Why the characteristics of odor perception and its neural basis are key to understanding the mind through the brain. My post for @iCogNetwork.

Are your neighbors playing heavy metal at 3 am?
Do you want revenge?
Or do you simply miss my lovely cheerful voice? (well, sort of, just pretend that you do)

Play this podcast on full blast & make them listen to my interview about smell, life, and philosophy of science SciPhiPod. 
Everything you never needed to know about my deep inner thoughts and confusions: http://www.sciphipod.com/podcast/2018/10/15/episode-48-ann-sophie-barwich 
(It starts with personal stuff, intellectual trajectory, and ends with how the brain makes scents of the smelly things that smell... smelly.)

The news is out! We're spicing up the History of Science Society meeting in November!
Get your noses and tastebuds ready for:

"Technologies of Taste"
Panel at the 2018 HSS Annual Meeting ​(History of Science Society), Nov 1-4, Seattle

• “Smelling Flavor” Ann-Sophie Barwich 
• "Modeling Flavor” Crystal Lee
• “Efficiency and Flavor" Victoria Lee
• “Removing Flavor" Hannah LeBlanc
• “Monitoring Flavor” Christy Spackman
• ​Discussant: Deborah Fitzgerald 

I did an interview with the online magazine Fatherly on teenage body odor this week.
 What's real and what's myth? 
Read about it here: "Why Preteens Smell Bad as Puberty Gets Started."
​
(Spoiler alert: “You might smell. What’s so bad about that?” )

20 Minute talk presenting the fruits and labor of my three year postdoctoral research as a Presidential Scholar at the Center for Science and Society, Columbia University. 

Three open challenges discussed in this talk:
(1) What's so special about smell - regarding its perception and neural basis?
(2) Philosophy of Science as part of Scientific collaborations: Where does Philosophy fail, can/should we do something new... and is that still Philosophy?
(3) Buzzword aside: Is interdisciplinarity more than being fluent (and potentially mediocre) in two fields? 

(Thanks belongs to Stuart Firestein & Lab, the PSSN program headed by Pamela Smith, and all the scientists who have lent me their time.)

In my new article in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Open Access)
"How to be rational about empirical success in ongoing science: The case of the quantum nose and its critics" ​I ask a seemingly simple question: 

Should philosophers think differently about the advancement of science when they deal with the uncertainty of outcome in ongoing research?
The answer is - emphatically! -yes! Moreover, such difference actually matters.

Because the answer to this question reflects our reasons for when we change our minds about an idea or scientific theory. (Like: When is a theory simply delayed in its success, or is something else maybe going on?) That our understanding (and the epistemology) of ongoing research has practical implications can be seen most vividly in our science narratives and science writing. 

To demonstrate this, I look at an apparent controversy surrounding the sense of smell: The story of the quantum nose and its critics. Spoiler alert: “there never was a genuine scientific controversy in olfaction as painted in public and philosophical discourse.”