I love science. All kidding aside, I really do, and this sort of thing is exactly why. We go along for years in our physio classes talking about the "fact" that humans don't go into estrus like other mammals do, or that we don't get new cortical neurons, and then one day, *bang*: the evidence shows us we're wrong.
This is consistent with the data on female-initiated sexual contact (during ovulation, it goes up), so I'm hopeful that it'll be replicated or otherwise supported. Things like this give me a chance to talk about the fact that scientific "fact" is tentative, and that science is self-correcting (in the main). Cool. Thanks for this. m ------ "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." -- Margaret Wheatley -----Original Message----- From: Pollak, Edward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 8:58 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [SPAM] - [tips] Humans go into heat after all, strip club study finds - Bayesian Filter detected spam This from http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071027_estrus.htm I can think of some alternative hypotheses, but it is quite interesting................................. Ed ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humans go into heat after all, strip club study finds Oct. 28, 2007 World Science <http://www.world-science.net/> staff Mam-mals go in-to heat. Ex-cept for hu-mans, of course-it's just for an-i-mals. Right? That con-ven-tion-al wis-dom seems to be wrong, a group of re-search-ers has found. The sci-en-tists col-lect-ed ev-i-dence from some lo-cales where sex-u-al heat is most reg-u-larly on dis-play, strip clubs. And they meas-ured it with a tool that rarely lies in gaug-ing the val-ue peo-ple place on things: mon-ey. Heat, or es-trus, is a reg-u-larly re-cur-ring time pe-ri-od dur-ing which fe-males are most sex-u-ally re-cep-tive and at-trac-tive to males, cor-re-spond-ing with the time at which they're most ca-pa-ble of con-ceiv-ing. Hu-man fe-males have no ob-vi-ous es-trus, lead-ing to bi-ol-o-gists' tra-di-tion-al as-sump-tion that it was lost dur-ing hu-man ev-o-lu-tion. But in a study published the Oct. 27 is-sue of the re-search jour-nal Ev-o-lu-tion and Hu-man Be-hav-ior, the in-ves-ti-ga-tors found that such a cy-cle does con-tin-ue in us. Surveying strip-club lap dancers, who pe-r-form erot-ic dances for cash, they found that tips vary by an aver-age of 45 pe-r-cent de-pend-ing on the time of the month, cor-re-spond-ing to the length of the ovu-la-tory cy-cle. That's the one-month cy-cle in which a ripe egg is re-leased from the ovary, be-com-ing avail-a-ble for fer-til-iz-a-tion. Dur-ing peak times of the cy-cle lap dancers made $335 per five-hour shift on av-er-age, com-pared to $260 dur-ing typ-i-cal pe-ri-ods, the re-search-ers found. Dur-ing men-strua-t-ion, the wom-en made only $185 on av-er-age. The peak earn-ings dur-ing a cru-cial phase of the cy-cle could only lead to one con-clu-sion: fe-males were in heat, the in-ves-ti-ga-tors said. "These re-sults con-sti-tute the first di-rect eco-nom-ic ev-i-dence for the ex-ist-ence and im-por-tance of es-trus in con-tem-po-rary hu-man fe-males, in a real-world work set-ting," wrote the re-search-ers, Geof-frey Mill-er of the Un-ivers-ity of New Mex-i-co and col-leagues. By com-par-i-son, they found, dancers us-ing con-tra-cep-tive pills, which sup-press ovula-t-ion, showed no earn-ings peak. The team col-lect-ed its in-forma-t-ion through a web-site where 18 dancers recorded their men-strual pe-ri-ods, work shifts, and tip earn-ings for 60 days-a to-tal of 5,300 "lap dances." Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Department of Psychology West Chester University of Pennsylvania http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---
