[thfuran]

>Assuming the effect is real at all, it's almost certainly chemical detection through the nose. That's odor.

No, odor is a perceived smell. UV and IR both interact with the eye without being visible, so there's no good reason to insist that it's impossible for chemicals with no smell to interact with the nose.

[mcpackieh]

When chemicals float through the air into your nose or mouth and get detected by your brain, that's odor. Conscious perception or unconscious emotional reaction makes no difference, both are odor. If there are no chemicals being emitted or they have no reaction to your nose and your nose doesn't change the signals it's sending to your brain, then you can fairly say it has no odor.

To say that odors aren't odors unless they are consciously perceived is like saying UV isn't light because you don't consciously perceive it. Except it's the same physical phenomena, electromagnetic radiation or chemicals floating through the air, your sensory organs are detecting it (mostly being destroyed by it in the case of UV, but probably not in the case of tear odor...) and your brain is reacting to it even though you don't consciously realize it.

[thfuran]

>To say that odors aren't odors unless they are consciously perceived is like saying UV isn't light because you don't consciously perceive it

No, I'm saying that EM doesn't produce colors unless it's visible light. What you're saying is that not only are cold, pressure, and pain flavors, so are any additional effects on satiety or insulin response or whatever triggered by any interaction with receptors on the tongue.

[fragmede]

That's a different definition of odor than commonly accepted. If you can't consciously perceive it, it's not an odor. Just like you can't see the TV remote shine a bright infrared light. We don't call TV remotes flashlights, because we can't perceive infrared. If we can't consciously perceive a smell, it's described as odorless.