What is the lab bet story?

The "lab bet story" involves an olfactory experiment initially sparked by a friendly disagreement at a lab picnic. Neurobiology professor Noam Sobel (clip) shares how, during his time at UC Berkeley, he claimed that humans could track scents as well as dogs. To prove this, they conducted an impromptu experiment where a graduate student, Christina Zelano, blindfolded and untrained, successfully tracked a chocolate bar scent across the grass.

This led to a formal experiment, despite initial skepticism from his students, who believed it would be uninteresting. The success of the experiment, which demonstrated extraordinary human olfactory abilities, was eventually published in Nature, confirming Sobel's claim and winning the bet 1 Andrew Huberman Noam Sobel.