3 ms·

How one perfume company misled scientists into believing in human sex pheromones

66 points by igonvalue 12y ago

dsjoerg 12y ago
I can't keep track of what's been debunked anymore.
- gwern 12y ago
  I wouldn't say that this is necessarily a 'debunking'. What it argues is that androstadienone and estratetraenol don't fit strict definition of 'pheromone' as used in animal research (fair enough). It admits androstadienone and estratetraenol have been linked to various behavioral changes (maybe), which could be true regardless of their pheromone status (since lots of chemicals have effects). And then observes that psychology research has a well-earned reputation for not replicating and publication bias (yes), implying that maybe the behavioral effects of androstadienone & estratetraenol are just more of the same although it does not point to anything specific like a meta-analysis establishing this (ehh....). So if androstadienone & estratetraenol are not 'pheromones' but do influence human behavior, would you call that debunking? I'm not sure I would.
- caminante 12y ago
  From the article, it doesn't sound like much debunking will occur in Psychology due to structural characteristics: 1. Funding's increasingly earmarked for "new" studies v. debunking old studies. 2. Psychology studies have a disproportionate amount of findings that "conclude" positive results (v. effects of randomness).
- DougN7 12y ago
  No kidding. Nutrition, health, history and psychology seem to be making a lot of course corrections. Unless it's physics or math, I get ticked off any more when I read "now we know..."
  - Dan_Nguyen 12y ago
    While unreproducible data does exist, I'd honestly blame mainstream news organizations more than the researchers themselves for all this 'course correcting'. Case in point, back in my bio days I worked in a lab that published an article on CBD knockdown of metastatic cancer genes in cell cultures. Mainstream news organizations picked it up and published it as "Smoking pot cures cancer" pieces, which was not at all what our research even touched on.
tracker1 12y ago
While it's likely humans do have sex pheromones... there's been no study to confirm which of many pheremones act as sexual indicators in humans... or how much affect they have.

66 points by igonvalue 12y ago

dsjoerg 12y ago

I can't keep track of what's been debunked anymore.

gwern 12y ago
I wouldn't say that this is necessarily a 'debunking'. What it argues is that androstadienone and estratetraenol don't fit strict definition of 'pheromone' as used in animal research (fair enough). It admits androstadienone and estratetraenol have been linked to various behavioral changes (maybe), which could be true regardless of their pheromone status (since lots of chemicals have effects). And then observes that psychology research has a well-earned reputation for not replicating and publication bias (yes), implying that maybe the behavioral effects of androstadienone & estratetraenol are just more of the same although it does not point to anything specific like a meta-analysis establishing this (ehh....). So if androstadienone & estratetraenol are not 'pheromones' but do influence human behavior, would you call that debunking? I'm not sure I would.
caminante 12y ago
From the article, it doesn't sound like much debunking will occur in Psychology due to structural characteristics: 1. Funding's increasingly earmarked for "new" studies v. debunking old studies. 2. Psychology studies have a disproportionate amount of findings that "conclude" positive results (v. effects of randomness).
DougN7 12y ago
No kidding. Nutrition, health, history and psychology seem to be making a lot of course corrections. Unless it's physics or math, I get ticked off any more when I read "now we know..."
- Dan_Nguyen 12y ago
  While unreproducible data does exist, I'd honestly blame mainstream news organizations more than the researchers themselves for all this 'course correcting'. Case in point, back in my bio days I worked in a lab that published an article on CBD knockdown of metastatic cancer genes in cell cultures. Mainstream news organizations picked it up and published it as "Smoking pot cures cancer" pieces, which was not at all what our research even touched on.

tracker1 12y ago

While it's likely humans do have sex pheromones... there's been no study to confirm which of many pheremones act as sexual indicators in humans... or how much affect they have.