Chemists are experts on the behavior of molecules.
People are made of molecules, and human behavior ultimately results from what some of those molecules do in the brain. Yet very few chemists could make a living as marriage counselors or political commentators. Analyzing social behavior in terms of molecules sounds harder than forecasting the U.S. economy by playing Monopoly. Knowing the brain's biochemistry is a long way from understanding sex, love, and the ratio of fighting to skating in ice hockey. Nevertheless, modern research methods for manipulating genes and scanning the brain's anatomy have enabled scientists to infer some intriguing links between social behavior and molecules in the nervous system.