Incorrectly Describing the BRAIN Initiative, Neuroscientists Beg for Its Lavish Funding to Continue

 The BRAIN Initiative is a multi-year big-science project launched during the Obama administration in 2013. It started off in 2014 with a budget of about $110 million, and its funding increased in subsequent years. One of its documents claims on page 121 that the BRAIN Initiative ”will require new and distinct funding of between 300-500 million per year." A graph at the page here gives us this depiction of the funding of the BRAIN Initiative, which has added up to be more than 4 billion dollars. 

Too bad the program consists largely of not-terribly-useful research designed to try to prove an untrue ideology about the mind.

The assumptions behind the project are made clear in a document called Brain 2025: A Scientific Vision, which is offered at one of the project's two main web sites. The “scientific vision” laid out in the document is largely an ideological vision, based on the far-fetched idea that the human mind is merely the product of the brain. The dubious ideology of the authors is made clear in the very first sentence of the document, in which the authors state, “The human brain is the source of our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, actions, and memories; it confers on us the abilities that make us human, while simultaneously making each of us unique.” It has certainly not been proven that any brain has ever generated a thought or stored a memory.

In fact, later in the document the authors confess, “We do not yet have a systematic theory of how information is encoded in the chemical and electrical activity of neurons, how it is fused to determine behavior on short time scales, and how it is used to adapt, refine, and learn behaviors on longer time scales.” This is certainly true. No one has anything like a systematic theory of how a brain could store memories as neural states, nor has anyone come up with anything like a systematic theory of how a brain could generate a thought. So why, then, does the document start out by stating that “the human brain is the source of our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, actions, and memories”? No one has any business making such a claim unless he first has or knows of "a systematic theory of how information is encoded in the chemical and electrical activity of neurons.” But the document admits that no such theory exists.

The document makes clear that the main purpose of the BRAIN Initiative will be to shore up claims about mechanistic causes of the  human mind. The document states, “The most important outcome of the BRAIN Initiative will be a comprehensive, mechanistic understanding of mental function that emerges from synergistic application of the new technologies and conceptual structures developed under the BRAIN Initiative.” That makes it pretty clear that the project is ideology-driven. The idea that mental function can be explained mechanistically is an unbelievable piece of ideology inconsistent with many forms of evidence. One of these forms of evidence involves the many cases of minds that worked well after half or more of the brain was lost to injury, disease or surgery. Another such form of evidence is that scientists cannot find any plausible storage place in the brain where memories could be stored for 50 years, synapses (subject to very rapid molecular turnover) being no such thing.

What are some of the things that this BRAIN Initiative has been spending money on? Most of the project's money has apparently be spent as follows:

1. Trying to develop new tools to study the brain.
2. Creating circuit maps of the brain.
3. Identifying various types of brain cells.
4. Playing around with zapping people's brains in various different ways.

There is no reason to believe that any of this activity will actually result in the project's goal of a “comprehensive, mechanistic understanding of mental function” or even something much smaller, a fragmentary mechanistic understanding of mental function. There is no “circuit map” that we can possibly imagine that would allow us to understand how neurons might produce thoughts, how neural activity could result in such a thing as selfhood, or how human episodic memories could ever be stored as neural states. No real insight into such things has been produced by previous efforts to identify different types of brain cells or map out the connections of the brain. So why should we believe that any further insight on these matters will come from further activity along these lines?

In a section entitled “Manipulating circuit activity,” the Brain 2025 document tries to suggest that electrically zapping people's brains might tell us something about memory. It says, “In the 1950s, Penfield’s electrical stimulation experiments suggested that a memory or thought could be elicited by activating neurons in the underlying network.” Penfield's experiments did not actually suggest such a thing, for reasons I explain in my post here. The document fails to tell us that a review of 80 years of electrical stimulation of the brain found that it was very rare for people to recall anything during electrical stimulation of the brain and said this: “Overall, only one patient reported what appeared to be a clearly detailed episodic memory for which he spontaneously specified that he had never thought about it.” 

But nonetheless the BRAIN Initiative fellows expressed great enthusiasm for monkeying with people's brains. After noting approvingly that “stimulating electrodes are being placed in human patients,” the BRAIN 2025 document says, “Entirely new tools could be developed based on magnetic stimulation, gases, infrared excitation, ultrasound, or organic or physical chemistry to allow access to neurons deep within the brain.” It sounds like their plan is kind of like this:

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MASTER PLAN FOR UNDERSTANDING HUMAN MIND

1. Gas people's brains.

2. Shock their skulls with electricity

3. Bombard their neurons with various forms of radiation and magnetism. 

4. Cross fingers and hope for breakthrough.

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So far the BRAIN Initiative has been running for well over a decade and has accomplished nothing extremely noteworthy. Our understanding of the brain has not dramatically advanced during those many years, and all the old mysteries of mind and memory seem as mysterious as ever. 

At this “Achievements” page there is a discussion of what the BRAIN Initiative has accomplished so far. At the top of the text is a big bold headline saying “Transformative Advances,” but the BRAIN Initiative has produced no such transformative advances. Go beyond the flashy spin on the web site, the high-tech glitter, and the discussion of things in progress that haven't yet yielded much, and you have not a single major accomplishment relating to our understanding of the mind or memory. 

We read the false claim that "2024 was a historic year for groundbreaking advancements in neuroscience." No, it sure was not. Clicking on the links we read some attempts to justify such a claim. We hear a mention of a paper with the misleading title "Representation of internal speech by single neurons in human supramarginal gyrus." The tricks used by the paper are discussed in my post "Look Very Closely at a Study Claiming Thought Reading of Brains, and You'll Find the Shady Tricks Behind It," which you can read here. The paper provides no actual evidence that anyone's "internal speech" is represented anywhere in the brain, or that such speech can be decoded by studying brain waves picked up by EEG readings 

We also have a reference to a paper involving a semi-paralyzed man who can produce slurred speech. With some electrodes attached to the motor cortex region of his head or brain, there is some kind of processing that is able to decode his slurred speech making it intelligible. This isn't picking up any "internal speech," which does not involve using your muscles to try to speak. 

