Brain-scanning pundit rebuked
December 9th, 2007From Slate.com:
Columnist Daniel Engber repudiates the Los Angeles Times for running a column in which Daniel G. Amen suggested that the presidential candidates submit to brain scans. Calling Amen a “medical maverick who runs a chain of private brain-scanning facilities across the country,” Engber says the column was “a sales pitch for his private clinics.” He takes editors to task for not doing their homework, and says the New York Times fell into a similar trap previously.
In the last month, two of the most prestigious opinion pages in journalism have succumbed to the delusion that MRI machines and SPECT imaging have anything meaningful to say about the upcoming elections. Clearly ill-equipped to distinguish between good and bad science, they’ve handed over column space to fringe researchers with glaring commercial interests. When is this brain-based punditry going to stop?
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