Donald Light, professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, says the pharmaceutical industry is a market for 'lemons' -  a market in which the seller knows much more than the buyer about the product and can profit from selling products less effective and even less safe than consumers are led to believe.

Talking at the meeting of the American Sociological Association, he said three reasons why the pharmaceutical market produces "lemons" are: Having companies in charge of testing new drugs, providing firewalls of legal protection behind which information about harms or effectiveness can be hidden, and the relatively low bar set for drug efficacy in order for a new drug to be approved.

Being married has been associated with improving health but a new study suggests that having that long-term bond alters hormones in a way that reduces stress - but you don't need to buy a ring just yet; unmarried people in a committed relationship show the same reduced responses to stress,  said Dario Maestripieri, Professor in Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago and lead author of a new study in Stress. 

A new Rice University study's side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models to determine when 'mitochondrial Eve'(mtEve), the maternal ancestor of all living humans, lived uses a very different set of assumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and spread across Earth - and it won't be without some controversy.

Mitochondrial Eve studies are an example of how scientists probe the genetic past to learn more about mutation, selection and other genetic processes that play key roles in disease but deterministic models may not be enough, says the new study.     Statisticians to the rescue.