I found a BRAIN Initiative .pdf document promoting the BRAIN Initiative, trying to summarize its accomplishments.  It had the  utterly phony statement, "Researchers uncover how the human brain separates, stores, and retrieves memories." Nothing of the sort has occurred. The boast is as phony as a three-dollar bill. 

The document mentioned a 2022 study, and a web search shows that an identical claim ("Researchers uncover how the human brain separates, stores, and retrieves memories") was the title of a 2022 NIH press release here. The press release published by the National Institute of Health is one of the worst examples of government BS I have ever read. It discusses a study that I debunk in my post here. The study was one of those ethically objectionable studies in which very sick epilepsy patients are lured into experiments involving electrodes implanted deep in their brains. The study did not do anything to show that a brain either stores or retrieves memories, nor did it do anything to clarify how a brain could either store or retrieve memories. It is now four years later, and neuroscientists still lack any credible theory of how a brain could either store or retrieve memories.  No one has ever been able to retrieve any trace of anything anyone learned by the microscopic examination of brain tissue. 

At the recent page here, we read that a letter has been sent to the US Congress, begging that the BRAIN Initiative continue to get the lavish funding it has got for the past decade. In that letter, neuroscience authorities say, "For FY 2027, we respectfully request that you provide $468 million for the BRAIN Initiative." The letter makes this false claim: "The BRAIN Initiative is revolutionizing our understanding of the brain."  No, it sure is not. The BRAIN Initiative has not met any of the grand goals that were set out for it when it was started 12 years ago. Claims to the contrary are examples of groundless hype, which is epidemic in today's neuroscience literature. 

The letter fails to make specific claims about advances in neuroscience that came from the billions of dollars already spent on the BRAIN Initiative. The letter states, "The BRAIN Initiative has supported scientists in developing adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS), a therapy that sends electrical signals to the brain and monitors brain activity in real time to help treat various neurological disorders." The reference is to some questionable "zap the brain" technology (requiring brain surgery) that is profitable for medical device manufacturers and neurosurgeons, but of questionable worth for the sick, given potential side effects. The request for the huge handout (many millions of government funding) sounds like a request for many millions in "corporate welfare." Do we need the government to be funding experiments involving brain-zapping devices? Probably not, because such experiments can be funded by the manufacturers of such devices, who will profit enormously if the experiments get impressive results. 

The National Institute of Health page here seems to be the main web page of the BRAIN Initiative, which has got most of its funding from the National Institute of Health. Clicking on the "Latest News" link takes us to the page here, which takes us to a page that seems to list no very noteworthy news announcements. The page gives no news announcements later than May 2025. The page rather gives us an impression of a floundering project, not getting much of anywhere. You would think that with the several billions of dollars of funding that the BRAIN Initiative has received, that its researchers would at least try to make a halfway decent effort to sell their research results. Instead we have a page that gives you a feeling of: these guys are not  getting much of anywhere recently. The page has three references to mouse brain studies, one reference to a fruit fly study, and only one reference to "the human brain." So we get a "they're mostly fooling around with mice and flies" impression. 

At the link here, we have a pdf file at the BRAIN Initiative web site, one trying to sell the BRAIN Initiative. At the top is the question, "Why do we need the NIH BRAIN Initiative?" The first statement following that question is a falsehood. It is the statement, "The human brain is the most powerful, flexible and energy-efficient computer known to humankind." The brain is not a computer. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a computer as "a device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information." Brains are not devices and brains are not programmable. 

The table below illustrates why it is nonsensical to claim that your brain is like a computer. 

	COMPUTER	BRAIN
Made of metal?	Yes	No
Has an operating system?	Yes	No
Has application programs?	Yes	No
Has a known system for writing information to itself?	Yes	No
Has a known system for reading non-genetic information from itself?	Yes	No
Has addresses, indexes or a position notation system?	Yes	No
Great effects or disabling if you remove small parts?	Yes	No
All components stable?	Yes	No
Reliably transmits information?	Yes	No
Digital?	Yes	No
Has known encoding systems for storing images and language?	Yes	No
Very fast signal transmission throughout system?	Yes	No
Images or text found in removed parts?	Yes	No
Has no effect on consciousness?	Yes	No

The image below has the same table, using "check box" graphics:

I can justify some of the claims above:

• An operating system is a software framework providing low-level services that are needed for application software programs to work. Examples include UNIX, Linux, MS-DOS, the various versions of Windows, and the various versions of the Apple operating system. Creating an operating system requires man-years of intentional programming work by programmers. The brain has nothing like an operating system. 
• Application programs are software programs created by software developers using programming languages such as Java, C, Python and C++. The brain has nothing like application programs. Genes are mere lists of amino acids, and are not application programs. A key feature of application programs is abundant use of "if/then" logic, something not found in genes, proteins or DNA. 
• No one has ever shown that a brain has any system or capability for writing learned information. Claims that information is written by "synapse strengthening" or "LTP" are examples of groundless hand-waving. No one has ever shown how even the simplest phrase such as "my dog has fleas" could be written by either synapse strengthening or LTP. 
• Like all parts of the body, the brain is capable of reading genetic information from DNA. No one has ever shown that the brain has any such thing as a system or capability for reading non-genetic information such as information learned in school. We know that humans can recall school-learned information, but do not know that brains can do that. 
• While neurons are stable components, the synapses and dendritic spines of the brain are unstable components. The average lifetime of the proteins in synapses is less that two weeks. Imaging of dendritic spines show they are unstable components that do not last for years. It is estimated that the average synapse does not last for years. 
• The average speed of signal transmission in the brain is not very fast. While some components such as myelinated axons can transmit information very quickly, the brain is full of chemical synapses that transmit signals relatively slowly, because of the delays caused by chemical transmission across synaptic gaps. Also, signals travel relatively slowly through dendrites. 
• The great majority of synapses in the brain are chemical synapses, and signals do not reliably transmit across chemical synapses. Tests have shown that signals transmit across the gaps in such synapses with a transmission likelihood of only about 10% to 50%. A scientific states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower." The failure of synapses to reliably transmit information is a major reason for thinking that recall and thinking does not come from the brain. Recall of very large amounts of memorized text can occur with 100% accuracy, and humans can do complex math calculations in their minds with 100% accuracy. But it would seem such feats should be impossible if achieved by brains that transmit signals so unreliably.  
• A computer engineer can detach the hard drive of a computer, and retrieve very many images and a great deal of written text from such a detached component.  No one has ever found by microscopic examination of brain tissue any such thing as something someone saw or something someone read or experienced.  Not a single word anyone ever read has ever been found through microscopic examination of brain tissue. This failure is a major reason for rejecting the claim that brains store memories. 
• No one has ever discovered any system by which a brain could encode learned information so that it could be stored in brain states or synapse states, nor has anyone ever even advanced a detailed credible theory of how such a thing could be done. 
• Computers can be made unusable (or all-but-unusable) by removing small parts such as the CPU. Brains, on the other hand, can operate well even when large parts of them have been removed. See my posts here and here for examples of people who suffered relatively little cognitive damage after very large parts of their brains were lost due to disease or surgery. 

