I hope they paid the sixty-eight women.

Here's some exciting news that the New York Times found fit to print:

Women can unconsciously detect the smell of fear, new research suggests, and the smell improves their performance on mental tasks.

Scientists collected sweat from seven volunteers — four men and three women — who watched horror movies while holding gauze pads in their armpits. Then, their sweat was collected while they watched videos with neutral emotional content.

Sixty-eight women next performed a word-association task while smelling the pads. The task involved watching two words flash on a screen one after the other, and then stating whether the two words were related. ("Arms" and "legs" are related; "arms" and "wind" are not.)

The subjects were divided into three groups: the first smelled the sweat pads of sweat collected during the frightening video; the second smelled pads collected during the neutral video; and the third, a control group, smelled pads with no sweat on them.

Without sacrificing speed, the women smelling the fear pads were more accurate than those in the other two groups when processing meaningful related words. There was no difference in speed or accuracy between the three groups when the words were not related.

Denise Chen, an assistant professor of psychology at Rice University and the study's lead author, says she believes that it was the smell of fear that improved performance. "The smell of fear may have made these people more cautious," she said, "and made them better at recognizing meaningful information."

None of the subjects could consciously assert that they could smell fear. "The effect on task performance," Dr. Chen said, "is likely subconscious."

The study appears in the April issue of Chemical Senses.

Heck, no one ever told me that watching horror movies while holding gauze pads in your armpits meant that you were doing science. Where I come from, that's called "any given Saturday night"!

Seriously, though -- this gives me a good idea, which I will generously share with you. For your next high-stress situation, where you may be called on to make snap decisions -- oral argument in front of a federal court of appeals, say (I'm just thinking out loud here) -- prepare your own "fear pads" ahead of time. Make sure to stash them in a closed, airtight container so as not to diminish their potency. Then, on the big day, attach your "fear pads" to your face, just below your nostrils. Be creative. Use colorful rubber bands, or modify the headgear some unfortunate adolescents have to wear with braces. Leave the house, walking tall. If anyone asks what you're doing, just say, "Wouldn't you like to know? Well, riddle me this: Arms! Wind! Related?" Then walk on.

Sure, some will laugh, but didn't they laugh at Newton? Didn't they laugh at Einstein? And so what if they also laughed at Bozo the Clown -- maybe if Bozo had been wearing his "fear pads" like I told him, he'd be having the last laugh.