No-one understands...

The science journalist’s first and foremost duty is to understand the science – and secondly – in terms of time – to re-write this science into popular language. Simple!

So what’s happening - why aren’t the public not better informed? Why has scientific rationale appeared to bypass the public debate over GM crops? And why do scientists continually lament to the poor standard of scientific knowledge held by the general public (in Africa and elsewhere)? Time and again during interviews in South Africa on the implications of biotechnology I have heard from scientists that the general public basically knows nothing about biotechnology, they’re misinformed, or they hold views that are fly in the face of rationality. Presuming that the scientists themselves feel they know more - what’s going wrong with science journalism in Africa?

Keep sniffing

Anosmia refers to the inability to smell, the lack of olfactory activity. Hyposmia on the other hand refers to an increased ability to smell. It is hard to imagine a world without smell, a curse of sorts, as it is hard to imagine living in a world of enhanced smell, in the sensory world of the dog for example, a curse of sorts too.

Anosmia can be temporary or permanent. A cold or sinusitis or any upper respiratory tract infection may temporarily deprive you of a sense of smell. It is more than likely if not inevitable that you would lose your sense of taste too. Taste and smell are bound together, as if partners in a dance of sensory joy.

Salty, sour, sweet, bitter, umami (richness) and astringent (sharp or severe) are our six distinctive tastes but we are able to smell about 10,000 scents that conspire with taste to give us the magic of flavour. When one can’t smell anything food loses most of its flavour.

It's not about the bottle

‘One of the first perfumes based on a completely synthetic smell’ Diane Ackerman wrote in her Natural History of the Senses ‘was Chanel No.5, which was created in 1922 and has remained a classic of femininity.’ (New York, Vintage, 11-12). Asked impertinently once what she wore to bed, Marilyn Monroe apparently shot back, coyly, ‘Chanel No.5’!

The ‘synthetic smell’ molecule in No.5 belonged to class of what is known as aldehydes, which is an organic compound formed by the oxidation of alcohols. In the music-like language of fragrance, the aldehyde is Chanel No.5’s first ‘note’; the substance you smell first, as it is often is the smell that disappears first too. It is the perfume’s introduction.

This is followed by the smell of jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, orris (a preparation of the fragrant rootstock of an iris used in the past in medicine) and the Malaysian and Filipino ylang-ylang (a sweet-scented oil obtained from the flowers of a yellow-flowered tropical tree widely used in aromatherapy and perfumes).