Stories by Christopher Mims

Testosterone's Bad Rep

Hormones don't necessarily make men violent, but they do cause them to seek social dominance

What is Evo-Devo?

A SciAm editor explains this core concept of evolution

What is Dark Matter? (Video)

Scientific American launches a new regular video feature

Scientific American launches new site, 60SecondScience.com

I'm proud to announce that Scientific American just launched a new site. It's not under the same domain name, because, well, it's a bit of a departure.

Think your boss is an idiot? Research suggests that means... um... so are you

Social psychologists from the University of Granada found that bosses who feel insecure or unqualified to hold their position often choose to hire and surround themselves with less competent people...

James Watson retires, gives statement, has media ties questioned

Watson has done the wise thing and decided to distance himself from his by all appearances much-beloved Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. A statement from the board lauded his 40 years of service, during which he "[transformed] a small facility into one of the world's great education and research institutions." Simultaneously, he released a statement of his own, in which he declared "That the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is now one of the world's premier sites for biological research and education has long warmed my heart." Watson's statement did not directly address his comments to the Sunday Times (of London) about Africans and African Americans that set off this firestorm, but earlier this week he apologized, saying that he was surprised by what he was quoted as saying, and that "there is no scientific basis for such a belief." Both statements, and more on Watson's ongoing ties to Seed Media Group, publisher of Seed Magazine, after the jump...

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has suspended James Watson

Just to be clear: They didn't fire him, they didn't take away his position as Chancellor of the university, and they probably won't ever take his name off of their graduate school (The Watson School of Biological Sciences), but the board of trustees at CSHL has decided to "suspend the administrative responsibilities" of James D...

James Watson's greatest hits

Lest anyone imagine that the recent comments regarding race by James Watson, Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA, not to mention board member of Seed Media Group, publisher of Seed magazine and ScienceBlogs, are in any way uncharacteristic of this particular scientist's descent into senescence: I've compiled this helpful guide to Dr...

Last year there were two trillion stalks of corn in Iowa, and a lot of it went to corn syrup

In the year 2000, the average American consumed 73 pounds of corn syrup. King Corn, which, depending on where you live, is coming to a theater near you sometime this fall, is the story of two guys who decided to find out what would happen if they moved to Iowa, grew an acre of corn, and traced its path through the giant metabolic engine that is the American food system...

UK declares Al Gore made 9 errors in An Inconvenient Truth; Germany rushes to his defense

The UK has its share of climate change skeptics, such as school principle Stewart Dimmock of Kent, who was attempting to use the English courts to have An Inconvenient Truth banned from schools there on the grounds that it contains a number of errors (earlier this year the government sent copies of the film to every school in the UK)...

New image of Saturn's moon Iapetus... as a desktop image.

Being into science means never having to look at a boring desktop background, because NASA is always pumping out amazing images worth staring at every time you close a window and need a moment of respite...

Nobel committee to climate change deniers: "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries."*

* There's no use pretending that today's announcement that Al Gore and the IPCC are to share the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change is not in some way political.

Our nation's history is littered with shameful secrets, such as sexist chemistry sets

Scientists ask Congress to fund $50 billion science thing

Will the web finally make the dream of a universal human language a reality?

Frightening new maps of U.S. coastal areas to be inundated by global warming

These maps correspond with a one meter rise in sea level -- the amount of sea level rise scientists predict will occur whether or not we cease emitting carbon today, on account of all the warming the earth has yet to do in order to reach equilibrium with the amount of C02 we've already put into the atmosphere...

Eating plants gathered from the wild... in New York City

Do patients have the right to demand experimental medications?

SciAm editor discusses male lactation on drive-time radio

Humans turn out to be as genetically different from one another as it was previously thought they were different from chimps