 By claiming over and over again that the brain is a computer,  neuroscientists have been guilty of a misstatement as bad as if they were to claim that your bath towel is a flying carpet that can transport you from city to city. 

She "Seemed Entirely Undamaged in Mental Capacity" After They Removed Half Her Brain

 Below is a news report that appeared in the November 10, 1933 edition of a newspaper called the Sedalia Democrat, a news report you can read here. 

In the story above we read this:

"Dr. Gardner removed the entire right half of the brain. The patient recognized friends immediately on recovering from  the anesthetic and seemed entirely undamaged in mental capacity."

The headline refers to Dr. Dandy.  The case of Dandy's patients is reported in the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pages 500-503. We read this: 

"Dandy has completely removed the right cerebral hemisphere from eight patients. He has performed total extirpations of one or more lobes much oftener... There are tabulated below certain generalizations on the effects of removing the right hemisphere.... The operation was the complete extirpation of the right frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes peripheral to the corpus striatum. The weight of the tissue re moved varies, with the pathological conditions involved, from 250 to 584 grm [grams].Coherent conversation began within twenty-four hours after operation, and in one case on the afternoon of the same day. Later examinations showed no observable mental changes. The patients were perfectly oriented in respect of time, place, and person; their memory was unimpaired for immediate and remote events; conversation was always coherent; ability to read, write, compute, and learn new material was unaltered. Current events were followed with normal interest. There were no personality changes apparent; the patients were emotionally stable, without fears, delusions, hallucinations, expansive ideas or obsessions, and with a good sense of humor; they joked frequently. They showed a natural interest in their condition and future. They cooperated intelligently at all times throughout post-operative care and subsequent testing of function." 

How could the memory of patients be "unimpaired for immediate and remote events" if memories are stored in brains?

Here is a quote from the newspaper article you can read here:

"Three seven-year-old chil­dren. Albert has had half his dam­aged brain removed by surgeons. Charley has millions of dead cells in his brain but has responded to nonsurgical treatment. Billy has a nor­mal brain. Yet all three are equal in intelligence."

So Albert who had half his brain removed (probably to treat epilepsy) had an intelligence equal to Billy who had a normal brain. That's not what we would expect under "brains make minds" assumptions. 

In the AP newspaper article here, we read, "One man had the right front lobe of his brain removed, con­scious and answering questions all the while, with one needle in his face below the cheek bone, and three in the top side of his right foot."

Below we read a report by a doctor (Logan Clendening) who attended a conference of the American Medical Association. In the bottom right corner, we hear he heard about a young girl who had "one-half of her brain removed for epilepsy." We are not told about any problem that the girl suffered, but merely told that "she is able to conduct her life and affairs with considerable success." 

Below is a similar newspaper account you can read here. We read of "mental faculties entirely unimpaired," even though the patient (John Daly) had "the larger part of his brain removed by an operation."

"Seeing What Was Not There" Pareidolia of Astrobiologists Resembles "Seeing What Was Not There" Pareidolia of Neuroscientists

 Phosphine is a gas mainly produced on Earth by living things. On September 14, 2020, a scientific paper entitled "Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus" claimed to have detected the "apparent presence" of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. The lead author was Jane S. Greaves. The claimed abundance level was very tiny, only about 10 parts per billion. Following their long-standing tendency to hype like crazy any story that may serve as clickbait to produce more page views and advertising revenue, a host of web sites began proclaiming that life or a sign of life had been discovered at Venus.  

I may have been the first one in the blogosphere to make a substantive criticism of this claim, since I published on the next day a post entitled "No, They Haven't Detected Life at Venus," in which I cited several reasons for doubting the idea that the paper had provided any evidence of life at Venus.  I said on September 15, 2020 that an alternate explanation was that "an error in interpretation could have occurred in spectral data that is hard-to-interpret because of overlapping signals from a variety of different gases in the atmosphere of Venus," and that such a possibility was "not very unlikely." I also pointed out the substantial chance that merely geological processes could have produced phosphine, and pointed out the lack of any plausible scenario for life on Venus, given the incredibly hostile conditions both on its hot-enough-to-melt-lead surface and its clouds (having almost no water but lots of sulfuric acid vapor). 

Days after my post, we began seeing on some sites such as www.liveScience.com and the National Geographic web site some articles (such as this one) questioning whether any sign of life had really been discovered on Venus.  On October 19, 2020 there appeared a scientific paper with the title "Re-analysis of the 267-GHz ALMA observations of Venus: No statistically significant detection of phosphine."  The paper doesn't merely question whether evidence of life on Venus has been found. The paper tells us that no robust evidence of phosphine has been discovered in the atmosphere of Venus. 

The five authors of the scientific paper provide a critique of the  September 14, 2020 paper claiming evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus,  saying that the paper used a dubious statistical technique that "leads to spurious results." The five authors state that the data actually provides "no statistical evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus." 

