The Smouldering Glances of Neuroscience Information

We examined the influence of neuroscience information on evaluations of flawed scientific studies after taking into account individual differences in scientific reasoning skills, thinking dispositions, and prior beliefs about a claim. We found that neuroscience information, even though irrelevant, made people believe they had a better understanding of the mechanism underlying a behavioral phenomenon. Neuroscience information had a smaller effect on ratings of article quality and scientist quality. Our study suggests that neuroscience information may provide an illusion of explanatory depth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).Do colorful brain images and neuroscientific information hold powerful sway over the unsuspecting reader's logic, leading them to overlook shoddy science coverage? From what I can gather, the seductive allure of neuroimages has not replicated (Farah & Hook, 2013; Michael et al., 2013; Schweitzer et al., 2013), but the appeal of neuroscience information (à la Weisberg et al., 2008) has yet to lose all its luster.1 The seductive allure of neuroscience throws us an unexpected smouldering glance http://t.co/fAoXcUCNFe via @sarcastic_f— Vaughan Bell (@vaughanbell) May 14, 2014Credit for the "smouldering glance" terminology goes to Vaughan Bell.Footnote1 This is debatable, however:Farah and Hook also debunked the study of Weisberg et al., (2008), which didn't use images at all but added neuroscience-y explanations to...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs