Why Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Are Phrenologists

[neededalj]

Why Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Are Phrenologists

Although I believe it would be edifying for our two favorite 'cognitive neuroscientists' to read this essay, they are not my audience. Rather, I write to fandom, to hopefully shed some light on why these two wankers think they have scientific validity, and why they in fact do not.

sabrina_il wrote a

Comments

[elfwreck]

This post has been included in a linkspam roundup.

[mecurtin]

Thank you for this post. As someone who was emailing them over the summer, I never figured out how they could possibly be planning to tie fanfic into brain modelling -- the idea is so obviously specious that I couldn't take it seriously enough to dismiss it (which I probably should have done). I mean really, how is this science?!?

What has still got me reeling is the "What are they teaching them in these schools?" question, because I literally cannot imagine how you get from cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging to fanfic. But then, their approach to statistics also staggered mean with its stupidity -- seriously, they were tossing about data from an earlier poll they'd done on *OKCupid*. For real.

My personal "start raging now" phrase in this context is "hard-wired".

[neededalj]

oh god, "hard-wired". I've heard that phrase so many times, both in real life and online, that my response to it is deadened. The problem is there *are* some things that are hardwired. But they are very, very basic and so few people know how to fairly parse real biological reality and culturally-induced biases that sometimes the only response is to just walk away.

I may try and get in to more detail about the modeling (what it really is vs. what they were trying to do) at a later point in time. I won't lie, I still have trouble wrapping my head around what they think they can use that survey data FOR. I have a few guesses, but they're hard to even keep in my head they're so baldly unscientific. Sigh.

[ldybastet]

I still have trouble wrapping my head around what they think they can use that survey data FOR

I think there are many people in many different fields who are all scratching their heads about that part. ;) We could do the whole "situating the appreciation" thing though, and start with the book deal needing something spectacular to be put between the covers. *g*

Something they can now build a model to predict goes along the lines of "when poking a large, interwoven group of women with a stick repeatedly and also flinging offensive things in their faces, it will take x amount of time before the shit-storm hits... a shit-storm that somehow involves their subcortical structures". Maybe that is what the Netporn book is actually about? It sure isn't science, anyway!

Thank you so much for this post. I shall now go and read the follow-up you posted. :) Neouroscience only recently began interesting me after I stumbled across Dr Ramachandran's work online... But it is truly fascinating!

[ironed_orchid]

Thank you! It's great to have someone who knows the specifics of cognitive neuroscience point out what's wrong with their project from the standards of the discipline itself.

[neededalj]

Thanks! When I first thought about writing up a longish post, my original title was going to be "In Defense of Cognitive Neuroscience". Because it is a legitimate field, despite Ogi and Sai's valient attempts to make it otherwise.

Unrelated

[tablesaw]

Holy crap you have an Animalympics icon! And it's awesome!

[neededalj]

Thank you! The phrenologist comparison literally hit me like a thunderbolt and when I realized how accurate it was I kind of wanted to bash my head against the wall. I'm a little sad Ogi didn't respond to the first time I called him a phrenologist; I thought he might, because among neuroscientists it's a pretty terrible thing to say about a person's research...the ultimate comparison to debunked quackery that the whole discipline would rather never have existed.

[gryphonsegg]

Thanks for this post! I'm a biologist, but human biology is outside my specialty, so I spotted the gross flaws in the project and knew they were overreaching, but I didn't recognize the more detailed levels of neurology fail you discuss here.

[neededalj]

Thank you! I originally was going to let my anonymouse comments lie, but when he started mansplaining with technobabble I just couldn't take it anymore.