Groupthink and Peer Pressure Make It Taboo for Neuroscientists to Put Two and Two Together

Why do so many neuroscientists go far astray in their dogmatic declarations about the brain? To understand the speech tendencies of neuroscientists, we must understand the environments that create and employ such scientists. Neuroscientists are created in university departments that are ideological enclaves. An ideological enclave is some environment where almost everyone believes in some ideology that the majority of human beings do not profess. Different departments of a university may tend to be places where different ideologies are concentrated.

A seminary is an example of an ideological enclave. A seminary is an institution where people are trained to be ministers or priests of some particular religion. A university graduate school program (one issuing masters degrees and PhD's in some academic specialty) may also be an example of an ideological enclave. Just as a seminary trains people to think in one particular way, and to hold a particular set of unproven beliefs, many a university graduate program may train people to think in a particular way, and to hold a particular set of unproven beliefs. Neuroscience graduate school programs tend to train people to believe that all mental phenomena have a cause that is purely neural, and that your mind is merely the activity of your neurons. This strange belief is not a belief professed by the majority of human beings.

It would be incredibly hard for any ideological enclave to enforce its belief ideology if the enclave got its members by some random selection process that gave it new members reflecting the thinking of the general population. Instead, things are much easier for the ideological enclave. There is what we can call a magnet effect by which the ideological enclave only gets new trainees when people choose to join the enclave. This guarantees that each new set of trainees will tend to be people favoring the ideology of the enclave. The great majority of the people signing up to be trained in the ideological enclave will be those attracted to its ideology. The great majority of the people signing up to be trained in a theological seminary will be those who favor the theology being taught in that seminary. Similarly, the great majority of the people signing up for a university graduate program in neuroscience or evolutionary biology will be people favoring the belief dogmas popular in such programs.

Once a person starts being trained in an ideological enclave, he will find relentless social pressure to conform to the ideology of that enclave. This pressure will continue for years. The pressure will be applied by authorities who usually passed through years of training and belief conditioning by the ideological enclave, or a similar ideological enclave elsewhere. In a seminary such authorities are ministers or priests, and in a university graduate school program such authorities are professors or instructors. Finally, after years of belief conditioning the person who signed up for the training will be anointed as a new authority himself. In the university graduate school program, this occurs when something like a master's degree or a PhD or a professorship is granted. In a seminary, this may occur when someone becomes a minister or priest.

Groupthink is a tendency for some conformist social unit to have overconfidence in its decisions or belief customs, or unshakable faith in such things. Groupthink is worsened by any situation in which only those with some type of credential (available only from some ideological enclave) are regarded as fit to offer a credible judgment on some topic. In groupthink situations, an illusion of consensus may be helped by self-censorship (in which those having opinions differing from the group ideology keep their contrary opinions to themselves, for fear of being ostracized within the group). In groupthink situations, belief conformity may also be helped by so-called mindguards, who work to prevent those in the group from becoming aware of contrarian opinions, alternate options or opposing observations. In an academic community such mindguards exist in the form of peer-reviewers and academic editors who prevent the publication of opinions and data contrary to the prevailing group ideology. We saw an example of such conformity enforcement in neuroscience not long ago when an “outrage mob” of 900 petitioners forced the retraction of a neuroscience paper which seemed to have no sin worse than contrarian thinking.

For the person who completes the program of a university graduate school program, and gets his master's degree or PhD, is that the end of the conformist social influence, the end of the pressure to believe and think in a particular way? Not at all. Instead, the “follow the herd” effect and the pressure to tow the “party line” of the belief community typically continues for additional decades. The newly minted PhD rarely goes off on his own to become an independent thinker marching to his own drummer, outside of the heavy influence of the belief community. Instead, such a person usually becomes a kind of captive of a belief community. The newly minted PhD will very often get a job working for the very ideological enclave that trained him, a particular academic department of a university. Or, he may end up employed by some very similar academic department of some other university, a place that is an ideological enclave just like the one in which he was trained. Such employment typically lasts for decades, during which someone may be stuck in a kind of echo chamber in which everyone parrots the same talking points. So when there is groupthink and ideological conformity in some academic specialty, peer pressure can continue to act for decades on someone like a neuroscientist or a string theorist or an evolutionary biologist.

Such peer pressure can be something that tells people they are  supposed to think in one way, and may also be something that tells people they should not think in some other way. The enforcement of belief taboos and speech taboos is one of the main tendencies of ideological enclaves and belief communities. Such taboos are promoted by those interested in preserving the ideological cohesiveness of the belief community. The belief community of neuroscientists enforces thinking taboos that can prevent neuroscientists from reaching conclusions that follow rather obviously from particular observations. Such taboos can make it culturally forbidden for neuroscientists to put two and two together. “Put two and two together” is a phrase referring to reaching an obvious conclusion. Let me give some examples where belief taboos prevent neuroscientists from putting two and two together.

Example #1: Near-death Experiences and Apparitions

Human beings often have near-death experiences. In such experiences people very often report floating out of their bodies and observing their bodies from a distance. It is quite common for extremely vivid near-death experiences to occur during cardiac arrest, when brain activity has shut down because the heart has stopped. The type of accounts given by those who have near-death experiences tend to have very similar features, the type of items listed on the Greyson Scale. These include things such as passing through a tunnel, encountering deceased relatives, feelings of peace and joy, being told to go back when reaching a border or boundary between life and death, and so forth. Near-death experiences do not have the kind of random content we would expect from hallucinations. Near-death experiences also very often occur when any brain hallucination should be impossible, because the heart has stopped and electrical activity in the brain has stopped. When people report having near-death experiences when their hearts are stopped, they can often recall details of the activity of medical personnel working nearby them, details they should not have been able to observe given their deeply unconscious medical condition.

