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Wheat

2008-06-10 'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity
2007-12-09 Neurorealism
2007-11-24 Review: Proust was a Neuroscientist
2007-11-16 I feel your pain
2007-07-11 The gregarious brain
2007-07-02 Duped: can brain scans uncover lies?
2007-07-02 Small-brained female seeks alpha male
2007-07-06 Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal?
2007-04-06 Neural Diversity
2006-11-03 A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right

'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity
By Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal, 2008-06-10
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121304603861058495.html
Posted: 2008-06-11

'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity, the Tuesday, June 10, 2008, WSJ Health Journal column by Melinda Beck passes muster as a rare germs of wheat according to the neurocurmudgeons hanging around the Mill.

The long-term cognitive effects of bypass surgery have not received the level of interest and study one might think would be warranted. Rather than just sensationalizing "bypass brain," Beck does a good job with a complicated subject, acknowledging that it can be hard to assess cognitive decline following surgery in aged or chronically compromised patients because of a host of confounding factors. A similar story can be told about "chemo brain." The medical profession should investigate rather than dismiss cognitive effects of treatments and think about how such effects could be prevented, minimized, and treated. Difficult to study does not mean impossible to study. Cognitive loss, might be considered "mild" or "moderate" by the surgeons and thought of as a reasonable trade-off for prolonged life. Unfortunately, cognitive loss can also be devastating to individuals and their families. The medical profession needs to acknowledge the possibilities of problems and investigate.

Neurorealism
By Matthew Hutson, The New York Times, 2007-12-09
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09neurorealism.html

Well, well, well - the neurocurmudgeons are not feeling quite so all alone in the world (although we wish these researchers had acknowledged that the science of what they are reporting in not precisely "news", either). Now - will neurojournalists get the message - or do their brains just find writing stories about behavior attached to neuroimages (so we can invoke the powerful brain storyline) too rewarding?

Review: Proust was a Neuroscientist
By Germaine Greer, NewScientist, 2007-11-24
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626316.100-review-iproust-was-a-neuroscientisti-by-jonah-lehrer.html

The neurocurmudgeons had heard about Proust was a Neuroscientist, the new book by wunderkind Jonah Lehrer and thought to ourselves – another opportunistic repackaging of what are essentially behavioral observations as neuroscience. We are stuck living in a time when for various reasons – the brain sells. Most of the greatest novelists and artists are great observers and raconteurs of human behavior. Big deal. Still, Lehrer sounds like a smart writer with a clever marketing twist. In the spirit of the season we wish his book well. For non-neuro readers it should come with a warning sticker (not really about neuroscience) – or maybe a copy of the thoughtful book review by Germaine Greer appearing in the 24 November 2007 NewScientist. The review earns the label of wheat and we encourage you to take a look at it. It brings up a number of important issues we think the neuroscience and psychology communities should talk about more, including why neuroscientists seem to ignore aspects of human behavior we know to be true.

A sentence that caught our curmudgeonly eye reads: “What artists tend to know about is the mind, not the brain…” Mostly, the mind is what non-neuroscientists want to know about. Much of what gets passed off as “brain science” today is not neuroscience, but psychology. The neurocurmudgeons think levels of analysis are important in the construction of explanations. We’re just funny that way.

PS - It is too bad that Elaine Morgan didn't read Germaine Greer before reviewing (the 2 reviews are a page apart in NewScientist) another recent entry in the "get brain or neuro into your title regardless" genre - On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Small. Based on Morgan's review we can admire Small's willingness to breach disciplinary boundaries. The neurocurmudgeons are all for challenging assumptions - but we are not so sure we are ready for "neurohistory." Perhaps disciplinary boundaries serve a purpose?

I feel your pain
By Gordy Slack, Salon.com, November 5, 2007
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/05/mirror_neurons/

Sensitive to the criticism that the Mill seems to turn out more chaff than wheat (although we don't see this as our fault...) we neurocurmudgeons are looking harder for good things to highlight. So, although we are put off by the style of this Salon piece brought to our attention and we could find much to quibble with regarding the science, we're going to call it "wheat". Why? We think the total package including understandable enthusiasm from Ramachandran, sound caution from Allison Gopnik, and some very good letters (such as the one by someone named Joe Buck) adds up to a good discussion of controversial findings about topics (empathy, altruism, nose-picking) that receive a fair (may we suggest too much?) amount of coverage. The original Rizzolatti work was intriguing – but then mirror neurons quickly became too easy a metaphor to invoke, which then, per usual, spawned an industry. Now it is almost to the point where one starts to wonder if mirror neuron is not just code for neuron. But hey, with Thanksgiving around the corner, the neurocurmudgeons are in a generous mood.