Four additional recent papers (published after the widely discussed "phosphine at Venus" paper) said that there is no phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. One paper by a single author states, "There is thus no significant evidence for phosphine absorption in the JCMT Venus spectra." Another paper with many co-authors is entitled, "No phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus." A third paper states there is "no statistical evidence for phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus."  Another paper says, "These findings, along with the recent papers by Encrenaz et al. (2020), Snellen et al. (2020), Lincowski et al. (2020), and Villanueva et al. (2020) undermine the reported detection of PH3 [phosphine] by Greaves et al. (2020a,b) and its possible biogenic origin."  A news account of this paper says, "The team concluded that what the scientists probably saw was just sulfur dioxide, which is a common gas around Venus and would not indicate the possible presence of life."

What was going on in the Greaves paper claiming phosphine on Venus seems to have been pareidolia fueled by wishful thinking.  Scientists looked at some noisy borderline data produced at the limits of observations, and interpreted the data in a way so that they could claim something they were eagerly hoping to find. Pareidolia typically occurs when someone looks at noisy, hard-to-interpret frequently-changing data, and then claims to see some important thing that is not really there.  The example of someone claiming to have found a Jesus image in his toast is an example of pareidolia. Another example of pareidolia is shown below:

A few years later we had another case resembling the subsequently-discredited report of detecting phosphine on Venus. It was another case of a scientist claiming to have found something of great significance in the field of astrobiology, the search for life in outer space.  In 2023 Nikku Madhusudhan and four other scientists created quite a stir. They authored a paper entitled "Carbon-bearing Molecules in a Possible Hycean Atmosphere." Researching a planet called  K2-18 b revolving around another star, the paper claimed to have found "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), which has been predicted to be an observable biomarker in Hycean worlds." The term "Hycean worlds" refers to planets in other solar systems that may be entirely covered by an ocean. The term "biomarker" refers to something that may be a sign of life. A very simple compound, dimethyl sulfide is not any type of building block of life. But on Earth dimethyl sulfide is sometimes produced by life. 

But there were some reasons why the attempt to insinuate a biomarker was very dubious. One reason was that the claims about "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide" was a kind of "reading tea leaves" affair, in which scientists were analyzing the faintest of faint signals, rather like someone squinting at something on the horizon miles away. That type of observation offers plenty of opportunity to see what you want to see, by interpreting marginal hard-to-interpret just-barely-detectable data in some way that fits your cherished desires, rather than interpreting that data in a hundred other ways. 

Then there is the fact that when scientists do observations like this, they are picking up signals from many different chemical sources, with the signals being all mixed up. It's a recipe for false alarms, rather like someone in a very crowded high school cafeteria trying to listen to what someone at a different cafeteria table far away is saying. 

Despite the paper's failure to detect water, and its weak mention of a mere mention of "potential signs of dimethyl sulfide," the world's "give us an inch and we'll take a mile" science news press began publishing a flood of misleading stories falsely claiming that some promising sign of life had been found. After the "sugar rush" of this flood of misleading stories, other scientists got busy examining the data on the distant planet K2-18 b, to see whether there was any decent evidence for dimethyl sulfide. In 2024 scientists produced a paper arguing that K2-18 b was not a "Hycaean" planet covered by an ocean, but instead a gas planet like Neptune with no ocean. The paper was "JWST Observations of K2-18b Can Be Explained by a Gas-rich Mini-Neptune with No Habitable Surface" authored by Nicholas F. Wogan and others. 

Then in early 2025 there was published the paper "A Comprehensive Reanalysis of K2-18 b's JWST NIRISS+NIRSpec Transmission Spectrum." It reanalyzed the data on K2-18 b and says "we find no statistically significant or reliable evidence for CO2 or DMS [dimethyl sulfide]." The paper had 16 authors, as compared to only five authors of Madhusudhan's paper. The 16 authors had found that Madhusudhan's claims about dimethyl sulfide at K2-18 b were unfounded. 

In April 2025 Madhusudhan released a new paper, based on some new observations. He claimed to have found stronger evidence for dimethyl sulfide at the planet K2-18 b. For a few days the world's science news sites spread a Madhusudhan-crafted narrative that the "strongest evidence yet for extraterrestrial life" had been found. But Madhusudhan's claims were soon shot down by other scientists. An An Ars Technica article soon appeared entitled "Skepticism greets claims of a possible biosignature on a distant world." We read this:

"The last issue is whether, if dimethyl sulfide is really present on K2-18b, it was produced by life as it is here on Earth. The answer appears to be 'possibly not': A 2024 paper indicates it's possible to produce the chemical through light-activated reactions."

Referring to Madhusudhan's team, an Atlantic article soon stated this:

"The chemical [dimethyl sulfide] is one of several that could be responsible for the signal they found. And while it's the most likely one according to their models, others disagree." 

The article notes that dimethyl sulfide was found "in the dead, icy spray of a comet," meaning it isn't any reliable biomarker. "Abiotic" refers to something not involving life.  One paper is entitled "On the abiotic origin of dimethyl sulfide: discovery of DMS in the Interstellar Medium." Another paper is entitled "Evidence for Abiotic Dimethyl Sulfide in Cometary Matter." In the Atlantic article we read a quote by astronomer Ignas Snellen stating that Madhusudhan's framing of his research is "irresponsible nonsense."

A National Geographic page interviews some experts about Madhusudhan's recent claims. Some excerpts:

" 'I'm pretty skeptical of this claim, and I wish the press coverage better reflected the skepticism of the astronomical and astrobiological community,' wrote astrobiologist Joshua Krissansen-Totton of the University of Washington in an email....Another researcher, astronomer Ryan MacDonald at the University of Michigan went further, criticizing the three sigma claim as 'statistical hacking' on Bluesky....'The simplest explanation of this planet is a very thick gas-giant atmosphere with no habitable surface,' says exoplanet scientist Nick Wogan of NASA Ames. ...And we already know that nature can produce DMS [dimethyl sulfide] without life. Last year, chemist Nora Hänni at the University of Bern and her colleagues found DMS on comet 67P—not exactly a habitable world. Other researchers have found it in interstellar space. And last year, chemist Eleanor Browne of the University of Colorado, Boulder and her colleagues showed that DMS can be produced in light-fueled chemical reactions in lab experiments with synthetic atmospheres.