In addition, perfectly healthy humans are often surprised to see an apparition of someone they did not know was dead, only to soon find out later that the corresponding person did die, typically on the same day and hour as the apparition was seen. You can read about 165 such cases here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Moreover, a single apparition is often seen by multiple witnesses, as discussed in 50+ cases here and here and here and here.

There is a very clear conclusion that must be reached when someone puts two and two together regarding what we know about near-death experiences and apparitions. The conclusion is that human consciousness is not actually a product of the brain, and can continue even when the brain has stopped working because of cardiac arrest. But to conclude such a thing would be to violate a belief taboo enforced by groupthink and peer pressure in the neuroscientist belief community. The belief taboo is that you cannot believe in any type of human soul, but must believe that all human mental activity comes purely from neurons. So in this case the social taboo (enforced by groupthink and peer pressure) prevents neuroscientists from putting two and two together.

Example #2: The Lack of Anything in Brains Suitable for Long-Term Memory Storage or Instant Memory Retrieval

Humans are capable of accurately remembering episodic memories and learned information for more than 60 years. Humans also routinely show the ability to instantly recall information learned many years ago, given a single prompt such as a question or the mention of a name or place. But we know of nothing in the brain that can explain such abilities.

A computer hard disk may read and write information by using a spinning disk and a read-write head, but we know of no similar thing in the brain. We know of nothing in the brain that seems like a unit specialized for reading stored information, nor do we know of anything in the brain that seems like some unit specialized for writing information. No one has ever discovered any type of encoding system by which any of the vast varieties of information humans remember could ever be translated into neural states or synapse states. Nor has anyone ever discovered anything like some indexing system that might explain how humans could instantly recall things.

Although it is often claimed that memories are stored in synapses, the proteins that make up synapses are very short-lived, having lifetimes of only a few weeks or less. There is nothing in the brain that is a plausible candidate for a place where memories might be stored for either several years or six decades. Humans are able to remember very large bodies of information with 100% accuracy, as we see on the stage when we see an actor recall all of the lines of the role of Hamlet without error or all of the lines and notes of the roles of Wagner's Siegfried or Tristan without error. But such 100% recall of large bodies of learned information should be impossible if it occurred through neural activity, given the high levels of signal noise in a brain. It has been estimated that when a neural signal travels from one neuron to another in a cortex, the signal transmission occurs with far less than 50% reliability. Other than the genetic information in DNA, no one has ever found any sign of stored information in a brain, such as memory information that could be read from a dead organism after it died.

There is a very clear conclusion that must be reached when someone puts two and two together regarding what we know about the limits of the human brain. The conclusion is that the brain cannot be the storage place of human memories. But to conclude such a thing would be to violate a belief taboo enforced by groupthink and peer pressure in the neuroscientist belief community. The belief taboo is that you cannot believe that any major facet of the human mind comes from something other than the brain, but must believe that all human mental activity comes purely from neurons. So in this case the social taboo (enforced by conformist groupthink and peer pressure) prevents neuroscientists from putting two and two together.

Example #3: The Results of Hemispherectomy Operations or Even Greater Brain Tissue Loss

A hemispherectomy operation is an operation in which half of a patient's brain is removed, typically to stop very bad seizures the person is suffering from. Hemispherectomy operations provide an excellent test for dogmas regarding the brain. From the dogma that the brain is the cause of human intelligence and the storage place of memories, we should expect that suddenly removing half of someone's brain should cause at least a 50% drop in intelligence, along with a massive loss of memories and learned information.

Nothing of the sort happened when such operations were done. You can read about the exact effects of hemispherectomy operations by reading my posts here and here and here and here. In most cases hemispherectomy operation does not cause a significant reduction in intelligence as measured by IQ tests. In quite a few cases, someone did better in an IQ test after half of his brain was removed in a hemispherectomy operation. Hemispherectomy operations also do not seem to cause major loss of memories.

Brain-ravaging natural diseases sometimes provide an even better test of dogmas about the brain. Such diseases often remove much more than half of a person's brain. Astonishingly, the result is often a person of normal intelligence and sometimes even above-average intelligence. The physician John Lorber studied many cases of people who had lost the great majority of their brains, mostly because of a disease called hydrocephalus. Lorber was astonished that more than half of such patients had above-average intelligence. Then there are cases such as the case of the French person who managed to long hold a civil servant job, even though he had almost no brain. 

There is a very clear conclusion that must be reached when someone puts two and two together regarding what we know about how loss of half or most of the brain has little effect on intelligence or memory. The conclusion is that the brain cannot be the storage place of human memories, and cannot be the source of human intelligence. But to conclude such a thing would be to violate a belief taboo enforced by groupthink and peer pressure in the neuroscientist belief community. The belief taboo is that you cannot believe that any major facet of the human mind comes from something other than the brain, but must believe that all human mental activity comes purely from neurons. So in this case the social taboo (enforced by an echo chamber of groupthink and peer pressure) prevents neuroscientists from putting two and two together.

In this regard we may compare neuroscience departments of universities to some bizarre pharmaceutical manufacturer that allows its researchers to note when the company's pill causes a person to collapse, turn white, and stop breathing, but makes it a taboo for researchers to put two and two together and conclude that the company's pill is dangerous.