D’oh! ‘Professeur de Parfums’ Flunks Neuroanatomy

Who is Roja Dove? According to his own web site, he is

a vast fountain of fragrance knowledge . . .

the world’s leading fragrance authority . . .

and

the world’s sole “Professeur de Parfums.”

When Marie-Hélène Wagner interviewed the Professeur on the Scented Salamander perfume blog in 2007, he coughed up this howler:

And so the reason I love white blossoms in particular, they contain a
molecule called “indole” and the indolic note also naturally exists in
the animal notes. So because of the way our brain processes odor.
You have the emotional part, the cerebellum, which is
responsible for processing scent, as I’m sure you know, and
then you have the rational part. So when you smell this scent, the
rational part of your brain smells it as a large bouquet of flowers but
the irrational part, the emotional part picks up on indole and what it
immediately thinks . . . sex.

Well, anyone can fumble his neuroanatomy under intense questioning by a fragrance blogger. But a few months later, Rebecca Howard interviewed His Professorship for the Daily Mail:

. . . according to fragrance expert Dr Roja Dove we should think
much more carefully about what we spray on our bodies as the
way we smell not only influences how we feel but can also have
an effect on the way people percieve [sic] us. ‘Odours are
processed in the cerebellum, by the limbic system,’
explains Dove.

Sigh. The last time I checked, the limbic system is not in the cerebellum, the cerebellum is not the “emotional part” of the brain, nor is it “responsible for processing scent.”

Luckily for the Professeur’s customers, fragrance consultation isn’t brain surgery.