Here's a NYT letter to the editor from a group of neuroscientists challenging Sunday's neuropolitics op-ed. While it's hard to disagree with the gist of the letter, one can pick on a few points where the letter writers could have made their claims more pointed and precise:
(1) The letter says that the op-ed "claimed that it is possible to directly read the minds of potential voters by looking at their brain activity while they viewed presidential candidates." This probably overstates the view of the op-ed authors. The op-ed purports to make inferences from brain activity; the op-ed authors might well deny that they are "directly read[ing] the minds" of swing voters.
(2) The letter also says "As cognitive neuroscientists who use the same brain imaging technology, we know that it is not possible to definitively determine whether a person is anxious or feeling connected simply by looking at activity in a particular brain region. This is so because brain regions are typically engaged by many mental states, and thus a one-to-one mapping between a brain region and a mental state is not possible." Again, even the op-ed authors would likely agree that they cannot "definitively" determine anything. That's too high of a standard even for cautious neuroscientists.
(3) The letter writers point out that "the results reported in the article were apparently not peer-reviewed, nor was sufficient detail provided to evaluate the conclusions." But they may overstate the case when they say, "[W]e are distressed by the publication of research in the press that has not undergone peer review, and that uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions about topics as important as the presidential election." Is this claim conjunctive or disjunctive? Research that has not (yet) been peer reviewed is published in mainstream media all the time. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. I doubt that they want to weigh in on this broader issue. Thus, their real concern is probably just the second part of the statement, namely that the op-ed "uses flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions."
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