- Researchers say that it pays to be loyal.
- Are women better at detecting sexual orientation during ovulation?
- New RSAnimate: Renata Salecl on the anxieties of choice.
- Interactive Graphic: how governments dealt with recessions.
- Nathan Myhrvold on risk and the state of the Earth.
- Killer paychecks: You’re more likely to die shortly after you get paid.
- Why restructuring Greek debt is Europe’s least bad option.
- A Gallup poll shows signs that international migration is slowing down.
FREAK-est Links
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I wonder if the “gaydar” researchers did enough “female biology” research to know that just counting the number of days since the beginning of the last menstrual period is a relatively poor indicator of whether a woman is fertile.
Technically, a woman is fertile about two weeks before her next menstrual period, not two weeks after the previous one. If she’s one of the one-third of women whose period doesn’t fall into the “officially normal” system of a predictable 21-to-35 day cycle length, then the researchers will have her misclassified.
There are three non-invasive solutions: They can ask for typical cycle lengths (and drop anyone from the study who reported irregularity), they could follow up later to establish this particular cycle length, or they could teach the subjects basic fertility awareness skills.