affords great opportunities for the writer who can present such subjects effectively.

In addressing students of journalism on “Science and Journalism,” Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the Independent, who was formerly a professor of chemistry, has said: 

The most radical ideas of our day are not apt to be found in the popular newspaper or in queer little insurrectionary, heretical and propaganda sheets that we occasionally see, but in the technical journals and proceedings of learned societies.  The real revolutions are hatched in the laboratory and study.  The papers read before the annual meetings of the scientific societies, and for the most part unnoticed by the press, contain more dynamite than was ever discovered in any anarchist’s shop.  Political revolutions merely change the form of government or the name of the party in power.  Scientific revolutions really turn the world over, and it never settles back into its former position.

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The beauty and meaning of scientific discoveries can be revealed to the general reader if there is an intermediary who can understand equally the language of the laboratory and of the street.  The modern journalist knows that anything can be made interesting to anybody, if he takes pains enough with the writing of it.  It is not necessary, either, to pervert scientific truths in the process of translation into the vernacular.  The facts are sensational enough without any picturesque exaggeration.

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