Social Sciences

An assessment of hundreds of thousands of songs confirms that choruses and hooks have taken over—but simpler isn’t necessarily worse

Does the word "uncertainty" make you nervous? Would you say it kinda describes the state of the world these days? Enter Uncertain, a new limited podcast series from Scientific American that will change the way you think about that word.

The forced resignation of Harvard’s president provides a peek at the blueprint for the war against justice in the U.S., concludes a long-time observer of attacks on academia

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

Letters to the editors for the December 2023 issue of Scientific American

Scientific research needs to slow down, not speed up, to produce trustworthy results

Capital punishment must come to an end. It does not deter crime, is not humane and has no moral or medical basis

Chromosome cats; Louis Pasteur, master brewer

Science in meter and verse

Hostility toward LGBTQ kids, enshrined in hundreds of new bills, has put families with such children under unprecedented threat, raising risks of suicide and physical attacks

Chicken takeovers, the missing histories of silk, a dazzling memoir of gravity, and more books out now

Children need patient adults and lots of practice to understand fairness, justice and equality