The neuropeptide oxytocin has been popularized for its role in social behaviour and nominated as a candidate treatment for several psychiatric illnesses due to promising preclinical results. However, these results so far have failed to reliably translate from animal models to human research. In response, there have been justified calls to improve intranasal oxytocin delivery methodology in terms of verifying that intranasal administration increases central levels of oxytocin. Nonetheless, improved methodology needs to be coupled with a robust theory of the role of oxytocin in behaviour and physiology to ask meaningful research questions. Moreover, stringent methodology based on robust theory may yield interesting results, but such findings will have limited utility if they are not reproducible. We outline how the precision of intranasal oxytocin research can be improved by the complementary consideration of methodology, theory and reproducibility.

神经肽催产素因其在社会行为中的作用而广为人知，并因其有希望的临床前结果而被提名为几种精神疾病的候选治疗方法。然而，到目前为止，这些结果未能可靠地从动物模型转化为人类研究。作为回应，有理由呼吁改进鼻内催产素递送方法，以验证鼻内给药增加了催产素的中心水平。尽管如此，改进的方法需要与催产素在行为和生理学中作用的稳健理论相结合，以提出有意义的研究问题。此外，基于稳健理论的严格方法可能会产生有趣的结果，但如果它们不可重复，这些发现的效用将有限。