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Decoding Academia 19: The Smell Test (Gelstein et al. 2011) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-05-31 02:52:14
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hey everyone,

A free-for-everyone decoding episode in which we look at a pre-replication crisis paper that suggests smelling sad tears makes men less sexually aroused. Bit of an odd paper but also recently promoted by Huberman. We cover some warning flags when it comes to assessing papers, why neuroimaging studies are sometimes misleading, and also get a little bogged down in a discussion of error bars (sorry!).

Hope you enjoy it. Full decoding episode coming soon!

Audio version coming later today.

Files

Decoding Academia 19: The Smell Test (Gelstein et al., 2011)

Comments

Demostix

I get all the points about low sample sizes, multiple degrees of researcher freedom etc, but I don't get the "close to significance" argument. I thought significance was below 0.05, so I'd get the argument if they hovered around say 0.04 or something like that. Not defending the paper in any way, I just wanna understand the argument.

Emma

Ok as an Australian animal lover I can't stop myself saying this. Platypus along with echidna are the only living members of the monotreme order. There is three groups of mammals still living: monotremes, marsupials (most of the other ozzy mammals) and placentals. Monotremes are a bit weird though.

Adam Session

Fun one to listen to as a stats minded biologist. Agree with many of the criticisms that you bring up. I will directly counter their claim that the within group variance matters more by saying really it is the comparison of within and between group variance that determines the p-value here, not either one on its own. Also to counter one comment Matt made at the end there (professional evolutionary biologist so I have to): we have actually understood the function and evolution of the appendix for a few decades now. It hosts the commensal populations of your probiotic gut bacteria. Essentially diarrhea clears out everything from your main gut, including the bacteria, and the bacteria from the appendix will colonize faster than anything you eat. People who have their appendix removed have issues recovering from diarrhea specifically and have to be treated with fecal transplants, etc. You can also see this reflected in the amount of bacteria needed by the mammal. No mammalian cell can digest dietary fiber found in many plants, but our gut bacteria hcan. Those mammals that eat grass have a lot of the bacteria that digests cellulose, and their appendix is larger to host more of the cellulose digesting bacteria.