The gregarious brain
By David Dobbs, The New York Times, July 8, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/magazine/08sociability-t.html

It is getting scary...this is also fairly well done. The neurocurmudgeons have a few quibbles (it's not us its our cingulate) particularly when it comes to the willingness of journalists to parrot the assertions of the self-declared "social neuroscientists" floating free of the scientific tethering to caution one might expect of a line of research still trying to find its way. But the explanations of biological and behavioral interactions was among the most sophisticated we have seen. Bravo Mr. Dobbs.

Duped: can brain scans uncover lies? By Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, July 2, 2007
Small-brained female seeks alpha male By Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon.com, July 2, 2007
Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal? By Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2007

Maybe the increasing number of vocal neurocurmudgeons and BNJ spotters is having an effect - recently we've read a few stories where journalists are making a serious attempt to get a little deeper into the complexities of mind/brain. We applaud their efforts (even if we will take an opportunity to quibble a bit...)

Margaret Talbot's piece on the problematic nature of lie-detecting with functional magnetic imaging (Duped: Can brain scans uncover lies? in the July 2 The New Yorker) is terrific. The neurocurmudgeons wish Ms. Talbot had used a few more column inches to explain what fMRI actually measures - as we think this is where the public is really being led down a rather weedy garden path, but she does do a masterful job at explaining much of what is most disturbing about the popular use of pseudo-color brain images devoid of experimental context and caveats. Ms. Talbot hits all the neurocurmudgeonly highlights - (need a refresher course - take a quick scroll through the BNJ archives). For us, the most distressing part of this article was the embarrassment we experienced when we read what some of our colleagues said to Ms. Talbot. We wonder if they would have been willing to be scanned during their interviews?

2) Tracy Clark-Flory, writing in Salon.com (Small-brained female seeks alpha male posted July 2) made as good an attempt at writing a BNJ posting as we neurocurmudgeons have read...except, we think she might be willing to give the original study more credit than it deserves. There are so many things wrong with extrapolating from species-specific changes that we're pretty sure whatever is going on with the mice ends with the mice - and this story should never have left the cage floor.

3) The neurocurmudgeons generally find that the Wall Street Journal does a credible job reporting on science and medicine EXCEPT, oddly enough, in the Friday Wall Street Journal column dedicated to writing about science. So we were pleased to see that the July 6th Science Journal column (Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal? ) reporting on the design of a large study of children's brain development passed muster. We do however, have a small quibble. Columnist Robert Lee Hotz falls into a common trap when he writes "Boys perform better at analyzing and manipulating shapes and patterns, while girls perform better on processing speed and motor dexterity". Statements like this one give the impression that ALL boys are better than ALL girls or that ALL girls are better than ALL boys on the tasks being tested. In reality, if you plot the performance of all boys and all girls there is tremendous overlap of the curves. What really matters is this observation: healthy boys and girls do equally well on most cognitive tasks. But don't expect to see that headline any time soon.

Neural Diversity
By Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Observer: March 2007, Volume 20, Number 3
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2134

Getting it right. Morton Ann Gernsbacher, President of the Association for Psychological Science, has written an excellent article clearly illustrating why certain types of brain-imaging studies are misdirected.

A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right.
November 2, 2006
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7112/full/443634a.html

A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right. Well, unfortunately it is not really neurojournalism but we're getting tired of being so negative all the times. So we are highlighting a book review by 2 academics that will really help you understand why bad writing about the brain is not harmless - no matter how nobel the author's intentions.

Many of our deputized neurocurmudgeons have asked us to please post a commentary on any one of the various popular articles inspired by The Female Brain by Louann Brizedine but ...Maybe its our darn female brains, or our hormones, or maybe our metabolism but we have this innate reluctance to keep repeating ourselves. Visit our archives for our remarks on prior her brain/ his brain oversimplifications. We've said it before and we'll say it again - sure there are anatomical differences between male and female brains. So what. We were unable to muster the energy to go over the issues again.

Thankfully, someone else has masterfully taken on the task. So before all of you fighting the good fight become tempted to throw in the towel, read Young and Balaban's review in the Oct 12, Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7112/full/443634a.html They are our Neuro-heroes.



