ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Reproducible research into human chemical communication by cues and pheromones: learning from psychology's renaissance.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Major histocompatibility complex-associated odour preferences and human mate choice: near and far horizons.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Pooled it
- Titrating the Smell of Fear: Initial Evidence for Dose-Invariant Behavioral, Physiological, and Neural Responses.Psychological science · 2021Trial
- Prejudice, Proxemic Space, and Social Odor: The Representation of the 'Outsider' Through an Evolutionary Metaverse Psychology Perspective.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Analysis of androgen receptor expression and activity in the mouse brain.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Food Security and Nutrition as the Neglected Missing Links in Cultural Evolution: The Role of the Sociotype.Rambam Maimonides medical journal · 2022Review
- Can Humans Discriminate Horse 'Fear' Chemosignals from Control Chemosignals? Comment on Sabiniewicz et al. A Preliminary Investigation of Interspecific Chemosensory Communication of Emotions: Can Humans (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Reverse Chemical Ecology Suggests Putative Primate Pheromones.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Olfaction in the Multisensory Processing of Faces: A Narrative Review of the Influence of Human Body Odors.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Perception of Social Odor and Gender-Related Differences Investigated Through the Use of Transfer Entropy and Embodied Medium.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2021Article
- Human olfactory communication: current challenges and future prospects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Olfaction scaffolds the developing human from neonate to adolescent and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Interdisciplinary challenges for elucidating human olfactory attractiveness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- More Data, Please: Machine Learning to Advance the Multidisciplinary Science of Human Sociochemistry.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite the lack of evidence that the 'putative human pheromones' androstadienone and estratetraenol ever were pheromones, almost 60 studies have claimed 'significant' results. These are quite possibly false positives and can be best seen as potential examples of the 'reproducibility crisis', sadly common in the rest of the life and biomedical sciences, which has many instances of whole fields based on false positives. Experiments on the effects of olfactory cues on human behaviour are also at risk of false positives because they look for subtle effects but use small sample sizes. Research on human chemical communication, much of it falling within psychology, would benefit from vigorously adopting the proposals made by psychologists to enable better, more reliable science, with an emphasis on enhancing reproducibility. A key change is the adoption of study pre-registration and/or Registered Reports which will also reduce publication bias. As we are mammals, and chemical communication is important to other mammals, it is likely that chemical cues are important in our behaviour and that humans may have pheromones, but new approaches will be needed to reliably demonstrate them. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.