# Team fails to replicate own 'strong' oxytocin result

**URL:** <https://pheromonetalk.com/t/team-fails-to-replicate-own-strong-oxytocin-result/64958>\
**Category:** Studies & Abstracts\
**Created:** [September 17, 2015, 6:46am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/team-fails-to-replicate-own-strong-oxytocin-result/64958 "2015-09-17T06:46:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vanadium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c4cdca/32.png) [@vanadium](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/vanadium)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 6:46am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/team-fails-to-replicate-own-strong-oxytocin-result/64958/1 "2015-09-17T06:46:44Z")

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I’m not going to comment on this yet, because I haven’t had to fully analyze its various possibilities (there’s much more to fully understanding a paper than merely understanding, however thoroughly, the words on the page) but I applaud the courage/integrity of the team in attempting two replications of their own study [published with a high p\>0.001 in the top journal _Science[_ and publishing their negative results.

Most departments want you to use your resources to publish extended or novel results. Most top journals refuse replication studies, whether positive or negative, as ‘not original’. To me, this indicates they’ve lost sight of what science is. Leave unsubstantiated “breaking news” to the tabloids. It’s not science until it is replicated, and not truly solid until well/widely replicated.

Lane A, Mikolajczak M, Treinen E, Samson D, Corneille O, de Timary P, et al. (2015) [Failed Replication of Oxytocin Effects on Trust: The Envelope Task Case.](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137000) PLoS ONE 10(9): e0137000. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137000

You’ll find some layman explanation/discussion in [this blog post](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/09/16/doubts-oxytocin-and-trust-theory) and its comments.

To be clear: I don’t mean to disparage oxytocin. It was, in fact, the first pheromone I personally tried, after a 15-20 year hiatus from the crude [pheromones](https://pheromonelabs.com/) [but sometime quite effective, e.g. Jovan Andron] of the 1980s, and I based that choice on a flurry of seemingly compelling results and hypotheses in the 90s/00s