Brains On Purpose™

Do scientists make "broad, and quite likely false, claims about what drives human behavior"?

Have you sometimes been skeptical about the results of research when the subjects are all college undergrads, and wondered how representative these subjects were of people as a whole? Regarding that skepticism, here's the abstract of an article for you from Science (AAAS):

A WEIRD View of Human Nature Skews Psychologists' Studies
Dan Jones
Although undergraduates from wealthy nations are numerous and willing research subjects, psychologists are beginning to realize that they have a drawback: They are WEIRDos. That is, they are people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures. In a provocative review paper published last week, a pair of researchers argues that WEIRDos aren't representative of humans as a whole and that psychologists routinely use them to make broad, and quite likely false, claims about what drives human behavior.

Excerpts from the article in the Ken Pope news e-mail (email Dr. Pope to subscribe):

Suppose you're a psychologist at a research university, trying to figure out what drives human behavior.

You have devised simple, clever experiments in which people play economic games or perceive visual illusions, and you would like large sample sizes.

How will you find subjects?

For generations of psychologists, the answer has been

A teleseminar on mindfulness and mediation, with a pinch of neuroscience

Although brain science will not be the main course for this seminar being held Tuesday, June 29, it will be mentioned. From the seminar Web page:

Event Details

Join Mark Kleiman, Esq., Executive Director, Community Mediation Services, Inc. and Jeff Thompson, Mediator, EnjoyMediation.com & ADRhub.com, as they discuss Mindfulness and Mediation at ADRhub.com’s June Web Panel Discussion.

Mark and Jeff recently presented at the ACR-Greater New York Chapter’s annual conference on the subject of how mediators as well as other conflict specialists are

Slides on the neuroscience of mediation: Mediators will want to take a look

A quick perusal of these slides indicates they are an excellent resource for you. They have been posted by Francois Bogacz of Convirgente and Jeremy Lack of Altenburger. Click to view the slide show "The social brain during mediation: a tentative model" [pdf].

Check back. I will be linking here to more about each of the cites they provide, several of which I already have blogged about in the past.

Bogacz and Lack have compiled a very good list of mediation-related brain resources and expanded well upon them, don't you agree?

More from two of the leading critics of neurolaw

Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson have responded to comments on an earlier article they wrote titled "Minds, Brains, and Norms" (download from SSRN). Their newest discussion of neuroscience and law is "More on the Conceptual and the Empirical: Misunderstandings, Clarifications, and Replies" (download from SSRN). Abstract of the new article:

At the invitation of the Editors of Neuroethics, we wrote an article (entitled, “Minds, Brains, and Norms”) detailing our views on a variety of claims by those arguing for the explanatory power of neuroscience in matters of law and ethics. The Editors invited comments on our article from four distinguished academics (Walter Glannon, Carl Craver, Sarah Robins, and Thomas Nadelhoffer) and invited our reply to their critique of our views. In this reply to our commentators, we correct some potential misunderstandings of our views and further clarify our positions with discussions of the conceptual-empirical distinction, rule-following, explanations at the personal and subpersonal levels, memory, and lie detection. Although we acknowledge many of the criticisms advanced by our distinguished colleagues, we conclude that, in several important respects, their criticisms confirm the points made in our original article.

My prior posts on Pardo and Patterson:

• Some hard questions about neurolaw: If you are interested in law and neuroscience, read this article
• Another article looking at neurolaw with a critical eye
• A critical eye on neurolaw: Two of the leading critics of neurolaw have signed up for a reading group at The Law and Neuroscience Blog

H/T: Legal Theory Blog.

Brain Imaging on Trial? View videos of debates here

You may view videos online of debates about brain imaging. From the Web site of The British Neuroscience Association:

Can functional brain imaging be used to read our thoughts? Should research data from imaging experiments be used in a court of law? These are some of the issues being debated in Scotland at the moment.

Edinburgh Neuroscience has been working with partners from the Scottish Imaging Network - A Platform for Scientific Excellence (SINAPSE) and SCRIPT in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, to host a series of debates on the ethics of brain imaging technology use.

These discussions ... were held at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Strathclyde, and brought together experts in brain imaging, neuromarketing, law, ethics and