Brain scans

[tikistitch]

Were meaning to put a link to this, and just plain forgot. But now every time we see a brain scan image on a news article, we are annoyed anew:

Brain scan images help convince students of almost anything

Recent experiments by CSU and UCLA psychologists show that brain scan images can make even the silliest scientific claims believable to readers.

In three experiments, beginning psychology students were given a supposedly scientific article to read, then asked to rate the credibility of the article's claims. Students were more likely to agree with the conclusions of an article illustrated by brain scan images than they were to agree with the same article illustrated by a bar graph or without images....

Worth reading the whole thing. Bottom line: a lot of science writing is just plain bad. Unfortunately, probably because of the pressures of publication and grant application, there's also some bit of just plain bad science out there. Caveat emptor.