	Home > The Neuro-Journalism Mill

	The Neuro-Journalism Mill Separating the wheat from the chaff of media reporting on brain science ABOUT \| LATEST \| WHEAT \| CHAFF \| Wheat 2008-06-10 'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity 2007-12-09 Neurorealism 2007-11-24 Review: Proust was a Neuroscientist 2007-11-16 I feel your pain 2007-07-11 The gregarious brain 2007-07-02 Duped: can brain scans uncover lies? 2007-07-02 Small-brained female seeks alpha male 2007-07-06 Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal? 2007-04-06 Neural Diversity 2006-11-03 A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right 'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity By Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal, 2008-06-10 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121304603861058495.html Posted: 2008-06-11 'Bypass Brain': How surgery may affect mental activity, the Tuesday, June 10, 2008, WSJ Health Journal column by Melinda Beck passes muster as a rare germs of wheat according to the neurocurmudgeons hanging around the Mill. The long-term cognitive effects of bypass surgery have not received the level of interest and study one might think would be warranted. Rather than just sensationalizing "bypass brain," Beck does a good job with a complicated subject, acknowledging that it can be hard to assess cognitive decline following surgery in aged or chronically compromised patients because of a host of confounding factors. A similar story can be told about "chemo brain." The medical profession should investigate rather than dismiss cognitive effects of treatments and think about how such effects could be prevented, minimized, and treated. Difficult to study does not mean impossible to study. Cognitive loss, might be considered "mild" or "moderate" by the surgeons and thought of as a reasonable trade-off for prolonged life. Unfortunately, cognitive loss can also be devastating to individuals and their families. The medical profession needs to acknowledge the possibilities of problems and investigate. Neurorealism By Matthew Hutson, The New York Times, 2007-12-09 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09neurorealism.html Well, well, well - the neurocurmudgeons are not feeling quite so all alone in the world (although we wish these researchers had acknowledged that the science of what they are reporting in not precisely "news", either). Now - will neurojournalists get the message - or do their brains just find writing stories about behavior attached to neuroimages (so we can invoke the powerful brain storyline) too rewarding? Review: Proust was a Neuroscientist By Germaine Greer, NewScientist, 2007-11-24 http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626316.100-review-iproust-was-a-neuroscientisti-by-jonah-lehrer.html The neurocurmudgeons had heard about Proust was a Neuroscientist, the new book by wunderkind Jonah Lehrer and thought to ourselves – another opportunistic repackaging of what are essentially behavioral observations as neuroscience. We are stuck living in a time when for various reasons – the brain sells. Most of the greatest novelists and artists are great observers and raconteurs of human behavior. Big deal. Still, Lehrer sounds like a smart writer with a clever marketing twist. In the spirit of the season we wish his book well. For non-neuro readers it should come with a warning sticker (not really about neuroscience) – or maybe a copy of the thoughtful book review by Germaine Greer appearing in the 24 November 2007 NewScientist. The review earns the label of wheat and we encourage you to take a look at it. It brings up a number of important issues we think the neuroscience and psychology communities should talk about more, including why neuroscientists seem to ignore aspects of human behavior we know to be true. A sentence that caught our curmudgeonly eye reads: “What artists tend to know about is the mind, not the brain…” Mostly, the mind is what non-neuroscientists want to know about. Much of what gets passed off as “brain science” today is not neuroscience, but psychology. The neurocurmudgeons think levels of analysis are important in the construction of explanations. We’re just funny that way. PS - It is too bad that Elaine Morgan didn't read Germaine Greer before reviewing (the 2 reviews are a page apart in NewScientist) another recent entry in the "get brain or neuro into your title regardless" genre - On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Small. Based on Morgan's review we can admire Small's willingness to breach disciplinary boundaries. The neurocurmudgeons are all for challenging assumptions - but we are not so sure we are ready for "neurohistory." Perhaps disciplinary boundaries serve a purpose? I feel your pain By Gordy Slack, Salon.com, November 5, 2007 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/05/mirror_neurons/ Sensitive to the criticism that the Mill seems to turn out more chaff than wheat (although we don't see this as our fault...) we neurocurmudgeons are looking harder for good things to highlight. So, although we are put off by the style of this Salon piece brought to our attention and we could find much to quibble with regarding the science, we're going to call it "wheat". Why? We think the total package including understandable enthusiasm from Ramachandran, sound caution from Allison Gopnik, and some very good letters (such as the one by someone named Joe Buck) adds up to a good discussion of controversial findings about topics (empathy, altruism, nose-picking) that receive a fair (may we suggest too much?) amount of coverage. The original Rizzolatti work was intriguing – but then mirror neurons quickly became too easy a metaphor to invoke, which then, per usual, spawned an industry. Now it is almost to the point where one