On Dead Salmon, Drugs, and “Lighting Up” the Brain

Are fMRIs truly useful in addiction medicine? What would it take to make neuroimaging a truly valuable tool for addiction medicine? Pictures of brain regions “lighting up” have always been exciting, as the early phase of neuroimaging predictably inspired rapture. Phase 2 arrived when a group of U.S. postdocs created the infamous dead salmon fMRI scan, showing that an exciting and colorful picture of false positives was entirely possible. As Neuroskeptic put it to the Globe and Mail, “Scientific journals prefer to publish results that are positive and ‘sexy,’ just like other media.” That is nice to hear, since it takes the full blast of the heat lamp off journalists and directs it at those scientists with a habit of overamping MRI studies, even when the sample in the studies is exceedingly small. Plenty of blame to go around. Moreover, both scientists and journalists must contend with the fact that the bulk of the scientific world’s research resides behind steep pay walls—steep enough that even prestigious universities have been wailing lately about the cost of just getting one’s hands on the research reports, let along doing the research. “Media literacy in science journalism is really stunted by the fact that we don’t have access to primary sources,” said a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. So much blame going around, in fact, that enthusiasm for President Obama’s recently announced brain initiative seems particularly muted ...
Source: Addiction Inbox - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: blogs