Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott currently has people scratching their heads as to what he was thinking when he ate a raw onion like most people would eat an apple. While people looking at Tony Abbott’s words and actions and thinking “what the hell are you doing?” is nothing unusual these days, this example has clearly struck a chord because it goes beyond short-sighted logic and patronising comments; it doesn’t matter what your political ideology or intellectual capabilities, onions are not the same as apples! It shouldn’t be possible to make this sort of mistake, or convince yourself otherwise. And yet, the Australian PM has done this.

However, and this may be the first time this phrase has ever been used in a serious context, science backs up Tony Abbott. At least, to some extent.

Firstly, taste, as enjoyable as it can be, is the weakest of the human senses. The five known types of taste, bitter, sweet, salt, sour and umami (the taste of savoury, triggered by glutamate) can provide a wide range of enjoyable and not-quite-so-enjoyable sensations, but the human nervous system doesn’t really do a lot with taste beyond judging food with it. There’s not much else it can do.

It is not a particularly accurate or precise taste. Some may dispute this, citing established epicurists or expert wine tasters, the latter of whom can seemingly take a brief sip and name the region and year that the wine originates from, and even that the French vineyard worker who stomped the grapes had size 10 feet. But scientific experiments into this have revealed that the discipline of wine tasting is largely psychological. While nobody is accusing wine tasting experts of actively lying, it does seem like all the subtle differences in types of wine are built largely on expectation and guesswork, hence it varies so strongly between individuals. If taste were in any way reliable or accurate, this wouldn’t happen.

So weak is taste, that it’s constantly dominated by other senses, most often vision and smell. You’ve probably heard is said that “the first bite is with the eye”? This isn’t some ruse created by restaurants to justify charging you 50% extra for a sprinkle or parsley or a shrivelled tomato, there is an actual scientific basis to this as how we visually perceive our food has a strong influence over how much we enjoy it. And anyone who’s had a nasty head cold will certainly be able to confirm that smell and taste are quite obviously linked; an inability to smell our food seriously impacts on our ability to taste it.

To exactly what extent the other senses influence taste is still being studied, but there are many basic experiments available for you to test this. Basic plugging of the nose seemingly makes it very difficult to differentiate between apples, potatoes and onions. Others disagree with this because onions have a rather different texture to apples, incorporating a more physical factor that allows you to tell between them.

However, some experiments where subjects have been wearing nose plugs while blindfolded have shown that subjects find it very hard to tell onions from apples. So basically, the fewer senses you have available, the harder it is to tell onions from apples.

Overall, this shows that science says it is possible for people to mistake onions for apples, but only in certain circumstances. Basically, to ensure that this happens, someone has to be convinced in advance that they’re correct despite all available evidence, and be totally unable to accept any information that would suggest they are wrong.

Tony Abbott can eat onions like they’re apples. Draw your own conclusions from this.

Dean Burnett is not making any accusations of Tony Abbott here, but probably wouldn’t accept a fruit salad from him. He’s on Twitter, @garwboy