Of Voodoo And The Brain

摘要

It is a brave, or perhaps foolhardy, scientist who uses the term "voodoo" to describe results in a high-profile field of science, and in retrospect psychologist Hal Pashler of the University of California, San Diego, concedes that the word might have been just a teensy bit incendiary. But when he, Ed Vul of MIT and colleagues scrutinized the use of brain imaging in social neuroscience-a burgeoning new field that seeks the brain basis for feelings and thoughts resultingfrom social interactions-there was a good reason why dolls with little needles stuck in them came to mind. Voodoo doctors think the needles bring harm to the unfortunate person represented by the doll. Social neuroscientists think the brain activity they discover can. predict and explain differences among people in feelings of prejudice, moral judgments, fear of pain, how much social rejection hurts and other fascinating questions. But in about half the studies the voodoo critics looked at, they charge in a paper to be published this year in Perspectives on Psychological Science, the methods and analysis are so poor that neuroscientists should go back, do it right "and correct the scientific record."