Sobel Noam
a Department of Neurobiology , Weizmann Institute of Science , Rehovot , Israel.
Cogn Emot. 2017 Jan;31(1):151-157. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2016.1177488. Epub 2016 May 19.
In a study by Gelstein et al., we found that human emotional tears act as a social chemosignal. In the first of three different experiments in that study we observed that sniffing women's emotional tears reduced the sexual attractiveness attributed by men to pictures of women's faces. In a study partly titled "Chemosignaling effects of human tears revisited", Gračanin et al. claim failed replication of this effect in a series of experiments, one they described as "exactly the same procedure" as Gelstein. Given that Gračanin et al. refused our extended offer to jointly replicate the experiment at our expense, we can merely comment on their effort. We find that Gračanin, who are not a chemosignaling laboratory, used methodology that falls short of standards typically applied in chemosignaling research. Thus, their experiments were profoundly different from Gelstein. Finally, we found that in reanalysing their raw data we could in fact replicate the effect from Gelstein. Thus, we conclude that the failed replication in Gračanin is neither a replication nor failed.
在盖尔施泰因等人的一项研究中，我们发现人类的情感泪水起着一种社会化学信号的作用。在该研究的三个不同实验中的第一个实验里，我们观察到嗅闻女性的情感泪水会降低男性对女性面部图片所赋予的性吸引力。在一项部分标题为“重新审视人类泪水的化学信号作用”的研究中，格拉查宁等人声称在一系列实验中未能重复这一效应，他们将其中一个实验描述为与盖尔施泰因的实验“程序完全相同”。鉴于格拉查宁等人拒绝了我们提出的由我方出资共同重复该实验的进一步提议，我们只能对他们的工作发表评论。我们发现，格拉查宁团队并非一个化学信号研究实验室，他们所采用的方法未达到化学信号研究中通常应用的标准。因此，他们的实验与盖尔施泰因的实验有着很大的不同。最后，我们发现在重新分析他们的原始数据时，实际上我们能够重复盖尔施泰因实验的效应。因此，我们得出结论，格拉查宁团队所谓的未能重复并非真正的重复失败。
