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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dragonlordofpoondari" data-source="post: 3668858" data-attributes="member: 42088">Exactly my concern.No doubt. What is this recent persuasive evidence?EDIT: The Mercer article appears credible enough from the abstract ... I can't download the article but the sample size is n=6399 women and they rely on interviews and "computer-assisted" interviews. British National population data certianly has the ring of decent sounding science. The Aaron article uses a population n=2185 and is localized to Allegheny, PA. They also rely on interviews. Hmm.As to the quality of their science, it is difficult to judge without the articles in front of me. Not to be snobby, but neither of these articles were published in Nature or Cell or Science or JAMA or even PNAS here (and I'm sure we both know how PNAS does business).So far ...  not terribly compelling. Sociologists can probably interview and run the stats with as much ability as a biologist. My point here is that, just because a paper is written from "a biological perspective," that doesn't give it any more credibility if they are doing the exact same experiments as the sociologists ... namely interviewing people and collecting statistical data. A lot of laypeople will automatically credit hard science research > soft without looking any further ... including me a lot of the time.EDIT: and then you go and post a PNAS article. that's totally funny!!! for the non-biologists here: PNAS has a "back-door" through which non-peer reviewed studies can be published if they are sponsored by a member of the special club. a large number of this journal's articles are published this way, and they do not all stand up to the scrutiny of repeatability. anyway, thanks for indulging me, Shemaska. i'll have to read those other articles and see what i think. whether i find them "persuasive" or not, they don't speak to frequency in populations. in the end, whether the stats are 5% or 15%, any value within this range is impressive and significant, whatever that true value may be. even 5 people out of every 100 is a lot! alas, i must away from the computer for a while, as much fun as this is!!!Yup. Me too! That's what I was getting at above in citing my preferences for certain reputable scientific journals. Okay ... must sleep.</blockquote>

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