On perpetuation of false data through the forum:
One major issue.
Originally Posted by Socrates A&E Super Primal Pheromones For Him - #6 by Matthew1982ct In any case when mixing putatives with A314, I hope the fixatives are at maximal levels – users have noticed that most of the putatives do not last long without strong fixatives. Some of the people who got the best results from the putatives ended up using strong fixatives to ‘extend the effects’ (like Tacitus with Monolaurin, Sandalo with Glucam P-20, and Warren who was going to try some Dipropylene Glycol).
That’s not a good meme to perpetuate. This is just bad info multiplying on itself, and it really taints the research .
Possible future pheromones, like any currently proven pheromones, all have different “staying power”. It depends on the molecule, not it being " putative " or not.
Putative does not mean short lived. Putatives doesn’t mean anything special at all. Putative simply means “not yet proven”. Nothing more, nothing less.
A putative is like a child. While it’s not yet proven, it could grow up to be anything. A winner or a loser, a hero or a villain, super-powerful or a real dud, who knows yet? You can only see it’s true nature if you don’t assume too much about it, either positive or negative.
Any human pheromones, putative or not, need proper fixatives, and proper diffusion. Most human scents are very short lasting and have poor diffusion on their own. You can smell a skunk a half mile away, but you’d be lucky to smell your buddy a half room away unless he was wearing some synthetic scents.
***Everyone: To keep feedback accurate, please evaluate each molecule, putative or not, on their own merits.
No putative necessarily has anything to do with another, so avoid assuming anything about any particular molecule w/o testing. Test any and all putatives like you’ve never tested anything before. Test everything as a blank slate. **
Here’s another way to help stop to this false assumption once and for all… When ordering putatives, please order with a scent/fixative package. The Neroli is a good default.
On social biased skewing of the data:
The information on the forum sometimes goes in the wrong direction temporarily due to social proof or inaccurate information spread by strong “sneezers” . (the idea that putatives need any more fixation than any other molecule is one such piece of false data… almost everything, aside from a very few molecules such as androstenone , need a ton of fixatives)
Our internal information is a tad more objective in the short term, and doesn’t always agree with the socialized forum view. Both sets of data are extremely valuable, especially when “sanity checked” against each other. Using both sets to determine future experiments allows us to move forward more quickly than depending exclusively on one or the other.
Traditional science would discount this forum as a useless mass of “anecdotal data”, but we don’t agree. We do agree, however, that you must be very careful about how you parse the data. You have to be very aware of how the social space influences the data in one way or anothe r, just like you have to watch the funding source(s) and motivations of the scientists involved in an academic study. Everything has it’s biases and points of inaccuracy that taint data.
Long term and with enough participants , the forum data usually self-corrects. Short term, especially with less participants, there’s a lot of social based sway , especially when a strong thought leader is involved in any early experiment.
There’s especially a lot of social sway and repetition of the less tested molecules , like p90. Since there is such a small data set on such a molecule, some new testers read everything about the molecule first, and pre-program their results to agree with the few people who’ve gone before. That leads to a lot of lot of dirty data in the short term.
Remember, the placebo effect is strong in the social realm, and it involves both positive and negative hallucination. The larger the test group, the bigger the n, the better. Something truly popular will always have it’s dissenting voices, and nobody will ever be able to completely pre-program their results by reading all of the feedback involved with a popular mix or molecule. That’s why there’s often great information in those voices in a large crowd that say something different.
This was specifically about putatives, but with test mixes and mixing putatives and/or test mixes with consumer line products - the issues with social placebo effects and tainted data are the same.
This is really not that big a deal. Even if there is enormous social follower placebo effect, eventually the data will correct, if a) the testers are given enough time, freedom, and opportunity for all their divergent experiences to come together into one bigger picture; b) if there are enough testers who are testing test mixes and putatives one by one thoroughly; and c) all the testers are encouraged and allowed to report their findings, whether positive or negative, without censure.
But it adds a lot to the amount of time it would take for an accurate picture to be built up of each of the putatives and test mixes.
Diane