经济学人下载:性感吸引:我的化学浪漫(1)

Science and Technology
科技

Sexual Attractiveness: My chemical romance
性感吸引：我的化学浪漫

Two putative human sex pheromones turn out not to be.
关于人类的两种性信息素的假说被证明是不成立的。

For several decades biologists have pondered the question of whether men and women produce pheromones.
近几十年来，生物学家一直在思考这样一个问题：男人和女人会不会产生信息素。

A pheromone is a chemical signal from one animal to another.
信息素是指从一种动物传递到另一动物的化学信号。

Often, though not always, such chemicals indicate sexual availability—and when it comes to human mating signals in particular,
这种化学物质通常表明性的可行性，而当涉及到人类发出交配信号时，

those looking into the matter have a couple of specific molecules in mind.
研究人员会想到某些特定的化学分子。

Androstadienone (AND) and estratetraenol (EST) are derived, respectively, from male and female hormones and are exuded in sweat.
男性和女性的荷尔蒙分别产生雄甾二烯酮(AND)和雌甾四烯(EST)，这两种分子通过汗水渗出来。

The idea that they are pheromonal is thus worth investigating.
因此，它们有信息素的性质这个想法是值得研究的。

The results of such investigations as have been made so far, though, are contradictory.
然而，迄今为止进行的这类调查的结果是矛盾的。

Some experiments have found that these molecules make opposite-sex faces, or photographs thereof, appear more attractive to heterosexual volunteers.
一些实验已经发现这些分子使异性面部或其照片对异性恋志愿者显得更有吸引力。

Others discern no such effect.
其他实验则没有观察到这样的效果。

Unfortunately, most of these studies were done with groups of volunteers too small for clear conclusions to be drawn, or using less-than-rigorous experimental methods.
不幸的是，大多数这些研究是用一些志愿者小组进行的，这些志愿者小组太小，无法得出明确的结论，或使用了不够严格的实验方法。

(That has not stopped businesses taking up the idea: several brands of “pheromone perfume” based on EST and, especially, AND are available for hopeful Romeos and Juliets)
（这并没有阻止企业对这个想法感兴趣：抱有希望的罗密欧和朱丽叶们可以买到一些基于EST，特别是AND的“信息素香水”品牌）

To try to clear up the confusion, a group of researchers led by Robin Hare of the University of Western Australia have performed one of the most stringent studies to date.
为了试着解释这一困惑，由西澳大学的Robin Hare领导的研究小组已经进行了迄今为止最严格的研究之一。

They report their results this week in Royal Society Open Science.
他们本周在《皇家学会开放科学》杂志上报告了他们的结果。