Failure of environmental lighting to influence dental caries rate

Two experiments involving littermate cotton rats were conducted to determine the effect of cool-white fluorescent versus artificial sunlight environments on caries incidence. There were no significant differences in either the incidence or extent of caries associated with the different types of lighting. This contradicts our previous observations (1) with this species using identical experimentation and calls for a retraction. It is suggested that the difference is due primarily to the application of an inappropriate statistical approach in the earlier work.