In the previous installment of this longish article, I have introduced some of the issues that may affect the correct interpretation of a statistically significant effect.

Though women work in corporations and serve at higher levels of organizations more than at any time in world history, sociologists note that they still lag behind men in one high-profile way; fraud.

Obviously cultural critics can argue that women are being left behind in opportunities to commit fraud because they do not have equal numbers at the highest levels, but that is a self-correcting problem over time. Regardless of the gender landscape, the sociologists who examined a database of recent corporate frauds found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one.

An interesting issue came up through my volunteer work for the new website, "GMOAnswers.com".  Apparently some pot users are concerned that they might be unwittingly consuming what they consider to be a dreaded "GMO."  

The irony is that while marijuana has definitely been "genetically modified" to contain higher levels of THC, that change didn't involve the tools of modern biotechnology.

Instead, the changes were achieved using rather clumsy methods from the past.

Toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has dropped cultural bombs on both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and two scientists who provided crucial information for Atomic Age carcinogen risk assessment.

Regarding the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, Calabrese says there was deliberate suppression of evidence to prevent the regulatory panel from considering an alternative, threshold model - the LNT model was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk ssessment.

An international analysis of conservation biologists finds that they work late at night and over weekends - just like much of the salaried corporate world and science writers. 

Thanks to athletes like Ryan Braun and Lance Armstrong, doping has gotten a bad rap, but if solar power is ever going to be viable, doping will be essential.

Flexible thin film solar cells require fewer materials and can be manufactured in large quantities by roll-to-roll processing. One such technology relies on cadmium telluride (CdTe), which is a distant second to silicon-based solar cells but cheap in terms of production costs. Because they are grown on rigid glass plates, these superstrate cells have, however a big drawback: they require a transparent supporting material that lets sunlight pass through to reach the light-harvesting CdTe layer, thus limiting the choice of carriers to transparent materials.

While cultural pundits are worried about the health impact of obesity and which foods need to be more regulated to prevent chronic disease, a new analysis has found that incidents of ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke caused by a clot in the blood vessels of the brain, has declined among most during the past decade. 

The nature of hypnotically suggested changes in perception has been controversial throughout the history of hypnosis. 

The major current hypotheses of hypnosis hold that we always actively use our own imagination to bring about the effects of a suggestion - for example, the occurrence of visual hallucinations always requires active use of goal directed imagery and can be experienced both with and without hypnosis. In other words, it isn't really hypnosis, but people susceptible to suggestion become more so when drowsy.

Sociologists have challenged the perception that there is a "new and pervasive hookup culture" among contemporary college students that is substantially greater than a generation ago.

People have always distrusted science, just like people have always been afraid of the supernatural (unless it promises a spiritual pot of gold at the end of your particular rainbow) but the naturalistic fallacy - that natural is somehow good and unnatural is somehow bad - is a recent invention.