American Scientist is the magazine of Sigma Xi, a well-known scientific honor society. The website americanscientist.org has been online since 1999, which is a strong indicator of legitimacy. Most long-running scientific publications have that kind of domain history. Our checks found no security warnings, no blacklist entries, and a clean reputation overall.
Because the site blocks automated scanners, we couldn't confirm whether it has an about page or contact details from a bot's perspective. But that's common for established sites that want to prevent scraping. A real visitor can browse the magazine's content freely. The missing favicon is a minor oddity, not a sign of fraud.
For a news and media site, the technical setup is adequate: it uses a valid certificate and modern encryption, and email authentication is configured. If you're wondering whether americanscientist.org is a scam or fake, the evidence strongly points to a legitimate, long-established publication. There's no reason to avoid it based on the data we have.