'There's no reason to understand [DMS] as a unique consequence of life,' says Mathis. 'I just, for the life of me, cannot figure out exactly what the argument is about: why they think this could even potentially be indicative of life, given that we've seen abiotic sources.' ”

An article at Gizmodo.com quotes some experts discussing Madhusudhan's paper.  Planetary chemist Oliver Shorttle says "I do not believe the report of DMS in the spectrum of K2-18 b moves the astrobiological needle." He states this:

"There is presently no requirement from the data that this planet hosts liquid water oceans and a climate amenable to life. In fact, based on the data there is every reason to believe the climate will be far too hot for liquid water oceans, with the deep atmosphere potentially being underlain by oceans of magma, not liquid water. For this reason, even if 1 and 2 return a DMS detection, our expectation should be that this [molecule] has emerged in a lifeless, hot, sulfur and hydrogen rich atmosphere and ask ourselves what the atmospheric chemistry is that would have enabled this. Believing instead that this is DMS of biological origin would require overturning our every expectation as to the climate of this planet, without any other reason to do this from the data."

In the same article, astrophysicist Ignas Snellen says this:

"The whole thing is completely blown out of proportions.... The research team finds bumps in their spectrum. It is not clear whether these are real, and if so, what they could be caused by. There could be dozens of molecules (if real), or even cloud features. What do the authors do? They just look whether DMS [dimethyl sulfide] could cause this (and add DMDS). They ignore the dozens of other species [i.e. non-biological sources of molecules] that could cause this bump and call it a day. If I had been the referee, I would have stopped this publication right there. There is no reason to invoke astrobiology, let alone call it the biggest breakthrough or whatever....In the long run this will hurt astronomy when nobody will take us seriously anymore."

An NPR story says that  a scientist has analyzed the most recent data from K2-18 b, and has found it has no signal of any kind. We read this:

"The results he got suggested that there's too much noise in the data to draw any conclusions. Rather than seeing a bump or a wiggle that indicated a signal, 'the data is consistent with a flat line,' says Taylor, adding that more observations from the telescope are needed to know what can be reliably said about this planet's atmosphere."

Madhusudhan's overenthusiasm and pareidolia reminds me of the overenthusiasm and pareidolia of another astronomer, Avi Loeb. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb somehow got the idea that a  2014 meteor (the CNEOS 2014-01-08 meteor) may have been an interstellar spacecraft that blew up high in the sky. Loeb ran a million-dollar oceanic expedition looking for what he hoped would be remnants of a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship, an expedition he organized.  He found no sign of anything looking like a spaceship or any of its parts. Loeb claims to have found tiny round specks only about a millimeter in size. All that he recovered were some tiny metal specks. The metal specks he found are just like metal sea specks found all over the world.  But  Loeb tried to suggest that he may have discovered smithereens of an exploded interstellar spacecraft. 

There was nothing special about the specks Loeb and his team gathered (as I discuss here), and there is nothing special about the data Madhusudhan got from K2-18 b.

We have above three examples of glory-seeking astronomers or astrobiologists making grand announcements of having observed something that they did not really observe, apparently as an effect of pareidolia, in which a person guilty of wishful thinking examines some hard-to-interpret, borderline data at the limit of observations, and claims that he has found something of grand significance.  Such a thing occurs not only in the world of astronomy, but also in the world of neuroscience.  Nowadays pareidolia is occurring very massively in experimental neuroscience. Eagerly hoping to find evidence of things they fervently believe in, neuroscientists are again and again claiming to have observed things they did not really observe. 

What we should never forget is that when you're a scientist, there are always a hundred ways for you to get some illusory evidence that is just a false alarm.  This doesn't require or typically involve any outright deception. It merely requires for a scientist to use some method that isn't quite right. 

One extremely common way for a scientist to conjure up a phantasm is to use too small a sample size or too small a study group size, which tends to result in false alarms. Scientists know how they can avoid this sin: by doing a sample size calculation to determine the minimum study group size needed to produce a moderately persuasive result, and to only use study groups with such a size. But a large fraction of scientific studies (particularly animal neuroscience studies) fail to include such a calculation, and fail to have adequate study group sizes. 

Another way for a scientist to conjure up a phantasm is to prune or filter his data until the desired thing seems to appear. It might be that when considering his full data set, there will seem to be no evidence of some thing (call it X) that the scientist wants the data to show evidence for.  But the scientist can prune the data at its beginning or end, until some evidence of X seems to show up. For example, if there were 4 weeks of data collection, the scientist can just get rid of the week 1 data or the week 4 data, or maybe both weeks of data. Or, the scientist can apply some "data filter" which gets rid of certain data points, until some evidence of X seems to show up.  The decision to apply such a data filter can often be rationalized in various ways, to make it sound like some "quality filter" excluding "bad data" or "outlier data."

Another way for a scientist to conjure up a phantasm is to collect data in a biased way that will maximize the chance that the desired result will appear. I will give a hypothetical example. Let us imagine that you are a scientist who wants to show that rainy days in New York City cause a higher chance of 300-point drops in a stock market indicator such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  You might begin recording daily stock market results on a rainy day in which there was a 300-point drop in the stock market.  You might then continue to record daily results, and conveniently end your data collection on a rainy day in which there was more than a 300-point drop in the stock market.  Given such convenient start and stop points of your data collection, you may well be able to write up a "statistically significant" correlation between rainy days in New York and 300-point drops in the stock market. But if you had resolved beforehand to start collecting data on some day 14 days in the future, and continue collecting data for exactly 100 days, then the desired result would probably not show up. 

Once so-called "raw data" has been collected, there are 1001 ways to "massage" the data before it is analyzed, some of which may make sense and some of which are dubious. A scientist can produce all kinds of rationalizations for particular data exclusions and data inclusions and use of data averages or "data smoothing" and use of "weighted averages" that may have been used, which can have a huge effect on whether some illusory phantasm shows up. 

