Patrick Thanks for the McCabe reference. This issue reminded me of another issue (another thread possibly) which is that in the hard sciences there are more graphical displays than soft sciences. See
Smith, Laurence D.; Best, Lisa A.; Stubbs, D. Alan; Archibald, Andrea Bastiani; Roberson-Nay, Roxann. Constructing knowledge: The role of graphs and tables in hard and soft psychology. American Psychologist, Vol 57(10), Oct, 2002. pp. 749-761. The article focuses on graphs and tables, but in general (fMRI notwithstanding) graphs and pictures are a sign of good science. Perhaps because graphs often show functional relationships, which are more informative than "statistically significant" results. Many of our durable findings - Pavlov's acquisition curves, Ebbinghaus' forgetting functions, operant conditioning curves, are communicated best graphically. ========================== John W. Kulig, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Director, Psychology Honors Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 ========================== ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Dolan" <pdo...@drew.edu> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:07:04 PM Subject: Re: [tips] Neurobabble Oh but pictures of brains with colored parts just screams science! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17803985 Seeing is believing: the effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning McCabe DP , Castel AD . Abstract Brain images are believed to have a particularly persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. Three experiments are reported showing that presenting brain images with articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research resulted in higher ratings of scientific reasoning for arguments made in those articles, as compared to articles accompanied by bar graphs, a topographical map of brain activation, or no image. These data lend support to the notion that part of the fascination, and the credibility, of brain imaging research lies in the persuasive power of the actual brain images themselves. We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people's affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena. (on a sad note, Dave McCabe passed away earlier this year- a terrible loss to the field http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2011/march-11/in-memory-of-david-p-mccabe.html ) Patrick O. Dolan, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology Drew University Madison, NJ 07940 973-408-3558 pdo...@drew.edu >>> John Kulig <ku...@mail.plymouth.edu> 3/31/2011 9:09 AM >>> Thanks Stephen, for this, you got to H-post before I did today. There does seem to be a fascination with these brain findings, and many of them merely point to a general area of the brain, which may be a first step but clearly not a complete "explanation." Though I am a sucker for these too. In my Mind, Brain, Evolution class I mention the role of the temporal lobes in creating out-of-the-body experiences and other spiritual phenomenon, but that's not a complete "explanation." And brain areas NOT lighted up will surely by a part of the explanation. Speaking about fMRIs, I don't know if I posted this on tips before, but if not, here is a link to the now-famous story about the brain activity of a dead salmon: http://lawandbiosciences.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/what-a-dead-salmon-reminds-us-about-fmri-analysis/ >From this blog: "In short, researchers scanned a dead fish while it was “shown >a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The >salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must >have been experiencing.”" I heard George Wolford give a talk to students at last years New Hampshire Psych Association meetings about this story. The research study was NOT about the social cognition of dead salmon; if memory serves they were calibrating/fiddling with the fMRI at Dartmouth and one of the grad students stuck his soon-to-be dinner in the tube and detected brain activity to social stimuli. What was going on was the way the fMRI crunched the data, making the equivalent of thousands of statistical comparisons. Holy Type I error!! ========================== John W. Kulig, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Director, Psychology Honors Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 ========================== ----- Original Message ----- From: sbl...@ubishops.ca To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:31:05 AM Subject: [tips] Neurobabble The Huffington Post (of all places!) has a nice piece today on " The brain is not an explanation", based on an article in _Perspectives on Psychological Science_. It disputes the explanatory value of the now- ubiquitous brain scams (oops! I meant scans) in investigating brain and behaviour. http://tinyurl.com/4sz5x8t I would add two items to the article. First, that the term "pleasures centers of the brain" is itself a suspect abstraction, as we really have little hard evidence concerning such claims. Second, that not only is the analysis of fMRI data difficult and complex, but that often (as has been repeatedly noted), its statistical basis is questionable. Seek (without correcting for multiple statistical tests) and ye shall find. Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: ku...@mail.plymouth.edu. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13338.f659d005276678c0696b7f6beda66454&n=T&l=tips&o=9709 or send a blank email to leave-9709-13338.f659d005276678c0696b7f6beda66...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: pdo...@drew.edu. 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