The weather forecast for today calls for a high of 80 degrees. This means summer may have finally arrived, which is a good thing. But the warmer weather also heralds the advent of mosquito season, which is not such a good thing, particularly if you are one of those people like me who seem to be irresistible to mosquitoes.

I’ve never liked spraying mosquito repellent on my skin, so my mosquito avoidance regime is based almost entirely on the principle of Relative Misery Indexing. Mosquito RMI consists of always trying to sit or stand next to someone who appears to be even more attractive to mosquitoes than you are. But there may be a better solution on the horizon to being bothered by annoying mosquitoes.

Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York have confirmed that people who are mosquito magnets emit from their bodies a tantalizing combination of chemicals that are all but irresistible to mosquitoes, particularly mosquitoes of the female persuasion, who are the ones doing all the biting. It turns out people who have higher levels of certain acids on their skin are 100 times more attractive to the female Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito responsible for spreading such diseases as dengue and yellow fever.

Female mosquitoes seek out blood as a way to provide themselves with enough of a protein burst to enable them to reproduce. A mosquito can gather the equivalent of 150 pounds of food from the droplet of blood it extracts from your arm in a one-minute feeding. In other words, to mosquitoes, we humans are just walking protein shakes.

The research at Rockefeller University have been able to confirm scientifically what has been speculated on for years: the principle that some people are just more attractive to mosquitoes than others, and that attraction seems to be linked to the way people smell, and that a big factor in how people smell has to do with the levels of carboxylic acid they have on their skin. In copious quantities, carboxylic acid is said to smell not unlike ‘cheese or smelly feet.’

Even before the Rockefeller University study confirmed this truth about the link between mosquitoes and human smells, previous mosquito researchers had established a link between mosquitoes and people who are pregnant, people who use certain soaps, and people who have ‘had a few beers.’

To the best of my knowledge, I have never been pregnant. I do shower regularly and do use soap, but generally not strongly-scented soaps. And I have been known on occasion to have a few beers. I am, therefore, hypothesizing that my particular attractiveness to mosquitoes must be related to consuming beer in the presence of female mosquitoes looking for a little shot of protein before an amorous night out with mosquitoes of the non-female persuasion.

I’ll be putting this hypothesis to the test through a series of rigorous scientific testing this weekend in my backyard, where I’ll be replacing my mosquito-drawing weekend beers with a couple glasses of mosquito-aversive wine while counting the number of mosquitoes that land on my exposed arms over a two-hour test period. Admittedly, my backyard experiment lacks some of the scientific and intellectual rigor of Rockefeller University’s testing protocols, and it is not without some potential evaluative flaws.

For example, I may find that I enjoy the wine in the yard so much that I miscount the number of mosquitoes sampling my blood during the testing period. It’s also possible that the presence of our chickens or the dog in the yard could either distract or confuse the mosquitoes and result in a non-reproducible outcome to my study.

These are all challenges I am committed to dealing with in the interest of science. It’s premature to speculate on where the results of this experiment may take me within the American scientific community (assuming, of course, that the current administration doesn’t win its war on science before I can post my test results and write up my findings in a leading mosquito science journal). Wish me well, and think of me the next time you are outside and don’t get bitten by a mosquito.

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.