Moving from the topic of data collection to data analysis, there are innumerable ways in which a scientist can conjure up phantasms by some kind of data analysis that isn't quite right. Don't be reassured when some science paper claims that it uses some kind of "standard software" for data analysis. There is almost always no such thing as a "standard analysis" of data. There are standard software tools used for data analysis, but such tools can be used in a million valid ways, and a million dubious ways. An example is Microsoft Excel, the leading spreadsheet program.  There are a million bad ways to use it, as well as a million good ways. 

When neuroscientists attempt to judge whether a rodent recalled by using the faulty "freezing behavior" method and manual inspection of how many seconds the rodent was immobile (within some arbitrarily chosen interval that can be anything between 30 seconds and five minutes), it's pretty much the perfect recipe for "see whatever you want to see" analysis. And when such analysis is done by people who are not blind to whether the observed rodents are in the experimental group or the control group, you have a likelihood of "see whatever you are hoping to see." Blinding fails to occur in most cognitive neuroscience studies, and almost never do we get a detailed statement giving us confidence that an effective protocol for blinding occurred. As for pre-registration (which can reduce some of the problems discussed in this post), a neuroscientist recently confessed it is rare in neuroscience. 

A science paper may try to reassure you that it used some standard software for doing some type of data analysis (such as measuring brain scan data or trying to measure "freezing behavior" in mice).  But there are always countless different ways to use such software, some good and some bad.  Every software program has program settings or startup options or menu options that allow you to customize how the program is used. Software programmers usually ask "how can I give the user the freedom to do exactly what he wants," and almost never ask "how I can make it so that there's no way to use the software in a stupid way." 

Nowadays neuroscientists often use "roll your own" customized computer programming to operate on gathered data in a way we can describe as "keep torturing the data until it confesses."  AI programs make it easier than ever to create such software, which is often of low quality.

Another way a scientist can conjure up phantasms is by failing to do a preregistered study that announces an experiment will be testing one very specific hypothesis, and going on a kind of "fishing expedition" within his analytic activity. For example, let's imagine the scientist does brain scans looking for some correlation between some behavior (or some aspect of thinking) and activity in some tiny brain region, some particular hundredth of a brain. By failing to limit himself to checking one small specific part of the brain corresponding to a previously declared hypothesis, and giving himself the freedom to check any of 100 small parts of the brain, he will have a good chance of finding some tiny region that weakly correlates with the behavior or aspect of mentality.  That's simply because given 100 parameters that show random variations, and the freedom to check any of them, it's easy to get something that looks like a slight correlation, even if only chance and not causation is involved.  The name sometimes given for this procedural sin is HARKing, which stands for Hypothesizing After Results are Known. 

Scientists have a hundred ways to conjure up illusory phantasms, and once a phantasm has been conjured up, there are many tricks by which the phantasm may be made to seem like something real, such as the use of complex charts and thick jargon which make the problematic presentation seem very scientific. All in all, we may say that the power of scientists to give you an impression of the reality of something illusory is comparable to the similar power of Hollywood's CGI special effects wizards. 

Very much of the more interesting-sounding neuroscience research results are examples of "seeing what was not there" pareidolia, in which some false alarm is conjured up using one of the techniques discussed above. There is no actual evidence for non-genetic representations in the brain. But neuroscientists often claim to have found faint traces of such things. Such neuroscientists are doing work similar to the false alarm generation work of Greaves, Madhusudhan and Loeb. 

In considering matters such as these, I like to remember a particular rule:

The rule of well-funded and highly motivated research communities: almost any large well-funded research community eagerly desiring to prove some particular claim can be expected to  occasionally produce superficially persuasive evidence in support of such a claim, even if the claim is untrue.  

We can consider an example of this rule, one involving astrology, the claim that the stars and planets exert a mysterious occult influence on the destiny of humans. Let us imagine that instead of there being merely a handful of poorly funded astrology researchers in the United States, there were instead 10,000 or more very well-funded astrology researchers, with billions of dollars in research grants to use to try to support their belief in astrology, by doing things like crunching statistics in various ways with computers.  It would then occur that we would occasionally read in the press stories presenting superficially persuasive evidence for astrology.  Such evidence probably would not stand up well to very close scrutiny, but it would be sufficient to give some talking points to astrology supporters. 

Similarly, if there was a large community of 10,000 ardent fairy researchers who were funded with billions of dollars, we would probably occasionally see superficially persuasive papers offering evidence for fairies. For example, with such an army of researchers, and so much money to spend, there might be occasional infrared heat signature studies suggesting anomalous little blobs of heat floating about that might be interpreted as fairies.  The researchers would be helped by the research rule that says, "Torture the data sufficiently, and it will confess to almost anything." 

And so it is for the 10,000 or more US neuroscientists funded with billions of dollars of research money (more than 5 billion dollars each year, according to this site).  Such scientists are able to occasionally produce studies providing superficially persuasive evidence for the dogmas the neuroscientists want to believe in, such as the idea that there is a physical hallmark of conceptual learning in the brain. Such evidence does not hold up well to very close scrutiny, but it is at least sufficient to provide some talking points for the neuroscientists.  Such evidence is actually no greater than the evidence we would expect to be produced for an untrue claim, given the "rule of well-funded and highly motivated research communities" cited above. 

An example of the schlock being typically produced by today's cognitive neuroscientists is the very low-quality paper being promoted in today's science news, the paper "Creating true and false memories from forgotten information in Drosophila." We have scientists experimenting with fruit flies, but the sample sizes used are way-too-small, almost always less than 15 (with study group sizes as low as 8 or 9). What excuse could someone have for not using a decent study group size such as 20 when experimenting with fruit flies? The authors confess, "No statistical methods were used to determine the sample size." A sample size calculation would have revealed how inadequate the study group sizes were. We have the confession, "Investigators were not blinded to group allocation during data collection." I doubt that anyone has devised a reliable method for measuring whether a fruit fly remembered something; and anything a neuroscientist claims about memory performance of fruit flies should be received with the greatest suspicion. The title of the paper is a groundless boast. 

