This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them:
- Aesthetic scrotums — Surprises abound in “The scrotum: A comparison of men’s and women’s aesthetic assessments”, a study done by plastic surgeon Carolin Eimer in Hamburg, Germany, and two colleagues at the Medical School of Hamburg.It begins by citing a 27-year-old psychology paper called “Gender and attractiveness biases in hiring decisions: Are more experienced managers less biased?” It avers that “studies have yet to investigate aesthetic preferences as regards the scrotum”. It…
- Workaday experiment — What would two scientists discover by adding some small requirements to a person’s work day, then later removing one requirement?Here are the added requirements. (1) Eat nothing overnight or in the morning before coming to work. (2) Arrive at work more than an hour earlier than usual. (3) Prior to beginning the day’s work, sit quietly for 15 minutes while technicians prepare to wire you up so they can record electrical activity from your brain and heart as you do some mental tasks (in which you look at visual images and decide whether to press a button). Then, (4) fill out a 24-item survey designed to get at the question “How do you feel right now?” Then, (5) let the technicians extract a small amount of your blood. Then…
- Me-in-a-museum — Have you discovered, in a museum, some non-human exhibit that looks startlingly like you? A taxidermied bird, perhaps, or a rock sample, or a historic old shoe? A waxwork flower? A fossil? Maybe a painted or sculpted depiction of some animal, vegetable, microbe or molecule? If so, we would love to hear about it….