She is proposing the possible existence of a sixth human sense to a world filled with skeptics, and must devise scientific experiments that explore workings of something that can't be heard, seen, smelled, touched or felt, but which may have an impact on how we think, breed and behave. I found a phenomenon that I thought this form of communication might explain. I hadn't taken a compound and changed physiology. We did that for the first time in humans only two years ago. McClintock believes that scientific curiosity about her field is increasing.
Some scientists think our results are just due to luck.
They want the whole system nailed down, and I think that's right. Other people are willing to say there is a human pheromone system and to advise selling perfumes that turn women from no, no, no, to yes, yes, yes. So it's high profile and very extreme. We have no axes to grind. We're trying to just stay with the facts that we can find.