Quick response and Happy New Year

[DrSmellThis]

Hey everybody, long time no see. I've missed everybody.

I've been busy with my psychology practice, family,

and musical projects lately; and haven't had much time for pheromones. Like most of you, I have interests besides

pheromones and perfumery.

But I decided to stop by to order some products from Bruce, and noticed a suprising

number of critical references to my past discourse about pheromones and perfumery on the forum, from one particular

member. It was suprising because I haven't been here in a long time.

I have no interest in engaging in a

debate, or saying a bunch of stuff about someone else; but I just wanted to make my positions clear, since someone

has been attributing certain things to me in my "absence". I'm not going to include the original criticisms,

because I want to devote as little space and energy to this as possible.

1. My anonymity: I prefer to

remain anonymous because my professional clinical practice with families takes precedence over my life in

pheromones; over being "a guy who helps you get laid", or something. I don't want to mix up public identities. It

always seemed the most responsible path.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with some attempt to market pheromones

or hide who I really am, as was intimated. There are people here who know me and my professional qualifications

(PhD, psychology), such as Bruce and some of the moderators. For that matter, one of the people who I once told my

real name, employment, and place of education to was the same person remarking negatively on my anonymity. The whole

issue of my anonymity seems silly and trivial.

2. My product and claims: I never made scientific claims

about my product, Pheros, which was a personal labor of love that was started long before I decided to market

it, as Bruce could attest. Every statement I ever made is on record here. I wanted to make a contribution to the

phero community as well as sell something. I wrote a lot about perfuming here, and people had been asking me to make

something for Love Scent.

My product came out of the perfumery and aromatherapy traditions by design, and was

designed to fill a niche that no one else came close to targeting. It was always designed to supplement, not

supplant, "chem lab approaches".

You have to rely on traditions and histories, not scientific research, in

those worlds. There are bits and pieces of science you can incorporate, but I was never aiming at "hard science" --

just to be true to the traditions and see what they could offer. I still believe there is a unique role for both

traditional perfumery and aromatherapy in attraction. Why can't all disciplines cooperate toward the same goal? I

wasn't coming at that project from a strictly scientific place, and always made that clear. A brief search on my

product under my forum name would confirm all this, of course; not that anyone should care enough to look it all

up.

3. My scientific debates on pheromones: On the other hand, I do claim to pass muster as someone very

conversant -- professionally conversant -- in science, psychology, human relationships, statistics and research

design/methodogy, because that is my professional training. No big deal. My advisor and some of my committee were

prominent experts in research design and methods, and I was forced to get good in that area to get them to let me

out of grad school. (The person claiming that I somehow "tossed aside the science" has an associate's or

bachelor's degree in lab tech, IIRC, so I don't take their word as the last on how scientific I am.)

When I

discussed pheromone science, I stuck with the rules and discipline of science, though trying to avoid the overly

narrow approach that so often screws up science's contribution to the rest of life. I considered the science before

I wrote anything; and I stand by the scientific integrity of everything I've ever said in this forum (which is

different from saying I was always right). This is no big deal either, as you would expect a PhD in science to be

scientific. Again, it's all on record here.

What I did was disagree with someone else's interpretation or

critical review of the science and research we were considering. We both read it, and I saw it different than they

did. In particular, I disagreed strongly with drawing certain overarching conclusions about human nature,

psychology, and relationships from the body of pheromone research.

I was qualified to do that, given that I was

professionally trained to design, produce, and critically evaluate human science research. That is just normal

scientific debate, even at its most "scientific". It was precisely my experience in human science, along with

several years of previous interest in pheromones, that led me to those disagreements.

I regret that those

debates sometimes became emotional in a negative way. That happens when you have fallible humans with egos; for

example, myself.

4. Finally, Archetypal Hybrid and I are indeed different persons -- lucky for him! Congrats

to him on his new products, BTW!

I hope everyone had a great holiday and New Year's celebration!