My friend Leigh Wolf sent me the Journal of Imaginary Research‘s 2024 call for abstracts (note, abstracts not papers) on the theme of “Flourishing.” Do check out the journal. It IS a hoot!

I do plan to submit something to the journal. I mean how cool would that be… to be published in the Journal of Imaginary Research. But just for fun I sat down with my buddy Claude to just goof around a bit and come up with a bit of academic satire. I decided to start with the question that Alan Turing started his classic 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence with, namely: Can machines think? (Incidentally it was this paper that introduced, what we now call, the Turing Test.)

Below is the result of my collaboration with Claude. Apologies in advance for the utterly juvenile nature of this post. There is a reason why my daughter often says that I never out-grew middle school.

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Note: All the stuff below is imaginary, including the journal, DOI and more.

Full citation

Rotting, A. P. (2024). Can machines stink? A touring test investigation of human exceptionalism. Journal of Post-Human Olfactory Studies, 13(4), 421-434. https://doi.org/10.1037/phos.2024.0069

Can Machines Stink?
A Touring Test of Human Exceptionalism

Abstract:

The ability to produce genuinely repugnant odors has long been celebrated as a uniquely human trait, commonly cited alongside other supposedly species-specific capabilities like telling bad jokes, making passive-aggressive comments about someone’s cooking, or losing socks in the laundry. To challenge this fundamental assumption of human olfactory exceptionalism, we developed the Behavioral Understanding of Technological Triggers (BUTT) System and subjected it to extensive sniff testing across 42 locations. Our investigation was grounded in Phenomenological Odor Orchestration (POO) theory, which posits that malodorous emissions are fundamentally performative rather than biological in nature. The BUTT system traveled via specially ventilated van to engage blindfolded participants (n=427) in controlled trials, deliberately including cultures with diverse conceptual frameworks for describing malodor, from societies that celebrate certain strong smells to those with elaborate vocabularies for degrees of stench. Results comprehensively undermined the “humans-only” stinking hypothesis: judges not only failed to identify the source of odors (p<0.001) but consistently rated machine-generated stenches as “more authentically human” than actual human samples. Most tellingly, when presented with particularly noxious machine-generated odors, participants frequently attributed them to specific human activities or states (“like the boys’ locker room at my old high school,” “identical to my grandmother’s experimental kimchi”), suggesting our deep-seated bias to associate truly impressive stinks with human origin. Statistical significance remained robust across all testing sites, though our Mumbai trials were prematurely terminated due to a mass evacuation of the test facility and our experiments in Wisconsin were temporarily suspended after being mistaken for an artisanal cheese-making operation. These findings validate POO theory’s central tenets about the universality of stench production. More significantly these findings force us to confront an uncomfortable question: if machines can produce odors that we instinctively recognize as human-like in their repugnance, what other supposedly unique human traits might be replicable? The implications extend far beyond the realm of smell, challenging our very understanding of what constitutes uniquely human capabilities.

Author Biography

Dr. Alan P. Rotting retains (despite numerous petitions) the Extinguished Chair in Sensory Offense Studies at the University of Rotterdam, though the chair is currently quarantined following a particularly successful experiment. His mobile laboratory (a converted 1985 Volkswagen van) has been declared a biohazard in seventeen countries, which he maintains proves his central thesis about machine-generated odors matching human capabilities. Previous publications include “The Complete Touring Test: A Roadmap to Applied POO Theory” and “No Sniffs and Butts: Why Your Robot Needs Deodorant.” He notes that his growing collection of public nuisance citations across three continents provides additional empirical support for his findings.