The Openness of Illusions is a philosophy piece about the epistemological implications of optical illusions. It cites my post about a paper dealing with the spooky Hollow Face Illusion. Long-time readers will remember this, but most of you probably won't, so here it is again; it truly is weird:
In my view, an even better demonstration of the same effect is the incredible magic dragon:
You can make your own dragon by printing it out from this helpful page. It takes like 5 minutes to make and it'll provide hours of philosophical fun.
Meanwhile, Stereotypes and stereotyping: What's the brain got to do with it? takes a neuro-skeptical look at the psychology and neuroscience of prejudice. It flatters me with a mention:
It should go without saying that activity in the brain does not indicate in any way whether a mental act is hard-wired (Beck, 2010). It is equally absurd to argue that the amygdala is on anyone’s team or feels occasionally upset. Alas, non-experts should not be expected to spot such fundamental flaws in reasoning without help.
Thus scientists using neuroscientific methods to study phenomena of social relevance are not only expected to be particularly critical towards over-interpreting their own findings, but also to monitor the ways in which their and other researchers’ data are reported in the media. Courageous attempts to counter overblown neuroscience-based claims in non-scientific outlets have so far resulted in numerous critical blogs (e.g., http://www.talkingbrains.org; http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com) as well as in the publication of counterstatements in popular magazines (e.g., Aron et al., 2007).
9 comments:
Many congratulations! Worthy recognition.
Cheers!
Unless of course you are Susan Quadflieg. The mask slips!
Congratulations! You definitely deserve it.
I have a question for you though, have you ever done a post on the effects of certain food (and thus nutrients) on the brain, and thus mental performance. I assume you must have since you have made so many postings, but I can't find them. If you could link me to them I'd appreciate it.
Thanks. I don't think I have had much to say about food. The only thing I can think of is this post about fish, omega oils and depression.
We tend to see what we expect to see, even if it's not there.
In my opinion, this is a common phenomenon, even among serious research scientists. I tend to be very skeptical, even of articles in prestigious health and medical journals, especially if a recommended course of action doesn't seem to work for me.
Doctors often dismiss my experiences as "anecdotal," but n=1 observations mean a lot to me, especially if I am the 1.
practiCal fRMI,
Of course neuroskeptic runs one of the most interesting and easy to read blog on neuroscience.
But you lack ambition for him. What about a Nobel prize of medecine? You just need to make him work on real subjects of phenomenal mental health interest with his noisy machinery and superior intelligence and scientific training.
Here you get a schizophrenia symptom of neurologic quality good as gold and only those researchers from Hanover are studying it!
Tal Yarkoni - a very clever and educated person - wrote in the Dec 2011 issue of European health Psychologist that fRMI has the potential to facilitate any number of health related questions like - no kidding he really wrote it-
how health related messages influence people thought and feelings!
I am sorry to write unpleasantly but physicians and sufferers of devastating mental symptoms should have a stronger voice than the psychologists in public research money allocation.
The psychologists -on the whole- have the right frame of mind to ask money to the Big marketting companies.
I tried to comment my mind on Tal Yarkoni blog to let him know my mind and that I couldn't write a link to his paper but the screen answer:
"Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!"
Being a bitter middle-aged nobody psychiatrist is tough in the modern world of communication!
Jim,
You complain:"Doctors often dismiss my experiences as "anecdotal,"
My answer to that is it depends how anedoctal the complain is in your life health history.
For example if you consult an homeopath doctor complaining about feeling ill after eating oysters ,if a good physician he will ask you how many times you felt ill after eating oysters.
If you ate oysters without trouble as usual , then eating oysters was anecdotal and you are probably suffering from a virus infection -or only a mild food poisonning needing Arsenicum album 15CH if allopathy not needed.
If on the contrary your health story is that your stomach had been upseting you everytime you had been obliged or tempted to eat oyster in your life, then it is not anecdotal and a good homeopath will be looking for other signs asking for the prescription of Lycopodium clavatum (a mushroom) like if you have a very sweet tooth with also a liking for strong cheese; your complaints like pain from a sorethroat or backache or skin alteration etc...are mostly right-sided or starting on the right side with a rather weak body and strong intelect on the miser side when it comes to money, a need for meals eated at regular times and a weak feeling around 4 pm etc...
Of course, you should resist and protest if your doctor is using anecdotal in order to make you believe that science says that this Big pharma drug is not giving you dangerous side-effect like an increase in blood pressure from Effexor of Wyeth because there is only anecdotal evidences that effexor is an antidepressant dangerous for that side effect.
(Using anecdoctical in the science methodology sense of not been supported yet by facts after a predicitve hypothesis has been tested.)
Thank you for the post, pretty helpful info.
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