Alright, maybe I’m just cynical and jaded, but this was put on by Proctor & Gamble, and I get the feeling this was just made for the purposes of having a study they could link to for claims that their new scent plug in can improve memory retention in certain groups of people. The fact that the total sample size was less than 50 and split between control and variable means that about 20 people of different age groups participated. That’s not much for a study. Also, the control group actually did worse during the experiment than normal, which leads me to believe that the control wasn’t handled very well, or that natural deviance in data is greater than the “improvement” they claim. Either way, I’m dubious. It feels like it’s destined for a fine print in a commercial that shows between reruns of Law and Order.
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It’s destined for a another study by independent researchers. As simple as that. Also more than one and substantially larger ones would be good given the simplicity, more or less innocuous study design, and the potential benefits. Maybe people assume that if a study says something, you’re supposed to immediately take that as the truth. That is never the case. This study is just a very clear case for more good studies on this.
For anyone interested in what they used:
“Individuals assigned to the olfactory enrichment group were provided with an odorant diffuser (Diffuser World) and 7 essential oil odorants (rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender; from The Essential Oil Company, Portland, OR) in identical glass vials that each fit into the diffuser. They were asked to turn on the diffuser when they went to bed, and the odorant was released into the air during the night for 2 h when they first went to sleep. They rotated through the different odorants each night.”
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Everything that sounds strange or like what people often call sham-science or funded by some people I don’t like must be pseudoscience and I don’t provide any reasons but only name-call
Do I remember my organic chemistry class right that scents that smell good are likely cancer causing?
Aromatic hydrocarbons doesn’t mean they smell good. Benzene smells sweet like gasoline does, but I wouldn’t want gasoline air fresheners.
Right but synthetic air fresheners that mimic natural ones are all petroleum based. We’re just aerosolizing petroleum and inhaling it all day. Like febreeze the bed while the plugged in air freshener in the corner off gasses all before I go turn on my gas stove with the broken vent.
I do, because it would be less toxic than smelling that sweet sweet gasoline.
Why would that be? And what do you mean by “scent” in this context? I don’t think the scent of fresh fruit is cancer causing.
