The disgusting (to some people) secrets of smelly (to most people) feet

The smelly feet / Limburger cheese / malaria mosquito research that earned an Ig Nobel Prize (in 2006) has provoked a deeper look at smelly foot smells. David Robson reports, for BBC Future: The disgusting secrets of smelly feet Renate Smallegange is something of a connoisseur of smelly feet – and she goes to surprising […]

A logical calculus of vomit stink, gay marriage, and political leaning

The logic and scope of this new study perhaps offer lessons for researchers in every field: “Disgust and the Politics of Sex: Exposure to a Disgusting Odorant Increases Politically Conservative Views on Sex and Decreases Support for Gay Marriage,” Thomas G. Adams, Patrick A. Stewart [pictured here], John C. Blanchar, PLoS ONE, 9(5), May 5, 2014, e95572. […]

Profiling the Nasal Ranger ® (for field sniffers)

Imagine that you are employed as a professional field sniffer. That is, a person who has the job of attempting to identify and quantify odours, quite literally in the field. Think: agricultural, industrial and natural. But there is an inherent problem  – however keen your olfactory expertise, when you’re immersed in problematic stinky air, where […]

Finger Ratios Don’t Always Predict Body Odor

Discoveries continue to pour in about the significance of people’s finger lengths. Recently we wrote about studies concerning finger ratios and number of sex partners, finger ratios and the prediction of who will become a good doctor, finger ratios and the success of financial traders, and many other wonderous things. A new Swiss/French/British study reveals […]

Study: Smelly socks for malaria control

Cesar Sanchez of the TwistedBacteria blog alerts us to this new study, which was derived from the Ig Nobel Prize-winning work of Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong (who showed that many malaria mosquitoes are attracted equally to the smell of human feet and the smell of limburger cheese): “Sugar-fermenting yeast as an organic source […]