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In other words, it transfers the information concerning night and day to the peripheral organs which, without it, could not \u201cknow\u201d which part of the circadian rhythm the body is in. Besides its main circadian and circannual rhythms mastering, melatonin is reported to be a radical scavenger and\/or an antioxidant. Because radical scavengers are chemical species able to neutralize highly reactive and toxic species such as reactive oxygen species, one would like to transfer this property to living system, despite impossibilities already largely reported in the literature. In the present commentary, we refresh the memory of the readers with this notion of radical scavenger, and review the possible evidence that melatonin could be an in vivo radical scavenger, while we only marginally discuss here the fact that melatonin is a molecular antioxidant, a feature that merits a review on its own. We conclude four things: (i) the evidence that melatonin is a scavenger in acellular systems is overwhelming and could not be doubted; (ii) the transposition of this property in living (animal) systems is (a) theoretically impossible and (b) not proven in any system reported in the literature where most of the time, the delay of the action of melatonin is over several hours, thus signing a probable induction of cellular enzymatic antioxidant defenses; (iii) this last fact needs a confirmation through the discovery of a nuclear factor\u2014a key relay in induction processes\u2014that binds melatonin and is activated by it and (iv) we also gather the very important description of the radical scavenging capacity of melatonin in acellular systems that is now proven and shared by many other double bond\u2010bearing molecules. We finally discussed briefly on the reason\u2014scientific or else\u2014that led this description, and the consequences of this claim, in research, in physiology, in pathology, but most disturbingly in therapeutics where a vast amount of money, hope, and patient\n                    <jats:italic>bien\u2010\u00eatre<\/jats:italic>\n                    are at stake.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/jpi.12926","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,26]],"date-time":"2023-12-26T03:58:45Z","timestamp":1703563125000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":33,"title":["Melatonin facts: Lack of evidence that melatonin is a radical scavenger in living systems"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"76","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0068-7204","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jean A.","family":"Boutin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Laboratory of Regulatory Peptides, 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