Social Sciences

In a postapocalyptic world on the verge of its next crisis, history gets rewritten

In Pillars of Creation, Richard Panek gets up close to the JWST

A biography of the scientist whose work led to fears of a ‘population bomb’

Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories

Letters to the editors for the May 2024 issue of Scientific American

The predictive value of childhood screenings for autism and other conditions depends on how common the condition is, a limit that parents need to understand

Kamala Harris has plans to improve health, boost the economy and mitigate climate change. Donald Trump has threats and a dangerous record

So far, enthusiasm for the Harris campaign has vindicated Democratic Party elites’ decision to push Joe Biden out of the race. Was this just a lucky guess based on political vibes? Or were there actual data supporting the decision?

The “Raygun” Olympics fiasco points to how hip-hop scholarship is at risk of being colonized and undermined in academia

A survey of the Dolmen of Menga suggests that the stone tomb’s Neolithic builders had an understanding of science

A sociophonetician explains presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s intonational patterns and the way that the properties of candidates’ speech influences how they are perceived.

Starting in the 1920s female writers pioneered the field of science writing for the mass market, making it their mission to help ordinary people understand everything from astronomy to venereal disease