Martha McClintock

Martha McClintock is an American psychologist best known for her research on human pheromones and her theory of menstrual synchrony. She is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago and is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology.^[1]

McClintock was born in Pasadena, California, and obtained her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1970. It was while at Wellesley that she conducted a research study of menstrual synchrony in women living in a college dormitory. Her studied asserted that women living together in a close community without the presence of males synchronized their menstrual cycles with each other. The McClintock effect of menstrual synchrony is named after this study, which was published in the journal Nature in 1971. ]^[2]

In 1992 H. Clyde Wilson, professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri published a critique of McClintock's research in Psychoneuroendochrinology.^[3] In that article, and in an article on human pheromones and menstruation published in Hormones and Behavior in 1987,^[4] Wilson analyzed the research and data collection methods McClintock and others used in their studies. He found significant errors in the researchers' mathematical calculations and data collection as well as an error in how the researchers defined synchrony. Wilson's own clinical research and his critical reviews of existing research demonstrated that menstrual synchrony in humans has yet to be proven.

McClintock obtained her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania with Norman Adler in 1974 and obtained a faculty position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago in 1976. She also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Comparative Human Development, the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, and the Committee on Neurobiology. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine in the National Academy of Sciences, and has received numerous awards and distinctions for her groundbreaking research.

In 1999, she founded the Institute for Mind and Biology at the University of Chicago, a research institute designed to foster transdisciplinary research in mind-body interactions and the biological basis of behavior. This innovative Institute enabled the creation of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research (CIHDR),^[5] a multi million dollar initiative to explore and understand why African American women have a higher incidence of mortality from breast cancer than Caucasian women. McClintock is Co-Director of the Center.

References

1. ^ "IMB Martha K. McClintock". 2004-03-14. http://imb.uchicago.edu/people/members/mcclintock.shtml. Retrieved 2007-02-07. 
2. ^ McClintock MK (1971). "Menstrual synchrony and suppression". Nature 229 (5282): 244-5. doi:10.1038/229244a0 PMID 4994256.
3. ^ Wilson, H.C. (1992). A critical review of menstrual synchrony research. Psychoneuroendochrinology 17 (6), 565-591.
4. ^ Wilson, H.C. (1987). Female axillary secretions influence women's menstrual cycles: A critique. Hormones and Behavior, 21, 536-546.
5. ^ Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research

External links

• her study as published in Nature

See also

• Androstenone
• Estratetraenol
• Pheromone
• Neuroendocrinology
• Biopsychology

Persondata
Name	Macclintock, Martha
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death