From Richard Chirgwin at the Register:
This is what your brain looks like on bad data
A whole pile of “this is how your brain looks like” fMRI-based science has been potentially invalidated because someone finally got around to checking the data.
The problem is simple: to get from a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scan of the brain to a scientific conclusion, the brain is divided into tiny “voxels”. Software, rather than humans, then scans the voxels looking for clusters.
When you see a claim that “scientists know when you’re about to move an arm: these images prove it”, they’re interpreting what they’re told by the statistical software.
Now, boffins from Sweden and the UK have cast doubt on the quality of the science, because of problems with the statistical software: it produces way too many false positives. More.
See also: Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away
and
Man has consciousness with almost no brain Whatever is going on isn’t what we thought.
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