Vladimir Nesov wrote:
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:59 PM, Richard Loosemore <r...@lightlink.com> wrote:
For anyone interested in recent discussions of neuroscience and the level of
scientific validity to the various brain-scann claims, the study by Vul et
al, discussed here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126914.700-doubts-raised-over-brain-scan-findings.html
and available here:
http://www.pashler.com/Articles/Vul_etal_2008inpress.pdf
... is a welcome complement to the papers by Trevor Harley (and myself).
The title of the paper is "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience", and
that use of the word "voodoo" pretty much sums up the attitude of a number
of critics of the field.
We've attacked from a different direction, but we had a wide range of
targets to choose, believe me.
The short version of the overall story is that neuroscience is out of
control as far as overinflated claims go.
Richard, even if your concerns are somewhat valid, why is it
interesting here? It's not like neuroscience is dominated by
discussions of (mis)interpretation of results, they are collecting
data, and with that they are steadily getting somewhere.
I don't understand.
The whole point about the paper referenced above is that they are
collecting (in a large number of cases) data that is just random noise.
And in the work that I did, analyzing several neuroscience papers, the
conclusion was that many of their conclusions were unfounded.
That is exactly the opposite of what you just said: they are not
"steadily getting somewhere" they are filling the research world with
noise. I do not understand how you can see what was said in the above
paper, and yet say what you just said.
Bear in mind that we are targeting the (extremely large number of)
claims of "psychological validity" that are coming out of the
neuroscience community. If they collect data and do not make
psychological claims, all power to them.
I don't particularly want to get into an argument about it. It was just
a little backup information for what I said before.
Richard Loosemore
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=126863270-d7b0b0
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
