There have been many studies establishing a link between sexual selection and the sense of smell... I wasn't aware this was in dispute. I believe the original "T shirt" smelling study was conducted in 1995 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p­ubmed/7630893?ordinalpos=1&ito­ol=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubme­d.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_D­iscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery­_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarti­cles&logdbfrom=pubmed).

Since then, there have been other studies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p­ubmed/9364787?ordinalpos=1&ito­ol=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubme­d.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_D­iscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery­_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarti­cles&logdbfrom=pubmed), including the one that is the topic of this discussion (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p­ubmed/18700206?ordinalpos=1&it­ool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubm­ed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_­DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discover­y_RA&linkpos=2&log$=relatedart­icles&logdbfrom=pubmed).

If you reject that sense of smell has anything to do with sexual selection, that's fine, people are free to believe whatever they want. But the study is certainly not "accepting at face value" the claim that the study is important "because of the existence of mechanism it's attempting to prove". This study isn't attempting to prove the link between smell and sexual selection - it is a study on the effects of contraceptives on body odor preference.