Skip to main content

Editor's Selections: Logos, Hospitals, Stephen Colbert, and Surprising Findings

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.

  • You might think that labels and logos indicate power or prestige, but you'd be wrong. Find out about the complicated relationship between overt labels and power at PsySociety in a great post by Melanie Tannenbaum.

  • Can music make your hospital stay more bearable? In a post at a new (to me) blog called For the Ears, Callum James Hacket discusses some research on this question.

  • Satire is a particularly nuanced form of humor. It might not be surprising, then, that Neurobonkers reports on a study that found "Colbert’s satire is so spectacularly deadpan that research has demonstrated that a significant proportion of right wing Americans actually believe that Colbert is genuinely a right wing commentator!"

  • Finally, over at Psych Your Mind, Juli Breines lists her top five surprising social psychology findings from 2011.

That's it for this week... Check back next week for more great psychology and neuroscience blogging!

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

More by Jason G. Goldman