This is one of those stories that come back cyclically (although hopefully they won’t come back in 2022), a story that is both true and not entirely true, in the sense that over time an interpretation has been given that is not entirely consistent with the reality of the facts.
Let’s go in order: what happened in the last Christmas season, and also in the previous one, the American site of Amazon was flooded with dozens and dozens and dozens of negative reviews against the Yankee Candle, the famous scented candles that are used so much to decorate rooms during the holidays. Someone wrote that “you can’t smell the perfume, unless you put your face on the container”, others that “I bought them before and the fragrance filled the room, this barely smells”, as reported in late December by Business Insider.
But what happened? Have Yankee Candles really lost their magical scent? Or maybe there is someone who sells them fake, and therefore less odorous, cheating people? A possible interpretation came from social networks, and it is the not necessarily true part of this story.
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twitter: the curve of negative reviews against the Yankee Candle
The reviews curve and the contagion curve
Especially on Twitter, but also on Instagram and TikTok (we saw it from the profile of the Italian influencer Stefano Guerrera), there are those who have compared the trend of negative reviews against the Yankee Candle with the trend of infections from coronavirus in the United States. Noting that they are almost perfectly stackable.
A couple of researchers, like Kate Petrova del Bryn Mawr College e Nick Beauchamp, from Northeastern University, shared images of the two graphs: stable trend from beginning to autumn of 2020, peak between late 2020 and early 2021, lowering between spring and autumn 2021 and then another peak between late 2021 and early 2022. For both the curves. The reason is (better: it would be) that there is one of the effects of the coronavirus infection anosmia, which is the loss of smell. That is: the fault is not of the candles that do not smell, but of the people who can no longer perceive the smell. And the negative reviews grow as the number of people affected by Covid-19 grows.
tiktok: the explanation in Stefano Guerrera’s video
Is this true? As mentioned, yes and no: by the researchers’ own admission, the comparison of the data was not done in a scientific and precise way, so much so that Beauchamp has tweeted that “I wouldn’t take this too seriously”, because “looking at the data, it seems that every winter there is a seasonal increase in the loss of smell”, probably also due to colds or other seasonal ailments. In short, it is likely. It is probable. As it also is It is advisable to get a tampon, if you no longer smell a candle. Instead of blaming the candle.
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