(See expansion below, which describes why this triggers my BS meter. YMMV, but it's not just "reflexive".)
People interested in more of the details can read the Nature Methods article here: http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth...
It also fits into a long history of work out of the Mogil lab about the limitations in our current assays for pain. It's worth noting that this is by no means an easy problem. Pain is inherently subjective, and measuring and quantifying it in humans is difficult, let alone in rodents. The only way forward is more work like this - that carefully quantifies the sources of potential bias and error in our assays, and proposes solutions for how to get around them.
Edited to add: Vox has a good interview with Mogil that goes more into this. You can read it here: http://www.vox.com/2014/4/28/5653444/mice-get-stressed-out-f...
It sounds too much like any number of "xxx affected by cell phone radiation!!1!!" results that historically have given rise to much panic, intense discussion, and clicking of links, but have never, ever, ever proven to be consistently replicable. At some point, skepticism and even a bit of "HN negativity," as you put it, becomes the most rational response to initial reports of such phenomena.
I've been reading this paper closely over the past 30 minutes, it's important enough that I'm sure it'll be heavily discussed at conferences and meetings this year. I can't think of a single thing that these researchers could have done that they haven't done. They've approached the question carefully, looked into a ton of second-order explanations and effects, and provided a plausible discussion of how and why they see their effects.
The experimental set-up seems fairly sound. They controlled for the obvious factors that could influence the outcome. It is somewhat consistent with what we know in other areas - yes, pain is felt less under increased stress, and yes, the presence of other males is a stressor.
The interesting part is that it's an inter-species stressor. But then again, testosterone as a male hormone is shared across a lot of species - it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that scent markers might be similar too.
So, what makes your BS sensor go off? (I ask in all seriousness. I'm always interested in calibrating my sensor, and it didn't go off for this).
Neither of those is a disqualifier, but A in particular at least somewhat gets into the realm of "an extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary confirmation".
The proposed mechanism would also seem to imply that female hunters don't exist. I would have preferred a proposal that you're inclined to hide your weaknesses around a male in general (lest he either take your woman or harass you in other ways), and the mechanism is likely keyed off of testosterone in general rather than mouse smells in particular, which seems reasonable.
My head isn't going to explode if this is established by further experiment. But it's suspicious to me.
To siyer's point, impeccably-done research can still come up with coincidental results, unfortunately.
Until it has been repeated, it has not been verified. That is how experimental science works.
Yes, this is what Figure 1c and 1d of the paper demonstrate. (To be precise, not testosterone, but adrostenone, androstadienone, and 3M2H).
"My head isn't going to explode if this is established by further experiment. But it's suspicious to me."
Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 3 describe replications performed in two other laboratories, one at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and the other at another laboratory at McGill.
Look, I'm all for scientific skepticism, and it's true that there's a lot of low-powered stuff out there. However, papers are best evaluated on what they actually say (which, incidentally, is why open-access/archiving is important), rather than on a filtered impression of what a press release says. If you'd like a copy of the paper, let me know, I'd be happy to send you a pdf.
So I don't expect the study to be retracted, but I expect half a dozen more papers and then a theory that will be eventually debunked in favor of a more politically convenient one.
I see what you did there.