starts to wonder if mirror neuron is not just code for neuron. But hey, with Thanksgiving around the corner, the neurocurmudgeons are in a generous mood. The gregarious brain By David Dobbs, The New York Times, July 8, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/magazine/08sociability-t.html It is getting scary...this is also fairly well done. The neurocurmudgeons have a few quibbles (it's not us its our cingulate) particularly when it comes to the willingness of journalists to parrot the assertions of the self-declared "social neuroscientists" floating free of the scientific tethering to caution one might expect of a line of research still trying to find its way. But the explanations of biological and behavioral interactions was among the most sophisticated we have seen. Bravo Mr. Dobbs. Duped: can brain scans uncover lies? By Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, July 2, 2007 Small-brained female seeks alpha male By Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon.com, July 2, 2007 Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal? By Robert Lee Hotz, Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2007 Maybe the increasing number of vocal neurocurmudgeons and BNJ spotters is having an effect - recently we've read a few stories where journalists are making a serious attempt to get a little deeper into the complexities of mind/brain. We applaud their efforts (even if we will take an opportunity to quibble a bit...) Margaret Talbot's piece on the problematic nature of lie-detecting with functional magnetic imaging (Duped: Can brain scans uncover lies? in the July 2 The New Yorker) is terrific. The neurocurmudgeons wish Ms. Talbot had used a few more column inches to explain what fMRI actually measures - as we think this is where the public is really being led down a rather weedy garden path, but she does do a masterful job at explaining much of what is most disturbing about the popular use of pseudo-color brain images devoid of experimental context and caveats. Ms. Talbot hits all the neurocurmudgeonly highlights - (need a refresher course - take a quick scroll through the BNJ archives). For us, the most distressing part of this article was the embarrassment we experienced when we read what some of our colleagues said to Ms. Talbot. We wonder if they would have been willing to be scanned during their interviews? 2) Tracy Clark-Flory, writing in Salon.com (Small-brained female seeks alpha male posted July 2) made as good an attempt at writing a BNJ posting as we neurocurmudgeons have read...except, we think she might be willing to give the original study more credit than it deserves. There are so many things wrong with extrapolating from species-specific changes that we're pretty sure whatever is going on with the mice ends with the mice - and this story should never have left the cage floor. 3) The neurocurmudgeons generally find that the Wall Street Journal does a credible job reporting on science and medicine EXCEPT, oddly enough, in the Friday Wall Street Journal column dedicated to writing about science. So we were pleased to see that the July 6th Science Journal column (Study of kids' brains hopes to answer: What is normal? ) reporting on the design of a large study of children's brain development passed muster. We do however, have a small quibble. Columnist Robert Lee Hotz falls into a common trap when he writes "Boys perform better at analyzing and manipulating shapes and patterns, while girls perform better on processing speed and motor dexterity". Statements like this one give the impression that ALL boys are better than ALL girls or that ALL girls are better than ALL boys on the tasks being tested. In reality, if you plot the performance of all boys and all girls there is tremendous overlap of the curves. What really matters is this observation: healthy boys and girls do equally well on most cognitive tasks. But don't expect to see that headline any time soon. Neural Diversity By Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Observer: March 2007, Volume 20, Number 3 http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2134 Getting it right. Morton Ann Gernsbacher, President of the Association for Psychological Science, has written an excellent article clearly illustrating why certain types of brain-imaging studies are misdirected. A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right. November 2, 2006 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7112/full/443634a.html A new twist for neurojournalism: Getting it right. Well, unfortunately it is not really neurojournalism but we're getting tired of being so negative all the times. So we are highlighting a book review by 2 academics that will really help you understand why bad writing about the brain is not harmless - no matter how nobel the author's intentions. Many of our deputized neurocurmudgeons have asked us to please post a commentary on any one of the various popular articles inspired by The Female Brain by Louann Brizedine but ...Maybe its our darn female brains, or our hormones, or maybe our metabolism but we have this innate reluctance to keep repeating ourselves. Visit our archives for our remarks on prior her brain/ his brain oversimplifications. We've said it before and we'll say it again - sure there are anatomical differences between male and female brains. So what. We were unable to muster the energy to go over the issues again. Thankfully, someone else has masterfully taken on the task. So before all of you fighting the good fight become tempted to throw in the towel, read Young and Balaban's review in the Oct 12, Nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7112/full/443634a.html They are our Neuro-heroes.

The Neuro-Journalism Mill

Separating the wheat from the chaff of media reporting on brain science

Wheat