Like every student in Mr. Paul’s sixth grade general science class, I was required to hack together a project for the annual SUNY Potsdam science fair. This was a time in my life when I was fascinated by moulds, fungi, and lichens, and when I was experimenting with condiments. (I still stand by peanut butter, mustard, bacon, and lettuce on pumpernickel as one of the best sandwiches known to woman or man.) I combined these two interests in an experiment to answer the ancient question: Which condiments would produce mould fastest on bread, and do folding sandwich baggies really ensure lasting freshness? My parents were leery, but obliging (though, the following year, they enthusiastically supported my construction of a diorama illustrating the platypus life cycle), and so I set in with the Scientific Method, as taught in class: question, hypothesis (that’s Greek for ‘educated guess’!), experiment, conclusion. Mayo, I think, was what I predicted would be the most mould-prone of the condiments — it is, after all, pretty frickin’ gross. Like the good do-be that I was, I ended my experiment with a series of thought-provoking questions (the judges loved stuff like that — science was more po-mo back in the early ’90’s), and me and my mycelia placed well enough that I got to visit the SUNY Potsdam planetarium (suh-weet!). And thus was I rewarded for producing good, useful science.

Yes, that’s a note of sarcasm, but I’ll leave it to you, gentle reader, to pick apart that poor eleven-year-old kid’s science fair project. For my part, I’ll pick on somebody my own size. Like these guys:

Scientists at universities in Liverpool and Prague tested women’s response to the smell of underarm sweat. They found that women in a relationship who were ovulating were most attracted to the aroma of a dominant man’s armpit. Single women and those not ovulating were not overly aroused.

A paper on this reserach, conducted by Professors Jan Havlicek of Charles University in Prague (Department of Anthropology), S. Craig Roberts of the University of Liverpool (Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group), and Jaroslav Flegr also of Charles University (Department of Parasitology) was published Wednesday by the Royal Society, and heralded by the same day’s Scotsman. The paper may be found here. The research behind the paper went something like this:

1. Forty-eight men between the ages of nineteen and twenty-seven completed eleven-point questionnaires which were scored for ‘psychological dominance’.
2. These men then wore cotton pads under their armpits for twenty-four hours straight.
3. Thirty women in the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle, and thirty-five women in assorted other phases rated the odours of the pads on their ‘intensity’, ’sexiness’, and ‘masculinity’ on a seven-point scale, each woman sniffing ten pads.
4. The scientists turned the results into science!

Before I get to the results, I want to make sure that it’s completely clear how poor this research method was. Can an eleven-point questionnaire ever determine something so complex as “dominance”? And can this one? Sweaters were asked to describe each of the following statements as “very inaccurate”, “inaccurate”, “neither accurate nor inaccurate”, “accurate”, “very accurate”:

1. I try to surpass others’ accomplishments.
2. I try to outdo others.
3. I am quick to correct others.
4. I impose my will on others.
5. I demand explanations from others.
6. I want to control the conversation.
7. I am not afraid of providing criticism.
8. I challenge others’ points of view.
9. I lay down the law to others.
10. I put people under pressure.
11. I hate to seem pushy.

A positive answer to any of the first ten questions raises your dominance/narcissism (apparently, researchers believe these terms to be synonymous or, at least, interchangeable), while a positive answer to the last lowers it. As a rule, though narcissists tend to think about themselves quite a lot, they’re not a terribly introspective sort. Do they always, or even usually, know these things about themselves? If they do, are they proud of the fact that they impose their wills on others? No doubt, some are, but most? And aren’t the weak-willed sometimes inclined to make themselves out to be more dominating than they really are? And is it necessarily the same personal quality that drives one to correct others and provide criticism as drives one to want to control conversation? (See what you think of the test these eleven questions are culled from. Test it on yourself. I’m disorderly and unconscientious.) At best, tests such as these are slightly better-founded versions of horoscopes or tarot readings — they don’t really tell you anything about yourself, but they do provide base material for introspection. At worst, they’re great tools for bad science.

