Neuroscience: Under AttackUnder attack by who?
Er... me. And the rest of the usual suspects:
A gaggle of energetic and amusing, mostly anonymous, neuroscience bloggers - including Neurocritic, Neuroskeptic, Neurobonkers and Mind Hacks - now regularly point out the lapses and folly contained in mainstream neuroscientific discourse.I had promised not to do any more self-referential posts, but this one wasn't my fault. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how Neuroskeptic's presented in the article, but not entirely.
The headline is sensationalist - I don't see myself as attacking neuroscience and I don't think any of the others do either. We are trying to defend neuroscience against errors and misrepresentations. My ideal is The Sceptical Chymist, where skepticism helped, rather than undermined, chemistry.
But the job of a headline is to be sensationalist so that's OK. Most of the piece is very good. I'm all on board with this:
But the job of a headline is to be sensationalist so that's OK. Most of the piece is very good. I'm all on board with this:
Yet I can't quite go along with this:Meet the "neuro doubters". The neuro doubter may like neuroscience but does not like what he or she considers its bastardization by glib, sometimes ill-informed, popularizers.
A number of the neuro doubters are also humanities scholars who question the way that neuroscience has seeped into their disciplines, creating phenomena like neuro law, which, in part, uses the evidence of damaged brains as the basis for legal defense of people accused of heinous crimes, or neuroaesthetics, a trendy blend of art history and neuroscience.
Admittedly this wasn't directly aimed at me because I'm not a humanities scholar, but I believe that neuroaesthetics and neurolaw are absolutely valid - in theory.
I'm not defending any particular manifestation of those, and I've criticized quite a few. But in the abstract, I see nothing wrong with neuroscience helping to explain those things. It will be difficult in practice, but it's fine to try.
I'm not defending any particular manifestation of those, and I've criticized quite a few. But in the abstract, I see nothing wrong with neuroscience helping to explain those things. It will be difficult in practice, but it's fine to try.
23 comments:
I also saw this article earlier today. I agree that's a misrepresentation of what you guys are doing. My guess is this wasn't written by a scientist. A scientist would know that it's not about 'liking neuroscience' but that any good scientist is also a skeptic.
Sure, wasting time and effort proving the moon is made of cheese should be allowed. Just not on my dime.
And please don't call it science. Call it whatever, occupational therapy or keep them off the street therapy.
Nitpicker,
To oppose and ridicule "bastardization by glib" producing "neuresthetics" and "neurolaw" does not require good scientist qualities- in my opinion.
-except when you have got a RMI (without the f ) showing a frontal brain tumor and the likes for neurolaw-
Common sense and honesty will do.
In neuroscientists but also in lawyers, judges, artcritics... and journalists
Anonymous? I'd recognize that brain anywhere!
@Ivana: In my view good scientists should also have good common sense and honesty so I agree.
I'm not sure what petrossa's point is.
I love your picture
Yeah, I've always gotten the impression --- from you and from the Neurocritic and the Mind Hacks writers (I haven't read Neurobonkers) --- that your criticism stems from you actually being a neuroscientist, and loving what you do enough to take it seriously.
The article should have been titled: "PseudoNeuroscience: Under Attack" instead of the original, misguided title "Neuroscience: Under Attack."
Neuroskeptic: "Admittedly this wasn't directly aimed at me because I'm not a humanities scholar, but I believe that neuroaesthetics and neurolaw are absolutely valid - in theory."
I think the quote from the article is a little ambiguous as I interpreted the argument presented as being consistent with your position here. The author suggested that the critics were questioning "the way" that neuroscience had been integrated into those disciplines which suggests to me that the highlighted problem is not the existence of the fields themselves, but rather how they have been utilised.
I might be wrong about what the author meant, and if so I agree with you that those fields are valid (at least in theory), but I do think that the current manifestations and attempts in those new areas are often problematic.
I disagree with the "Golden Bowl" comment. I reckon in due time neuroscience or the study of the brain will be the key to open the floodgate. Death, immortality, beyond religion. I see the possibilities. The question is, how will humanity prepare for such transition? Law, manmade politics will be useless. The future belongs to scientists, duty to save or annihilate humanity.
Nitpicker,
petrossa wrote that "neuroscience" is a waste of public money, keeping lunatics busy.
I assume his second sentence was just a friendly joke.
Thanks for your openess of mind!
Petrossa never wrote such thing. He wrote PSYCHOLOGY is. And my point was that flirting with vague new age stuff such as humanity 'scholars' is all good and well but please don't do it on taxpayers money. It's been wasted enough already.
@petrossa: sorry to nitpick but fact is you said neither, hence the confusion. The question of what is worth funding by public money is a discussion I'm currently too tired to have.
@nitpicker
This discussion with Ivana goes way back, i'll excuse you for having missed it.
