When people are trying to write about the brain and the mind, they have the very big problem that neuroscientists lack credible theories to support some of their most important claims, and also lack solid evidence to back up such claims. How do writers get past such a roadblock when they are trying to write a book, article or scientific paper that parrots conventional ideas about the brain and the mind? They tend to resort to a set of widely used speech tricks. I will list some of them.
Trick #1: When They Don't Have a "How," They Try to Use a "Where"
Neuroscientist lack very many things. For example, they lack:
- Any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could convert experience into brain states or synapse states when a memory is created;
- any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could convert brain states or synapse states into thoughts or recollections when a memory is recalled;
- any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could instantly create new memories, something that humans routinely do;
- any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could instantly retrieve a memory, such as getting instantly getting just the right answer when someone is asked to identify some person or object or technical term or historical event;
- any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could create an abstract idea such as the idea of a child or the idea of a dog.
- any coherent or credible theory of how a brain could imagine something such as some invention no one ever built yet.
- When they don't have a "how" in regard to the brain and abstract thought, they try using a "where" by claiming that abstract thought comes from the frontal cortex. This claim is very dubious because of evidence I discuss in my post "Reasons for Doubting Thought Comes from the Frontal Lobes or Prefrontal Cortex" you can read here.
- When they don't have a "how" in regard to the brain and memory, they try using a "where" by claiming that the hippocampus drives the wonders of memory. This claim is very dubious because of evidence I discuss in my post here.
Type of truth claim | How to recognize it |
Citation of established fact | Typically occurs with a discussion of the observational facts that proved the claim. |
Citation of a claim that is not yet established fact | Typically occurs with phrases such as “scientists believe” or “it is generally believed” or an appeal to a “scientific consensus.” The claim of a “scientific consensus” is often unfounded, and there may be many scientists who do not accept the claim. |
Citation of a claim that has little basis in observations, and that there may be good reasons for doubting | Often occurs with a phrase such as “it is widely believed,” or maybe a more confident-sounding phrase like “it is becoming increasingly clear” or “there is growing evidence.” |
Trick #6: They Make Empty and Unverifiable Appeals to "Brain Wiring" or "Circuit Dynamics" or "Neural Pathway Dynamics"
Neurons in the brain are connected by long synapses that are not unbroken wires but which can be roughly compared to wires or circuits. Pretty much any claim about the mind and the brain can be made through some vague appeal to "brain wiring" or "circuit dynamics" or "connection pathways" or "neural pathways." Such claims are almost always vacuous, never being backed up by specific details. It kind of reminds me of someone faking things during a technical interview, as in the example below:
Interviewer: So what exactly goes on when you look up something using a search engine?
Candidate: Well, that just involves some particular software dynamics.
Trick #7: They Appeal to Psychology Observations That Are Just Observations of What People Do, Not What Happened in a Brain
There is only so far you can go trying to refer to brains while discussing something that scientists have completely failed to explain by any theory or observations of brain activity. So a writer trying to make his writing sound like a neuroscience article will often just start listing results of psychology experiments. For example, a person writing about memory retrieval may discuss experiments that had nothing to do with the brain, but which simply tested how well people recalled something under different conditions. Or a person writing about memory formation may discuss experiments that had nothing to do with the brain, but which simply tested how well people learned something under different conditions.
Often an article will combine psychology results and neuroscience results, to try and "beef up" things so that the reader does not notice how miserably weak the neuroscience is relating to some particular topic of the mind. For example, there is hardly any "neuroscience of imagination." But a writer can combine a little discussion of scant neuroscience experiments dealing with imagination with a discussion of psychology experiments dealing with imagination, and try to pass that off as a discussion of "how your brain imagines."
Trick #8: They Use Inappropriate Language Claiming Your Brain Does Something When They Should Be Saying That People Did Something
A bad form of expression is to make superfluous causal claims. Examples:
Evolution gave giraffes very long necks and lots of brown spots.
God gave us some good weather today.
There is no need to make such debatable causal claims. The first statement is better stated as "Giraffes have very long necks and lots of brown spots." And the second statement is better stated as "Today the weather is good."
Superfluous causal claims are frequently made by people writing about the brain. So we may hear that "brains can think very quickly" or "brains can remember things for half a century or longer" or "brains can recognize many faces." In each such statement the writer should simply be referring to people or humans rather than brains. We do not know that brains think, and no one has any understanding of how a brain could calculate something or have any idea. We merely know that people think and calculate and imagine.
