Brain science furphies
my dome piece from cloois on Vimeo.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article entitled Does Our Brain Impair Our Political Perspective? It referred enthusiastically to a report about an experiment with an MRI machine that "found" that people did not register brain activity when presented with evidence that their preferred political candidates were lying or being contradictory. The conclusion by the brain scientists was that political polarisation inhibits learning. I left this comment:
I am sceptical of positivist science that presumes an objective Truth external to our personal and social context. Yet the study findings are an interpretation of interpretations by subjects. This hand-waving is hardly validated by the use of an MRI machine. If I am an expert at something, I will go more directly to a response apparently without thought. Similarly, social, political and even technocratic beliefs unconsciously guide everything I do and filter my perception. I don’t need an MRI to “prove” this.Today George Siemens points to a paper entitled The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. Those researchers demonstrate that people claimed to be brain scientists tend to be believed regardless of what they say, without question. But this video tells the important story that most often the levels of analysis are not rigorously aligned between the claims of brain science and learning or behaviour.
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