NeuroLogica Blog

Writing in today’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks discusses the relationship between neuroscience and mysticism - saying that in the future the debate will center around a concept that he calls “neural Buddhism”. He says he is not taking sides, just pointing out that this is where the real debate is going to happen. Well - let the debate begin.

First I want to point out that I read David Brooks regularly because I find his style to be very rational, educated, and thoughtful. He is one of those writers who is worth reading regardless of your political ideology. I particularly enjoy those articles in which he takes a step back and looks at the current political topics of discussion in the context of broader cultural trends. That is indeed what he is attempting to do in this article. Although he is clearly well-read on this topic, I think he has misinterpreted the implications of current neuroscience.

To summarize his position, he is saying that recently there has been a public debate between militant atheists and religious believers. In essence the atheists, like Hitchens and Dawkins, have been challenging believers to defend their belief in God. He writes:

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Last week Michael Gerson published this editorial in the Washington Post - essentially his answer to the notion that there is a “Republican war on science.” He argues that:

There are few things in American politics more irrationally ideological, more fanatically faith-based, than the accusation that Republicans are conducting a “war on science.”

Gerson needs to get out more. I do not want to address some of the purely political points that he is trying to make (this is simply not a political blog), but the piece does present some opportunities to discuss logical fallacies. (As an aside, for convenience I will use “Republican” or “conservative” to refer to the positions that Gerson is defending but I acknowledge that not all Republicans or conservatives hold these positions.) For example, he writes:

Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled “anti-science.” Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as “theological” and thus illegitimate.

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Earlier this week I wrote about the marketing of devices for brainwave entrainment for therapeutic use, concluding that these devices and the claims made for them are pseudoscientific. In response to my blog post I received the following e-mail:

Dear Dr. Novella,

I am the director of research at Transparent Corporation, which is the developer of Neuro-Programmer, and was disappointed to read your blog entitled “Brainwave Entrainment and Pseudoscience”.

I fully acknowledge that peer reviewed research on Brainwave entrainment is hard to locate, and it is one of the biggest hindrances to the field. The greatest barrier to finding this research is the lack of consistency in terminology used to describe brainwave entrainment. In fact, the term “brainwave entrainment” appears to have been invented by those in the industry, rather than those who have published on the subject. In the last year, I wrote an article entitled “A comprehensive review of the psychological effects of brainwave entrainment” which has been accepted in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine and I’ve been told will be published this summer. I’ve attached a copy of the article I submitted, but in deference to the journal, I would like to ask you to not distribute this article. This is the first review article that will show such a comprehensive review of peer reviewed research on the effects of brainwave entrainment on psychological outcomes. I found 21 studies that met our basic criteria by using a long list of search terms. Many of these terms, such as photic stimulation or auditory stimulation are general terms that can include brainwave entrainment, so I had to search through thousands of studies that were not relevant to my subject of interest. You can see the procedure I used in my methods and figure 1. You will note that I did not use Pubmed, as I was told by the librarian at Tufts University that Ovid searches are more extensive than Pubmed, and include those from Pubmed. A number of the articles are from the Journal of Neurotherapy which can be found in the Psychinfo database.

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Dr. Roy Kerry, who is an ENT surgeon (ear, nose, and throat specialist) decided that he would extend his practice to treating children with autism by giving them chelation therapy for presumed heavy metal poisoning. In other words, he decided to completely abandon the scientific and ethical standards that should guide the practice of medicine. Back in the day, states actually took it upon themselves to enforce reasonable standards, but the world today is swept up in a collective delusion - often referred to as complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM) or “integrative” medicine - the essence of which is the wholesale abandonment of the standard of care in favor of wishful thinking and magic.

As economist Paul Krugman observed, in a different context (and I am paraphrasing), “When the public believes in magic, it’s springtime for charlatans and con-artists.”

In the case of Kerry, his medical shenanigans lead directly to the death of 5-year-old Abubakar Tariq Nadama in 2005. The story is tragic: Abubakar had autism. His parents, reasonably and lovingly wanting to do everything they can for their child, apparently became caught in the web of misinformation claiming that autism is associated with mercury poisoning. The scientific evidence does not support this contention, nor is there scientific evidence that treating autistic children with chelation to remove mercury is of any benefit. That such misinformation is out there is an unavoidable consequence of free and readily available information in an open society. But it is also a symptom of a scientifically illiterate society grappling with scientific medical issues, and the current atmosphere of distrust of the medical establishment combined with the allure of anything “alternative.”

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I wrote previously that the Florida state senate passed a version of an “evolution academic freedom” bill. This bill represents the latest strategy of the anti-evolution movement - the claim that the academic freedom of those who have legitimate scientific doubts about evolution are being oppressed. Such laws are unnecessary, and they single out evolution simply because the true purpose of such laws is to create a back door through which creationism and other pseudoscientific evolution-denial can be introduced into the classroom.

Well now I am happy to report that the Florida bill was defeated in the House. For now, it is dead. But it seems that the death of this bill was due at least partly to stubborn differences in proposed language between the senate version and the house version. So it may have been bureaucratic inefficiency, not common sense, that killed this bill.

