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It is actually a scientific documented phenomenon that many people believe outrageous claims as long as they seem to be justified by random neurobabble . PDF: "The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations" http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Edls73/Assets/Weisberg-neuro%20ex...

Quote: "Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation."

A summary from Language Log here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004578.h...




I know this exists because I've seen to happen and I shudder every time. But it's not just just "neurobabble". It's possible to obfuscate in any domain. The problem is: You can never be certain of what's babble and what's real without doing the intellectual heavy lifting yourself. In neuroscience, my ability to see a poorly designed study is only as good as the methods and theories get closer to what I know. So I decline being a reviewer of manuscripts if I don't know enough to sufficiently judge them.




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