Next, the sweat: Do we have any reason to believe that there’s a qualitative difference between caveman sweat and pansy sweat? If Superman does sweat differently or more than Clark Kent, is it necessarily because Kryptonian sweat is inherently different from that of Earthmen, or might it simply be that Superman flies around, leaps tall buildings, and fights evil (and his inner demons) all day, while Kent sits in an air-conditioned office? It’s not necessarily the case that men who are more psychologically dominating (however that term is defined) also tend to be more physically active, but it’s one possibility — one among many — that would invalidate the results of this research. Imagine: If women find activity-stink on jerks who are quick to correct others and who delight in laying down the law, how devastating might that combination of pheromones and personality be for a guy who’s not a dick? I don’t believe that this is the case, but it’s an important sort of question to consider when conducting or evaluating research of this sort, as it’s an entirely viable conclusion quite different from that drawn by the researchers.

A third complaint: Numbers. Forty-eight men and sixty-five women living in two relatively close cities. My statistics are tetanus-rusty, but that don’t strike me as terribly significant, given a planet of six billion (give or take a few million), of thousands of vastly different ethnicities, in hundreds of countries and thousands of communities. What if it’s only women eating European diets, or with Slavic or Teutonic blood who dig stinky capitalists? Or what if — and this may be a stretch for evolutionary psychology types, but grok with me for a minute — what if olfactory attraction is culturally learned?

So, even if our results are reliable (which, I reckon, they aren’t), this myriad of possible causes points out another fundamental failing: If you really want to know whether ovulating women are genetically sexually inclined toward the odour of psychologically dominant men, for the love of Darwin, use physical scientific methods; not those of social science. Stick electrodes on people and keep them in white boxes with climate control. Watch the blips that their brains make on the monitor. Shred their DNA and parse it. But don’t use surveys and social statistics.

So, what’s the big deal? One piece of bad, research, right? Who cares? Well, here’s the problem: People believe scientists, and these scientists’ research comes with deeply political conclusions: Havlicek et al. claim that their research indicates that fertile women are more likely to dig the stink of a psychologically dominant man. And what’s that mean?

Some researchers have suggested that the high mating value of dominant men is a result of their tendency to reaching higher socio-economical status and, therefore, gaining the resources that they may invest in their mate and offspring (Mueller & Mazur 1997). Alternatively, dominance has been suggested to honestly reflect male genetic quality. Tendency to dominate is a risky strategy in competitive encounters and is associated with higher levels of testosterone, which may reduce immunocompetence in various species (Folstad & Karter 1992); dominance could, therefore, reliably indicate male condition. There is also evidence that males of high genetic quality have a tendency for lower parental investment (Waynforth 1998). In response, a mixed mating strategy may have evolved in females: they prefer genetically superior males as short-term or extra-pair sexual partners while, at the same time, they seek males who are more willing to invest in their offspring as long-term or social partners (Reynolds 1996; Penton-Voak et al. 1999; Blomqvist et al. 2002; Foerster et al. 2003). This interpretation is consistent with our findings that women in stable relationships have a strong tendency to prefer the smell of dominant men when in the fertile phase of their cycle, while single women and all women in non-fertile phases lack this preference.

That first sentence is thrown in there as a ‘yeah, maybe’, but Havlicek et al. clearly prefer the second interpretation. This should come as no surprise: There’s an evolutionary psychologist in the group; this is the discovery they had expected.

This isn’t science in any sort of truly useful sense: A conclusion was drawn from an ideology a priori, and throw-away sixth-grade “research” was conducted to support this conclusion after the fact. The problem is, to an extent, people trust scientists, and they believe research to be infallible. Complicit with bad scientists are bad science journalists. This sort of crap fills the airwaves, and is a tremendous portion of the science that actually reaches the news-reading and -watching public. Check the Scotsman’s title for the article: ‘What fertile women really want: a macho man with a strong odour’. Author Ian Johnston may have had the wool pulled over his eyes, but giving credence to work like this is shoddy journalism, if it’s not downright deceitful.

One last bitch-and-moan, and then I’ll sign out: Why are we still trying to figure out what women want? There’s a certain mystical misogynism to this — women are impossible creatures whose desires can never be sussed. Why, when men ask questions like this, do they turn to sources like science journalism for the answers, rather than asking individual women directly? And, more importantly, when is somebody going to ask me what I want?

Over and out. Time for ice cream.

This entry was posted on Sunday, 10 July 2005 at 20:02 and is filed under News Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.