Scientists have proved that the hormone oxytocin turns writers into spouters of inane pseudoscience and groundless speculation. Well, not yet, but it’s pretty likely that they will. First it was used to explain the now-debunked “fact” that women talk more than men. Now a science writer at the Times of London is waxing dystopian about a new study showing that the chemical may calm anxiety:
The potential uses of oxytocin could ultimately extend well beyond individual patients and into commercial environments. Restaurants, for instance, could spray a thin mist over customers to put them at ease.
It could be used as a benign form of tear gas, quelling any violent feelings among groups of demonstrators, or even to prevent extramarital affairs.
Lots of “could”s there. The reactions at Metafilter are mostly predictable (OMG SOMA!), whereas you can be fairly sure that if some writer mused that, say, salvia “could” be introduced into the water supply, they’d recognize the suggestion as the media-driven War on Drugs hysteria it is. At least one poster sums it up accurately: “It’s like [journalists] are amateur science-fiction writers.”
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