When Neuroscientists Matter-of-Factly Tell "Old Wives' Tale" Explanations

Why do cells reproduce? Why does a cell split into two to become two cells? Our biologists don't even understand this.

On a web page entitled "The Mystery of Cell Division," a scientist confesses that scientists don't understand how cells -- with a complexity of "airplanes" -- could self-reproduce. 

"Scientists have been trying to understand how cells are built since the 1800s. This does not surprise us and, as scientists ourselves, we have always been puzzled at how cells, such complex structures, are able to reproduce over and over again. Even more astonishing is that, despite the frequency of cell division, mistakes are relatively rare and almost always corrected. According to Professor David Morgan from University of California, the complexity that we observe in cells can be compared to that of airplanes."

If you do a Google search for “why do cells divide,” you will get various answers referring to "grand purpose" type of causes -- what are called "final causes" in the terminology of Aristotle's philosophy. A web site may state that cells divide to replace old, dead or damaged cells, or that cells divide so that an organism can grow, or that cells divide so that an organism can reproduce. But these are all “grand purpose” reasons, and none of them is a low-level reason. What we do not understand is: what cell-level reason is it that very complex cells divide into two identical complex cells? Considering only the cell itself, and not some higher purpose, what would cause a very complex cell to reproduce by splitting into two?

Scientists do not understand such a thing. They have identified particular stages in the most common type of cell reproduction (called mitosis): stages such as prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase. But without referring to higher-level “grand purpose” reasons, scientists do not understand why (on the individual cell level) a cell would pass through such phases and reproduce. A university press release confesses that "there are many remaining mysteries about how cells perform this remarkable feat." The answer is not at all "the cells follow the instructions in DNA." DNA and its genes do not contain any instructions for making cells or any specification or blueprint of a cell (contrary to the misstatements so often made about DNA and genes). 

M. Pitkanen (who has a PhD in theoretical physics) has written the following about cell division:

"Replication is one of the deepest mysteries of biology. It is really something totally counterintuitive if cell is seen as a sack of water plus some chemicals. We have a lot [of] facts about what happens in the replication at DNA level but how this miracle happens is a mystery. At cell level the situation gets even more complex."

A university press release discusses scientific ignorance about the basic question of cell division. It states the following:

"When a rapidly-growing cell divides into two smaller cells, what triggers the split? Is it the size the growing cell eventually reaches? Or is the real trigger the time period over which the cell keeps growing ever larger?...'How cells control their size and maintain stable size distributions is one of the most fundamental, unsolved problems in biology,' said Suckjoon Jun, an assistant professor of physics and molecular biology at UC San Diego...'Even for the bacterium E. coli, arguably the most extensively studied organism to date, no one has been able to answer this question.' ”

The press release claims that some study has "shed light" on this mystery, but the study mentioned doesn't sound very impressive, merely being something that mathematically analyzed cell growth, and claimed to have found a "principle of cell-size control," without discussing a cause for such a thing. 

It would be easy to understand cell reproduction if cells were very simple. Imagine if a cells were just uncomplicated little blobs kind of like little bubbles. Then a cell might be able to reproduce easily enough by a simple collision. When one cell collided with another, it might cause a large cell to break up two smaller cells. But what goes on in cell reproduction is gigantically more complicated than that.

Cells are so complicated that they are sometimes compared to cities, and the organelles in cells (such as the mitochondria, ribosomes and Golgi apparatus) are sometimes compared to buildings in a city. You will vastly underestimate the complexity of a eukaryotic cell (the type of cells in the human body) if you look at one of those cell diagrams that shows only a few organelles in the cell. In some cells there are millions of ribosomes, and thousands of mitochondria, as well as many other types of organelles. So when a cell reproduces, it's like some complicated machine made an exact copy of itself. Using Morgan's statement that cells are as complex as airplanes, this is as much a wonder as if some airplane were able to make an exact copy of itself.

The discussion above clarifies a point of the greatest importance: scientists do not understand the origin of cells. Specifically:

•  Scientists do not understand the origin of the simplest types of cells, called prokaryotic cells. The question of the origin of the first prokaryotic is pretty much equivalent to the question of the origin of life. Scientists have made no real progress in understanding the origin of life.  Even the simplest prokaryotic cell is an enormously complex thing, with roughly the same amount of functional information as a 100-page technical manual. Even the simplest self-reproducing cell scientists study is a cell requiring hundreds of different types of proteins, each a separate complex invention requiring hundreds of well-arranged parts.  The total number of well-arranged parts needed for even the simplest life is greater than 10,000. No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever produced life from non-life. No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever produced  the building components of one-celled life (protein molecules).  If fact, no experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever even produced  the building components (amino acids) of the building components of one-celled life (protein molecules). The much discussed Miller-Urey experiment did produce amino acids, but that experiment was not a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions. 
• Scientists do not understand the origin of eukaryotic cells, the more complex type of cells used by humans and other mammals. The problem of explaining the origin of eukaryotic cells is gigantically greater than the problem of explaining the origin of prokaryotic cells, because  eukaryotic cells are many thousands or millions of time more complex than prokaryotic cells. 
• Scientists do not understand how extremely complex eukaryotic cells are able to reproduce.  The answer is not that cells read instructions in DNA specifying how to build  eukaryotic cells. There is no such set of instructions in DNA or its genes. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a particular protein molecule. Eukaryotic cells are built of building components called organelles. DNA and its genes do not even specify how to construct organelles.  In fact, DNA and its genes do not even specify a layer of structure between protein molecules and organelles: the layer of protein complexes (specialized teams of proteins). 

In the book Aliens, biologist Matthew Cobb gives a description of current thinking on this topic, emphasizing the improbability of it:

"What happened on Earth – known as eukaryogenesis – was not the product of random mutation and the subsequent sifting of acquired characters that have differential fitness (the essence of natural selection). Instead there appears to have been a single event of mind-boggling improbability, for it involved two life forms interacting in a most novel way....Prior to that moment, all life had consisted of small microbes with no cell nucleus and no mitochondria. Everything changed when one unicellular life form, known as an archaebacterium, ended up inside another, called a eubacterium."

