Oxytocin: how to write a bad science article

[roseembolism]

This is an excellent example of bad science reporting; grab a press release, summarize it, overstate the findings, and then do a breathless spiel about What This Will Mean for the Future.

Personally, I love how they mention that restaurants and bars could spray a mist of oxytocin in order to get people to loosen up and trust each other more.  As if, even if it did work, there wouldn't be any potentially nasty side effects of artificially enhancing our tendency to trust people.  And the idea of making it into a riot suppression device...I'm surprised they didn't go one step further and rhapsodize about dosing all citizens with "Oxy-Soma"

One of the problems of reading about neurochemical research is it's really hard to separate out the wheat from the chaff.  This article may be chaff, but hidden in it are some very chilling ideas a writer could tap, if they were sufficiently supplied with paranoia, and insuffciently dosed with Oxytocin

Comments

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

Wow. How very Brave New World. Ick.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Or "A Bowl of Biskies Makes a Healthy Boy".

It's amazing how the potential for truly nasty and subtle social control was lost in the gee-whiz reporting. I mean, even in the listed uses there was room for massive abuse.

[ladycrim.livejournal.com]

I'm getting flashbacks to Serenity. "It was the pax ..."

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I would be unsurprised if .1% of the people exposed to Oxytocin gas developed unfortunate side effects, like say megaviolence, rape, cannibalism, or all of the above...I'd love to see the disclaimer.

[etoilenoir959.livejournal.com]

The worst part is that it's spun as "new and amazing!" Science has already known about oxytocin for quite a while.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I think that's one of the classic elements of your bad science reporting: the "discovery" that really isn't a discovery at all.