May 24, 2017 05:00 AM
(This post was last modified: May 24, 2017 05:12 AM by C C.)
Humans have a poor sense of smell? It's a myth
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/sc...-nose.html
EXCERPT: [...] This belief isn’t based on empirical evidence, but on a 19th-century hypothesis about free will that has more in common with phrenology than with our modern understanding of how brains work. In a review published Thursday in Science, John P. McGann, a neuroscientist who studies olfaction at Rutgers University, reveals how we ended up with this myth. The truth is, humans are actually pretty good at smelling our world. “We’re discovering, to our delight, that the human smell system is much better than we were led to believe,” he said. It may be different than other mammals’ “but actually in ways that suggest that it could be more powerful than mice and rats and dogs.” This is how the human nose works....
Can't Sleep? Blame Air Pollution
http://www.science20.com/news_staff/cant...ion-225104
EXCERPT: [...] In the EPA of recent years, where the drive was on to throw out toxicology and to simply accept claims on surveys published in epidemiology papers, this was gaining traction. But a new administration has declared that evidence must be presented, regulations can't be implemented by believing a epidemiological claim, as Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, wants to do, and then telling government scientists to go find a biological mechanism to affirm it. And using grey literature that hasn't been through peer review. A new presentation is firmly in the epidemiological correlation camp and not science...
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/sc...-nose.html
EXCERPT: [...] This belief isn’t based on empirical evidence, but on a 19th-century hypothesis about free will that has more in common with phrenology than with our modern understanding of how brains work. In a review published Thursday in Science, John P. McGann, a neuroscientist who studies olfaction at Rutgers University, reveals how we ended up with this myth. The truth is, humans are actually pretty good at smelling our world. “We’re discovering, to our delight, that the human smell system is much better than we were led to believe,” he said. It may be different than other mammals’ “but actually in ways that suggest that it could be more powerful than mice and rats and dogs.” This is how the human nose works....
Can't Sleep? Blame Air Pollution
http://www.science20.com/news_staff/cant...ion-225104
EXCERPT: [...] In the EPA of recent years, where the drive was on to throw out toxicology and to simply accept claims on surveys published in epidemiology papers, this was gaining traction. But a new administration has declared that evidence must be presented, regulations can't be implemented by believing a epidemiological claim, as Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, wants to do, and then telling government scientists to go find a biological mechanism to affirm it. And using grey literature that hasn't been through peer review. A new presentation is firmly in the epidemiological correlation camp and not science...