On another page Cobb says this:

"We could in principle calculate the probability of the appearance of eukaryotes, but we would soon run out of zeros...That weird hybrid was our ancestor, and its existence – and therefore ours – was incredibly improbable. As far as we are aware, no such event happened before or since."

Obviously we have here a fairy tale, an "old wives' tale." Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how eukaryotic cells originated, just as they have no credible tale to tell of how prokaryotic cells originated. Whenever they refer to eukaryotic cells arising by fantastically improbable combination accidents, biologists are merely engaging in the most farfetched hand-waving. Because neither prokaryotic cells nor eukaryotic cells specify in their DNA how to make either a eukaryotic cell nor any of its organelle components, there is no conceivable lucky combination accident of prokaryotic cells that would result in eukaryotic cells with the ability to reproduce to make other eukaryotic cells. 

In light of all of these ocean-sized explanatory shortfalls, what are we to make of a recent statement at the beginning of an essay by neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow?  Simply that it is a gigantically unbelievable "old wives' tale," a tall tale that should not at all be classified as science.  Here is how Critchlow begins her essay (which you can read here):

"About 2 billion years ago, evolution performed an improbable experiment. A larger ancestral cell engulfed a smaller bacterium. It should have been a meal. Instead, it became a merger. The bacterium survived inside its host, and together they forged one of the most consequential partnerships in the history of life. The host offered shelter and access to oxygen. The bacterium supplied something revolutionary: a vastly more efficient way to generate energy.  From this intimate alliance emerged the eukaryotic cell – and with it, the possibility of complex life. Every plant, animal and thinking being traces its lineage back to that ancient symbiosis."

This is the preposterous tall tale called endosymbiosis or eukaryogenesis.  It's a ridiculous story along the lines of  "we got eukaryotic cells after a prokaryotic cell gulped its way to becoming 1000 times more complex."  No sensible theorist should ever tell this tale, which has zero credibility.  The tale is not an example of science with a capital "S," because no one has ever observed any such event occurring. Science with a capital "S" is facts established by observations, not math-oblivious wild tales describing events unlike any that have ever been observed. 

The truth is that scientists do not have any credible explanation for the origin of either of the two major classes of cells.  Scientists do  not have any credible explanation for the origin of prokaryotic cells, and scientists  do not have any credible explanation for the origin of vastly more complex eukaryotic cells.  Neither one of these origins has any Darwinian explanation.  You may start to realize how bogus are all "Darwin explained it all" claims when you realize that scientists these days are not providing a Darwinian explanation for either the origin of prokaryotic cells or the origin of eukaryotic cells. The "giant complexity leap by engulfing" tall tale Critchlow gives is not any type of Darwinian explanation, and is actually an explanation attempt hugely contradicting Darwin's favorite principle that "nature does not make leaps." 

Critchlow makes the untrue claim that an origin of eukaryotic cells created "the possibility of complex life,"  ignoring the fact that even the simplest type of cell (prokaryotic cells) is itself a very complex thing requiring half a million very well-arranged base pairs and hundreds of types of proteins, most being a separate type of complex invention requiring hundreds of well-arranged parts. Her little "gulping"  tale does not even try to explain more than one of the many differences between prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells. It's kind of like someone saying that a real working car arose from a palm-sized toy car, because the toy car got bigger. 

As many scientists have confessed, DNA and its genes contain no specifications for building the structure of bodies, and no specifications for building the structure of eukaryotic cells. So there is no conceivable event by which some combination accident or gulping accident involving prokaryotic cells could explain the origin of eukaryotic cells.  One prokaryotic cell might make itself more complex by gulping something, but that would not do anything to cause future cells to have the same increased complexity. 

After reading the neuroscientist Critchlow tell the enormously unbelievable fairy tale quoted above, you might start to get a suspicion along these lines: maybe neuroscientists may tend to tell tall tale yarns having no credibility, while reciting such groundless "just so" stories as if they were facts. And such a suspicion would actually be correct, because of  many other examples of absurd unwarranted narratives that neuroscientists like to tell. One of the most ridiculous is the claim that some mere strengthening of synapses can explain the wonder of human memory storage.  It is a tale as absurd as the "huge leap in organization by a gulping accident" tale Critchlow tells to try to explain the origin of eukaryotic cells.  Complex information never gets stored by some mere act of strengthening. Equally absurd is the tale that your ability to instantly recall complex relevant answers occurs from some process in neural tissue lacking any addresses, indexes or sorting, the type of things that make a fast retrieval of information possible in physical systems. 

What should neuroscientists be saying when they address the question of the origin of prokaryotic cells?  They should be saying something like, "I don't understand how the first prokaryotic cells arose." What should neuroscientists be saying when they address the question of the origin of vastly more complex eukaryotic cells?  They should be saying something like, "I don't understand how the first eukaryotic cells arose." What should neuroscientists be saying when they address the question of how human cells reproduce? They should be saying something like, "I don't understand how cells as complex as humans have are able to reproduce." What should neuroscientists be saying when they address the question of how humans learn things? They should be saying something like, "I don't understand how a human being can learn anything using a brain in which learned information has never been found by microscopic examination." What should neuroscientists be saying when they address the question of how humans recall things? They should be saying something like, "I don't understand how a human being can recall anything using a brain lacking any addresses, indexes and sorting, in which learned information has never been found by microscopic examination."

Yesterday I discovered a 2021 paper by two scientists who attempt to persuade us that some progress was made by neuroscientists in learning about a physical basis for memory. In the last few paragraphs, their pretensions fall apart, as the scientists make this confession, which makes it sound as if scientists have no real understanding of any physical basis for memory:

"Despite the tremendous efforts in the field to clarify the molecular  basis of memory processes, some very important questions remain unanswered... How does one singular memory get recalled when it is behaviorally relevant? How are the molecular mechanisms in memory systems not only flexible to allow immediate and quick learning but also persistent to store information during long-lasting periods?...Where is the information stored for long-term? Is there such thing as a memory code?...Despite half a century of research, we are still only scratching the surface of the molecular basis for memory function."

Schematic depiction of some types of experts