Statistics in fMRI studies: mere voodoo?

“Do you think the media are partly responsible for sensationalizing the findings of social neuroscience? And how can the media do a better job of reporting on brain scanning data? Ed Vul: In general, I would advocate a bit more skepticism on the part of reporters, with respect to all scientific findings. I think reporters [...]

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Big hopes

A recurring aspect of the discussions in social neuroscience is the big, indeed massive, hopes generated by the field. Social neuroscientists claim they will one day help cure diseases, handicaps, improve memory, learning capacity,  etc. To see a perfect example of this rethoric, have a look at this short video by the University of Reading. [...]

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The “pop” genre in science

Pop music has a distant cousin: pop science. I first encountered the “pop” adjective before “science” when reading about ethology, the continental tradition in the study of animal behavior. The revival of the notion of instinct (Konrad Lorenz), and the flourishing of animal studies in natural conditions (apes in particular) led to the publication of [...]

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The new science without a name

In speech and writing, it occurred to me that I could simply not name the scientific field I was studying. “The neuro- approach in social science” is a clumsy definition for a field that has not been been labeled yet. For now, we just have the above definition, or a repetitive list: neuro-marketing, neuro-management, neuro-linguistics, [...]

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