scientific discourse

As a graduate student, I observed the nascent field of functional magnetic resonance imaging and thought to myself with some amusement "modern phrenology! Now with big, fancy, expensive equipment!" Count me among those who have never been terribly impressed with fMRI, and certainly not with its applications in what is known as social neuroscience. Now we have this: Late last year, Ed Vul, a graduate student at MIT working with neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher and UCSD psychologist Hal Pashler, prereleased "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience" on his website. The journal Perspectives…