Trick #9: Trying to Make Us Think a Particular Thing About Human Brains, They Cite Poorly Designed Studies Involving Mice, Often Burying the Fact That the Experiment Involved Mice
Something like this goes on all the time:
(1) Some headline announces that something important has been discovered about the brain or memory.
(2) Below the headline the only research mentioned is some poorly designed study involving mice, usually a study guilty of multiple types of Questionable Research Practices such as way-too-small study group sizes, a lack of pre-registration, and a lack of a blinding protocol.
(3) The story below the headline may take a long time before it reveals that the research only involved mice. The first paragraph or two may refer only to "brains," and the reader may get the idea human brains are being talked about. Only readers who read to the end of the story will find out that the research involved only mice. 90% of causal readers (who skim the story) will go away with the false idea that something has been learned about human brains or human memory.
Trick #10: They Make Dubious Claims Such As "Neuroscientists Believe" or "All Neuroscientists Believe" or Dubious Claims of a Belief Consensus Among Neuroscientists
Appeals to alleged beliefs of scientists of some type about some matter are rarely made when there is good evidence telling us about the nature of something. For example, people don't say "scientists believe that there are many different types of proteins in the human body." Instead people say things like "scientists have identified more than 20,000 types of proteins in the human body." When someone appeals to some alleged belief tendency of scientists, it is a reason for suspecting there is a lack of clear proof about such a matter.
We should distrust almost all appeals to what scientists of some type believe, because scientists are very bad at reliably measuring the beliefs of scientists in particular scientist communities. The only way to get a reliable measure of the opinion of a scientist is to do a secret ballot poll, one that includes a variety of belief options including "I don't know" or "I'm not sure." However, such polls are virtually never done. When opinion polls of scientists are done, they typically fail to be secret ballots, and also fail to offer a full spectrum of answers including options such as "I don't know" or "I'm not sure."
Trick #11: They Claim That Scientists Have Imaged Mental Things When Merely Physical Things Were Imaged
An example of this is found on page 119 of the document here. A previous Chief Scientist of Australia states this:
"Now differential tractography MRI shows us the white matter – the connections across the brain – and it’s revolutionised our understanding of cerebral networks. To start, we just imaged structure. Then, we imaged the functional areas of the brain. Now, we’re imaging thinking. And we couldn’t imagine neuroscience without it."
The claim about "we're imaging thinking" is a misstatement. No one has been able to do any such thing as "imaging thinking," nor has anyone been able to find any robust evidence of neural correlates of thinking. Brains don't look any different or act any different when someone is thinking, as I discuss in my post "The Brain Shows No Sign of Working Harder During Thinking or Recall."
Trick #12: They Insinuate That If You Distrust Them It's Your Fault Not Theirs
The previously quoted "pope of Australian science" (having the official title of Chief Scientist) has been replaced with a new one. The latest "papal encyclical" of this Chief Scientist (which you can read here) is a document that seems to have a theme of "scientists must not be distrusted." We read, "Questioning is healthy for good science and good government, but distrust is not." No, whenever scientists don't follow good procedures or act way too overconfident or speak in an inaccurate or misleading manner, then distrust is a very healthy response. The document laments that trust in scientists is declining. We hear nothing about the main factors causing such a decline, which include:
- The ever-increasing tendency of university press releases to make false boastful claims about the research they are announcing.
- The ever-increasing tendency of scientists to produce papers with titles making claims that are not justified by anything discussed in the paper.
- The runaway epidemic of clickbait "science news" stories containing false or misleading headlines that lure you to click and read "science news" accounts often much different from the headline.
- The ever-increasing tendency of scientists to produce hype and unfounded boastful language in their scientific papers and public statements (see here for a prominent recent example).
- The very persistent tendency of many scientists to make untrue claims that dozens of other scientists have renounced, such as the entirely false claim that the DNA in our bodies is some blueprint or recipe or program for constructing our bodies.
- The prevalence of very bad research practices in some fields of science, such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes in most experimental neuroscience papers.
- The low reproducibility of studies in many fields of science such as psychology and neuroscience.
- The substantial existence of fraud in some branches of science such as neuroscience (discussed here).
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