PZ has hosted two great carnivals over the past days. First he filled in for The Tangled Bank, compiling a collection of evolution-related posts. And up last night is the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, celebrating – obviously – elitist bastardry among people who believe in ideas, science, and the like.
Enjoy.
I’ve created a new category “Fun” which gathers together our humorous, amusing, and otherwise entertaining posts. Below I’ve listed the collection at present, starting with one of our most popular posts overall.
Psychopharma-parenting Stephen Colbert brings us his Word, and the latest on modern parenting techniques
“Ooh Girl” – An Honest R&B Song This one gets it right about love and sex
The Allegory of the Trolley Problem Paradox Laughing all the way to the moral dilemma
Evolutionary Psychology Bingo Ah, the options. Capable of solving any problem
Spore and the Obvious Sporn hits the Internet
Grand Central Freeze A massive improv in the NYC train terminal plays with people’s minds
Sing along with the Brain Pinkie and the Brain bring you the brain’s anatomy in just over a minute
Free Running and Extreme Balance Parkour and free running videos taken to amazing heights. And drops.
Dickie Dawkins, He’s Smarter Than You Are The latest rap from the great evolutionary master
Paintball Sentry Gun Experience the brilliance of engineering geekdom
Ants Eat Gecko Watch it just like it reads
New Yorker Cartoons Iconic classics brought to life in short videos
Greg and I have featured plenty of neurocriticism recently. Neurotosh, Neurodosh, and Neuordash, Psychiatry Affects Human Psychology, and Pop Goes the Media are three recent pieces. But I have also been gathering critical pieces from other places, so here they are.
The place to start is with two entries discussing the Critical Neurosciences conference I recently attended, both written by attendees.
Stephan Schleim at Brainlogs, A Critique of Neuroscience
Stephan provides us the overview: the introduction by the organizers, Cornelius Borck’s history of neuroscience’s ever-receding explanatory horizon, Laurence Kirmayer on neuroimaging and the DSM, and Ian Gold on what counts as good reductionism.
Eugene Raikhel at Somatosphere, Critical Neuroscience and Anthropological Engagement
Eugene gives us his general take: critical approaches to the culture of neuroscience and to how culture gets “encoded in the brain”. Then he considers why this critical neuroscience movement is happening in this historical now.
And now for your typical round-up from me. I’ve focused more on the neuroscience side, less on the social science side.
On Industry
Furious Seasons, The Zyprexa Chronicles: Zyprexa Judge Slams FDA, Eli Lilly
“the FDA has arguably failed consumers and physicians by over relying on pharmaceutical companies to provide supporting research for new drug applications; by allowing them, through lax enforcement, to conduct off-label marketing; by acquiescing… [and on and on]”
The Neurocritic, Coming to a Marketer Near You: Brain Scamming
Neuromarketer’s dreams and the neuroscience fallout
Natasha Mitchell, Studying the Species—Beyond the Neurobabble
Tempering the hype to find the good stuff
David Duncan, The Ultimate Cure
CondeNast takes on the neurotech industry for mixed results (it’s CondeNast, after all…)
Ape, Neuromarketing + Ads = Duh, Again
Neuromarketing BS rather than actual confidence and creativity
Mirror Neurons Hype
Social Mode, Mirror Neurons: A Fictionalized Interview
A funny take on Marco Iacoboni and the hype of mirror neurons
Neuroscientifically Challenged, Mirror Neurons May Be Responsible for Global Warming and US Economic Woes
The fanfare about mirror neurons is overblown—the challenge is to put it out
Neurotosh. The best word from the entire Montreal Critical Neurosciences conference! There was Cordelia Fine, capturing perfectly her frustration at the manipulation of data and science in the service of stereotypes. Just pure neuro-nonsense.
The neurotosh in question was Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain, an excellent representative of the neurosexism sold in recent popular books. It is popular, a bestseller translated into many languages, and it is simply bad science. In Nature Rebecca Young and Evan Balaban describe the book as “dressing the [gender] myth up in new clothes” and selling a “melodrama,” noting that “The Female Brain disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance.”
Cordelia Fine took us step-by-step through several passages, examining the supposed citations and supporting evidence. Gender differences were confirmed by (a) studies with only women, (b) studies on a different topic entirely, and (c) personal communication. Ouch.
Plenty of other people have gotten on the bash-Brizendine-bandwagon, helping to undermine the moral authority that Dr. Brizendine wields through her academic credentials and “scientific” claims. Language Log has several critical analyses of the gender difference claims about language (see here, here and here). Mother Jones takes Brizendine to task on her approach to medicine. The most popular Amazon reviews of the book lead with titles calling The Female Brain “disappointing” and “nonsensical.” Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks gets in on the pile-on-party as well.
Still Simon Cohn, a British anthropologist at the meeting, was rather nonplussed at Cordelia’s agonizing over the data and methods and claims made by Brizendine. As Simon said to me, “It’s called ‘The Female Brain.’ Doesn’t that tell you everything right from the start?” His point was that knowledge gets turned in the service of ideology and profit and power all the time.
The Social Science and Research Council hosts a group blog called The Immanent Frame. There they have been hosting an excellent series called A Cognitive Revolution?
The two most recent posts have been Which Cognitive Revolution?, a reflection that builds off David Brooks’ neural Buddhism essay to examine the rise in cognitive research on religion, and The Aesthetics of Neural Buddhism on the aesthetic impulse (even impossible dream) behind the desire for these sorts of “theories of everything.”
Earlier posts include Medical Materialism Revisited, A Religious History of American Neuroscience, and Cognitive Machinery and Explanatory Ambitions. Plus a few more.
SSRC has also started a series of podcasts entitled Societas. They are up to four now, mostly on politics, including Breaking Out of the Iron Cage on Barack Obama, Max Weber and charisma and All Politics Are Identity Politics? on the relationships between politics, possible identities and the search for and imposition of social categories.
The first twenty Wednesday round-ups quickly evolved into a format of summarizing different links by themes. So here are the past twenty weeks with the covered themes indicated next to the link. Have fun exploring. I have.
Wednesday Round Up #20 Brain Health & Illness, Addiction, PLoS One Papers, General, Evolution
Wednesday Round Up #19 Education, Health, Anthropology, Mental Health, Language
Wednesday Round Up #18 Experimental Philosophy, Morality, The Brain, Addiction, Nature/Nurture, Evolution, Animals
Wednesday Round Up #17 Inequality, Anorexia, Decision Making, Politics, General, Evolution, The Brain
Wednesday Round Up #16 Biocultural Synergies, Psychiatry, Brain Stuff, Marriage, Genetics
Wednesday Round Up #15 Anthropology, Elitism in the US, Decision Making, Gender in the US, Everyday Life, General
Wednesday Round Up #14 Memory, Prefrontal Cortex, Consumer Life, More on the Brain, Education
Neuroanthropology 