I find discussing where scarce resources go to extremely important, especially amongst the scientific community, since they should realize that we are not there to pay for their hobbyhorses but to produce actual results for the good of those pay the funding.
The illusion of science as being a lofty place where the members know what is best, is that. An illusion.
Science is there to help mankind progress in various fields, not to help pay for publishing interesting studies on how self-report of X shows that Y and therefore we all should Z, after which someone else can write a highly interesting paper which show the opposite ad infinitum. Which is the current state of human 'sciences'
We want a machine that looks into our brain and finds the problem, a cure for cancer and a solution for energy. Grant money from whichever source wasted on papers 'showing' that eating eat makes you more aggressive and anti-social http://www.dutchdailynews.com/meat-eaters-selfish-less-social/ we can do largely without.
Know your place.
Anything else everyone is free to do on his own.
The focus of the article in question appears to be all wrong - at least with respect to NeuroSkeptic's blog. The focus appears to be on the distortion of neuroscience research by the popular media and the reaction of the "neurodoubters" to this distortion. While some reaction to pop neuroscience definitely occurs on this blog it appears to me that most of the criticism is aimed directly at the neuroscience research rather than the media's distortion of it. The lay person reading this article could easily get the message that all is well in the ivory towers of neurocscience but that the big bad media is doing us all a disservice by overselling neurocscience research. All is not well in the those towers - at least not as far a solid science is concerned.
DS: Good point. My view is, bad science is bad whether it's from journalists or scientists. I tend to focus on science, though, just because it's more interesting. Bad media neuroscience is rarely wrong in a new or fun way.
@Petrossa: thanks for clarifying. I disagree with you, not because there aren't bad apples (I frequently get to review some of them), but because in the big scheme of things science is not about immediate applications and finding cures. The large part of research is basic science and for many discoveries the future potential uses can not even be predicted.
Naturally, science funding is not unlimited so someone has to make a decision on what research gets funded and what doesn't. But this decision shouldn't be left up to naive notions of what seems immediately useful.
I think this is an interesting debate but this digresses a long way from the topic of this post. So I will refrain from commenting more on this issue.
Dear Nitpicker
"But this decision shouldn't be left up to naive notions of what seems immediately useful."
One couldn't get more condescending if one tried. But i'm glad things are such immensely capable hands who are not 'naive'. Takes a load of my mind.
And then wonder why science gets a bad rap.....Words fail me.
Original Nitpicker wrote: "The large part of research is basic science and for many discoveries the future potential uses can not even be predicted." I disagree. IMO our science funding systems do not focus on basic science. Instead they focus on telling sexy science stories. Sex sells and stories are fun but they are not science and this focus has corrupted us.
@DS: I agree with you but that's another issue. To secure funding people seem to oversell the immediate usefulness when we should encourage more basic research.
@petrossa: 'One couldn't get more condescending if one tried.'
I did try but I failed... All joking aside though it wasn't meant to be condescending but I feel it's true. It's very easy to jump to the conclusion that because something reaps no immediate rewards it must be worthless science. You know things like gravity, radioactivity, quantum mechanics, the structure of DNA...
In times of hardship one focuses on direct usable goals. In times of luxury one can play around.
Recently Cern pitched yet another give us money play with their 'announcement' of 'strange' particles found.
For example.
You might have missed it on top of the ivory tower, but down here society is unravelling at a furious pace.
Do something shorterm useful, leave the fancy stuff for later, if we're still around.
@petrossa.me
And this is exactly what I'm calling naive. And it's short-sighted. The LHC and similar projects can potentially greatly advance our scientific understanding (and the pay-off may be decades in the future). These are also not the kinds of projects where we can withdraw and reinstate funding every couple of years in accordance with fluctuating economies.
You won't believe me but scientists don't live in ivory towers, they are real people like you and they very much feel the brunt of our current economic woes. Apart from the arts nothing is at as much risk of being cut as scientific research whenever the economy turns bad. Please go to the countless graduate students failing to find any sort of job how they should come down from their ivory tower.
Science needs basic research. We all need basic research. Without basic research there can be no research into short-term useful applications. DS above is correct that the current science funding system is focused on overselling the usefulness of research. That's bad. But the reason it is this way is because there are too many politicians and public voices who don't understand that scientific discovery is founded on basic groundwork being laid by previous work. When times are bad science shouldn't be the first thing to be cut. It's not even the biggest drain on funds. Why is it I wonder science funding gets slashed but somehow the very people who caused the mess we're in still live in luxury?
Well, I keep failing to resist the urge to reply to you. But this has little to do with the post and we obviously must agree to disagree. I must move on from here.
I concede we are off-topic here and we agree to disagree wholeheartedly. It's shortsighted top pretend the present doesn't influence the future.
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