Sociology is a science. In fact, a sociologist has to have more personally challenging scientific standards than the more popularly-known sciences such as physics and chemistry, because it is much more challenging to deal with bias and subjectivity.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (United States) Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, also called GAAP or US GAAP, is the accounting standard adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The acronym SEC stands for Securities and Exchange Commission. The basic role of this agency is to ensure that the stock markets operate in a way that is fair to all investors. One of the major things that the SEC is supposed to do is to prevent insider trading. In insider trading, people who know what is going to happen with some business (like that it is going to merge with some other business) use that knowledge to know whether to buy or sell stocks in those firms.