The ‘love hormone’ oxytocin needs a scientific makeover, and left-handed kangaroos don’t have autism.
An article published this week in Nature suggests the old hormone needs a new shtick — a rebranding of sorts. “It doesn’t induce love; it doesn’t induce massive amounts of trust,” Adam Guastella, clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney, told Nature. “The sorts of biology we’re studying here are incredibly complex.”
Trials testing the hormone’s effects in people with autism have been inconclusive. That’s why researchers are taking a step back trying to truly understand oxytocin’s effects in the brain. For more about the molecule’s lingering promise, check out our Q&A with oxytocin pioneer Larry Young, director of the Silvio O. Conte Center for Oxytocin and Social Cognition at Emory University in Atlanta.
An article published this week in Science looks at the extent of that damage. Citing a May report by theNational Bureau of Economic Research, the article says bigwig biomedical scientists see a 10 percent dip in citations of past papers after an ‘honest mistake’ retraction. This dip swells to 20 percent after misconduct.
The citation hit is a penalty, “but it’s not a death sentence,” John Walsh, professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Science. “One way to think about it is you can survive a scandal.”
Case in point: A press release issued last week by Current Biology suggested that studying left-handed kangaroos may shed light on autism. Autism is never mentioned in the study, but several news sites that covered the study highlighted the connection. One article even stated that “autism is widespread among kangaroos.”
“I have seen autism attributed to animals from mice to horses to cats, but kangaroos? That’s a first,” Willingham wrote, stressing that autism is, by definition, a human disorder.
The mistake serves as a valuable reminder of the importance of clear, correct communication between scientists and the public.
