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arXiv · 1502.05120

Humans can discriminate trillions of olfactory stimuli, or more, or fewer

Richard C. Gerkin·Jason B. Castro
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Abstract

A recent Science paper (Bushdid et al, 2014)[1] proposed that humans can discriminate between at least a trillion olfactory stimuli. Here we show that this claim is the result of a fragile estimation framework capable of producing nearly any result from the reported data, including values tens of orders of magnitude larger or smaller than the one originally reported in [1]. We conclude that there is no evidence for the original claim.

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Richard C. Gerkin, Jason B. Castro. 2015-02-18. Humans can discriminate trillions of olfactory stimuli, or more, or fewer. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05120

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