Also, this bill is only the tip of the iceberg. There are forms of this bill in several other states - Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, and Michigan - and the Discovery Institute is pushing this hard as their latest attempt to undermine the teaching of evolution. It looks like this is going to be the battle ground for the next few years.

Last week we interviewed Kirsten Sanford for the Skeptics’ Guide podcast. Kirsten is a PhD neurophysiologist who is forging a career as a media scientist. She currently hosts the This Week in Science podcast and is working on a number of other projects.

We discussed the role that culture, particularly television and other mainstream media, plays in forming the stereotypical image of the geek scientist. Kirsten lamented that female scientists on TV are typically unattractive, both physically and in their personality, and that part of her goal as a media scientist is to show that women can be “girly” and pretty while still being interested in science.

The segment prompted this e-mail from a listener:

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Beware simple answers to complex problems, or easy methods for accomplishing difficult goals. If you combine this maxim with the advice to be skeptical of any claims that are being made in order to sell you something - then ironically you have a simple method (perhaps I should call it an “elegant” method) for protecting yourself from most scams and cons. Actually the application of this combination of maxims can be complex, but what it does do is trigger doubt and skeptical analysis. (And to be clear I am not saying that all simple solutions must be wrong - you should just beware them, meaning your skeptical senses should be tingling.)

The reason this rule of thumb is so useful is because there is a huge market for simple answers. A genuine elegant solution (one that accomplishes more with less) is highly valuable in the marketplace. We are used to technology delivering new easy solutions to previously difficult tasks. While most improvements are incremental, there are occasional breakthroughs that transform our lives.

Therefore we are very receptive to new technology products that promise to improve our lives, or solve previously difficult problems, because of some new scientific or technological advance. This has created, in a sense, a marketplace of consumers that expect to be dazzled with technobabble they don’t understand, backed by assurances of legitimacy by the citing of research and association with professionals or professional institutions, and offering significant benefits. We are all, in a sense, waiting for that next product to improve our lives, and many of us like to feel we are on the cutting edge - getting an advantage over others by being savvy early adopters.

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I am not referring to the excellent Showtime series by Penn & Teller - but rather to the very concept of BS. It turns out it is actually a useful concept for science and skepticism. Andy Lewis, who writes the Quackometer blog, recently wrote about the concept of BS as it applies to “alternative medicine”, specifically homeopathy. I liked it and thought the concept can be more generally applicable.

As skeptics we are often confronted with the false dichotomy question of whether or not a certain purveyor of nonsense or woo is self-deluded or a con-artist. My usual response is that for most people they are somewhere along that spectrum, and probably incorporate aspects of both. Since we can’t read minds, we can only guess or infer what a person’s true intentions are. I usually abstain from such speculation - except in cases where the behavior of the pseudoscientist requires conscious fraud. Psychic surgery is a good example. There is no self-deception involved in palming chicken innards and then pretending to psychically remove them from a person who desperately sought your help for their cancer.

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Researchers from the universities of Exeter and Oxford in England have published a study that they claim shows that a woman’s diet around the time of conception can influence the sex of their child. At first glance this claim sounds implausible, since in mammals the male sperm entirely determines the sex of a child, not the female egg. But the story is more complicated than it at first may appear.

The study involved having 740 women who were trying to get pregnant for the first time keep track of their daily diet. What they found is that those women who had a higher calorie diet overall, and those who ate at least one bowl of breakfast cereal per day, had a 24% greater chance of having a boy than those who skipped breakfast or consumed lower total calories.

What this type of study shows is a potential correlation. Before we can conclude that the correlation is reliable the study should be replicated. Also, correlation does not equal causation - it may be due to causation, but we cannot be sure. There may be some other factor involved that was not measured or controlled for in the study. So, in addition to replication, the hypothesis that diet can affect the sex of a child should be tested prospectively. This means that women who are trying to get pregnant can be randomized to various diets and then followed prospectively to see if there is any difference in the chance of conceiving a boy or a girl.

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Yesterday I discussed the proposed Florida “Academic Freedom” law, one aspect of which is to specifically protect the inclusion of criticisms and competing theories to evolution. I pointed out that no such law is required - good science education can and should already include legitimate criticisms of any theory. It is entirely a fiction of ID/creationists that evolutionary theory is a dogma protected from such criticism.

In response to this post several commenters pointed out that their experience in high-school science class did not include much discussion of competing theories. For example, Blair T wrote:

My recollection of high school biology class was it was mostly rote learning with lots of memorization. The idea that students are discussing or debating competing theories at that level seems a bit unlikely, since they have no fundamental knowledge to ground such a debate.

Blair is unfortunately correct in that this is all too commonly the experience. My own experience was mixed. I do remember some mindless memorization in biology class regarding evolution, and certainly almost everything I have learned about evolution I learned on my own outside the classroom or in undergraduate school.

But this is not a problem of academic freedom - it is a problem of the quality of science education. Ironically, the creationism movement has consistently eroded the quality of science education with regard to the teaching of evolution. Perhaps we can use the recent controversy regarding evolution and ID/creationism in the public schools to focus attention on the real issue - the quality of science education.

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