More Candid Confessions of the Neuroscientists

 In my post "Candid Confessions of the Cognition Experts" which you can read here, I quote some named cognition experts (mostly neuroscientists) who tell us confessions about matters such as the sorry state of neuroscience research, and how little neuroscientists understand how minds arise. Below are some more quotes of this type. 

I'll start with some quotes mostly using the phrase "in its infancy." Whenever scientists confess that something is "in its infancy," they are effectively admitting they do not have good knowledge about such a topic.

• "Despite recent advancements in identifying engram cells, our understanding of their regulatory and functional mechanisms remains in its infancy." -- Scientists claiming erroneously in 2024 that there have been recent advancements in identifying engram cells, but confessing there is no understanding of how they work (link).
• "Study of the genetics of human memory is in its infancy though many genes have been investigated for their association to memory in humans and non-human animals."  -- Scientists in 2022 (link).
• "The neurobiology of memory is still in its infancy." -- Scientist in 2020 (link). 
• "The investigation of the neuroanatomical bases of semantic memory is in its infancy." -- 3 scientists, 2007 (link). 
• "Currently, our knowledge pertaining to the neural construct of intelligence and memory is in its infancy." -- Scientists, 2011 (link). 
• "But when it comes to our actual feelings, our thought, our emotions, our consciousness, we really don't have a good answer as to how the brain helps us to have those different experiences." -- Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist, Ancient Aliens, Episode 16 of Season 14, 6:52 mark. 
• "Dr Gregory Jefferis, of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge told BBC News that currently we have no idea how the network of brain cells in each of our heads enables us to interact with each other and the world around us."  -- BBC news article (link). 

By making such confessions, scientists are admitting that they do not actually understand how a brain could store or retrieve memories. The reason for such ignorance (despite billions of dollars on funding to try to answer such questions) is almost certainly that the brain does not actually store memories and is not the source of the human mind.  

A similar confession is found in the recent paper here, where scientists confess "It remains unclear where and how prior knowledge is represented in the brain." The truth is that no one has ever found the slightest evidence of any such thing as prior knowledge being represented in the brain, and no one understands how learned knowledge could ever be represented in a brain. 

An interesting paper is the paper "On the omission of researchers' working conditions in the critique of science: Critique of neuroscience and the position of neuroscientists in economized academia" by Eileen Wengemuth.  Wengemuth interviewed 13 neuroscientists about critiques of neuroscientists, apparently agreeing to quote them anonymously. She got some revealing quotes. 

A neuroscientist identified only as NW12 states this: "We still don't understand how molecules contribute to consciousness or the mind.”  On page 85 a neuroscientist identified only as NW2 makes a confession, which has a kind of "we must publish a paper even when we know it's junk" sound to it. First Wengemuth tells us this:

"One interviewee recounts an incident in which a new colleague pointed out a flaw in an experimental setup, which limited the validity of the conclusions drawn from the experiment. However, since she needed to have a publication soon, the interviewee [NW2]  describes that it seemed not possible to change the experimental setup and to repeat the experiment."

Immediately after that description, we have a quote from NW2:

NW2:  "She had a very good point and we never thought about it in two years of doing this experiment. We have a problem. (Both laugh) And nevertheless, we have to publish, because... you know, it's two years of work! So we will discuss this, we will account for it, we will try our best, but we probably don't want to rerun the whole experiment saying 'Oh, what happens if we change this other thing.' Once we've reached our conclusions..." 

I: "You said: 'But we still have to publish.' Did you mean, for example, that you got some grants and now you have to show, ok, we did something with that money?"

NW2: "Not so much based on grant money, but in terms of career. (...) I need papers to get my next job."

Get the idea? "The show must go on" as they say in the theater business. And apparently scientific papers must be published, to advance the career goals of neuroscientists,  even after it has become clear that bad methods were used (which seems like the majority of the time in contemporary neuroscience research). Discussing the quote above, Wengemuth says, "In this interview clip, it becomes clear that the interviewee perceives her working and research conditions as not allowing her to work in a way that would meet her own standards of good science."

On page 85 a neuroscientist identified only as NW9 seems to suggest that guys like him are playing fast-and-loose in their interpretations of what their experiments show, in order to get interesting-sounding claims that may increase the chance of publication in "high-impact" journals:

NW9: "We are working in a structure in which an increasing number of people are on third-party-funded positions, which are temporary. And one important criterion that decides who stays and who doesn't, is: who has published where? So journal impact factors. And publishing high impact often means: generalizing as much as possible in the interpretations and throwing as many limitations as possible overboard. "

Wengemuth describes what is occurring in that quote: "He argues here that the broad claims for which neuroscientists have been criticized also have to be understood as a way of getting one's article published in a high impact journal and thus increasing one's chances for a next job." Get the idea? Our neuroscientists are prioritizing career advancement over accuracy of statements.  It sounds like they are playing "fake it until you make it."

Yeah, right

A survey of Danish researchers found large fractions of them confessing to committing various types of shady or sleazy Questionable Research Practices.  A year 2024 follow-up study found a similar level of confession in other countries. The paper is entitled "Is something rotten in the state of Denmark? Cross-national evidence for widespread involvement but not systematic use of questionable research practices across all fields of research."  The title is inaccurate, because the confessions do reveal a systematic use of Questionable Research Practices.  Figure 2 of the paper reveals these confessions:

• About 60% of the polled researchers confessed to citing literature without reading it. 
• About 50% of the polled researchers confessed to reporting non-significant findings as evidence of no effect. 
• About 50% of the polled researchers confessed to granting "honorary authorship" to authors who did not participate in the study. 
• More than 50%  of the polled international researchers confessed to overselling results. 
• About 50% of the polled researchers confessed to HARKing, which is when some hypothesis is dreamed up to explain results in an experiment not designed to test such a hypothesis. 
• About 50% of the polled international researchers confessed to cherry-picking what data supports a hypothesis and what does not. 
• About 40% of the polled international researchers confessed to data dredging or p-hacking, a practice some times described as "keep torturing the data until it confesses."
• About 40% of the polled international researchers confessed to have refrained from reporting data that could weaken or contradict their findings. 
• About 30% of the polled international researchers confessed to gathering more data after the initially gathered data failed to show a significant effect.