A new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, entitled "Taste and Smell: A Unifying Chemosensory Theory," proposes the unification of all chemosensory modalities into a single sense, moving toward an interconnected perspective on the gradual processes by which a wide variety of chemicals have become signals that are crucially important to communication among and within cells, organs, and organisms in a wide variety of environmental conditions. The paper thus envisages a rupture with what emerges as one of the most deeply rooted confirmation biases in the scientific literature: the differentiation between gustation (taste) and olfaction (smell).
