I was recently overgeneralizing to a friend about the overall value I find in a lot of brain imaging research, and I just now had a moment to privately dance to music in a way that made me want to clarify what I said to my friend about false positives and that dead fish fmri study. Of course there is lots of good brain imaging research. Certainly you can do things like modeling to reduce the uncertainty of any leading systemic detections that might be discovered in localized brain regions. Like using Bayesian priors based on meta analysis of a literature, to say this or that brain region is associated with this or that function. Yes, that’s true. But you also bring unmodeled priors to the table about what you’re trying to find with the research questions you’re asking. For example, doing instinguishable, though interesting, basic research, while a genocide in the Middle East conducted by our “ally” Israel, threatens to engulf the world in mass despotism that will certainly nullify the value of this interesting research. Almost as if it’s time for those concerned to revisit Chomsky1967 about the responsibility of intellectuals.

This is the song I had on loop while writing:

And Chomsky1967 spoon fed to you: