You are not understanding about smell when you are smelling. Instead, you are just experiencing the perception of smell, when you smell something. If you want to understand the mechanisms behind smell, the only way is science (You may refer- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfaction)

Regarding the link you provided, i can only say one thing. All research papers are not equal. All pseudoscience practitioners will do research and publish in some of the dedicated journals that accept only pseudoscience or some low quality paid journals. Mainstream scientific community will not even look into such crap.