For millennia, the sense of smell has been widely undervalued — ranked far below vision by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. In 2021, a survey in the journal Brain Sciences found that people consistently ranked smell below vision and hearing — and even below commercial products. One quarter of college students surveyed said they’d prefer to give up their sense of smell than their smartphones.
But modern research suggests that smell, also known as olfaction, is less dispensable than we might think. In recent decades, we’ve gained a greater understanding of just how much humans rely on the sense of smell — for everything from social communication to the detection of environmental hazards. Researchers even believe that changes in patients’ sense of smell could eventually be used to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases.
As the science of smell continues to progress, it’s becoming increasingly clear how much we stand to gain by focusing on it.
So I read this and my 93yo uncle, who lost his sense of smell from a brain injury, was sitting right next to me. I just asked him what he thought of that statement and he laughed.
“Tell them it’s not even a contest. I can do anything I did before except taste dinner, and it wasn’t all that good back when I could. Don’t tell Bonny I said that.”