MHARRIS There’s at least one dud in the kit, too. That’s how we can tell which testers hallucinate results, and which ones really have a knack for social observation.
Some people seem to literally hate me for blind testing everything (always begging to be preprogrammed), but our placebo free tests have work marvelously.
Also, there’s social collusion on forums… “agreement” to what things do, that sometimes override other legitimate effects that these chemicals are producing.
If people would accept unlabeled “-none”, I think things would go even further.
Even with well known pheromones such as androstenone, I think they’re a little too well “known”. People are overlooking the subtleties. They’re overlooking effects that they would’ve seen if only they didn’t have their expectations well programmed, and the effects all decided and agreed upon.
I’d just as well release ExperiMone kits completely blind, with everything labeled with letters. It seems like it’d kill sales to do that, but if it were accepted, there’d literally be a RENAISSANCE in pheromones. Truly. I swear! (until collusion really took hold in forums, which would slow discovery)
On to another point… Even though the data is not complete (mostly because a lot of pheromone aware testers get overzealous and create mixes before they’ve fully tested one compound), there’s now more workable pheromones than ever.
What’s more, due to the tests over the years, I’ve known which chemosignals to invest the funds in to achieve efficient synthesis routes.
Eventually, you’ll have a gaggle of new pheromones, all at costs similar to what you have now.
Mind you, with our self-sales we hide people from true costs. We don’t sell things based on actual cost. We absorbed a great deal of that (especially when we used to send out free kits), otherwise we would’ve been fighting an uphill battle.
Now when it comes to making consumer products or supplying to other companies, costs matter more. They want everything cheap, they don’t want to absorb costs or offer anything too new or unproven. We just can’t do that with most truly novel compounds. If you absorb costs on a wholesale level, and you die.
Synthesis routes are just like routes to work, or back home. The more efficient it is, the “cheaper” it in terms of time and “fuel”. In chemistry, you talk about yield.
You can get wherever you want by flying around the world 3 times, but it’s more efficient to go in a straight line. Same thing with chemistry. Research chemistry is expensive, and commercial chemistry is all about finding affordable routes to the most useful compounds.
Anyway, we’re getting there… in terms of commercial viablity. Making the rare and difficult, a little easier and more common.
I thank everyone here who’s been part of our tests.
I’ll be bring you more experimentals in the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aurelie
The other thought I had last night was that some of these studies were done quite a few years ago. If some of the pheromones are unavailable, I’ll just look at it this way - I have to have faith that R&D done by guys like you might actually have produced pheromones that are finer-tweaked (is that a real word?)
MHARRIS… We certainly get more data by offering this out to the public, and to a small, private test groups.
It also shifts costs costs around to make things happen. If you do research at univerties, you’re often talking eons for the most boring, staid data on earth. Those places suck up money with a moonsized straw, and they don’t make much happen, unless they have someone truly passionate and inspired conducting the research.
I think the university research in this area is something more for poeple to put into sales letter. The real “action” is where the enthusiasts are. The real proof is in the pudding in the pheromone field. The proof is amongst the people who use 'em.
The second greatest hotbed of action are the experimenters I round out myself, who I get to test totally blind. I tell them to watch for skin reactions, not pheromonal effects. Then I ask them about social effects later on, see if their enhanced skin helped their social life. These social experiments produce even better results than most enthusiasts. It’s real time, real life social experimentation, with the world as the observation chamber. It works.
My modus operandi is always: test first, describe second.
Not even university studies do that, usually. They almost always have an idea of what they’re looking for. There’s always bias at one or more points in an experiment.
I hate to do that. I delight in removing bias points, where and when at all possible.
If you always go in looking for something, you might just find it, whether it’s real or not… and ignore something else entirely.
Anyway, thanks for your input. Much appreciated! 
Actually it is a research institution. The sales from the store fund the research. They do outside (of the forum) studies as well and then compare what they get here to the outside testers.