Editor's Selections: Data, Novelty, and Pets

By Jason G. Goldman on January 24, 2012

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

Sometimes you're interested in new papers not for the main results that the authors present, but for some other data you see in a graph that might catch the corner of your eye. At Cracking the Enigma, Jon Brock discusses this, and a handy tool to help extract that data. The Adventures of DataThief!

At BishopBlog, Dorothy Bishop has a nice inside-baseball sort of post about the business of publishing papers in high-impact journals. Novelty, interest and replicability.

Having pets is a good thing, and science agrees. At Gaines, on Brains, find out about the latest research in this area: Fur-iends with Benefits.

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

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jason G. Goldman

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.