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Essay on fMRI draws criticism and praise from psychologists and others

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To the Editor:

I am not a social scientist, nor am I a practitioner of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), but I am expert in MRI, so I feel qualified to offer unbiased criticism of your essay in the July 19, 2004, issue of The Scientist. You have written a factually inaccurate and dangerously oversimplified bit of fluff that, for the sake of a moment's amusement, holds up to ridicule the work of many serious scientists. Certainly, there have been abuses and overinterpretation of results, but we all remember when sequencing the genome was going to answer all of our questions about medicine.

Let me be explicit about the ways in which you were wrong or wrong-headed:

1) Putting "fake" in the title is simply irresponsible, and I hope you get the avalanche of mail that you deserve about this.

2) You make the blanket statement that fMRI is not ...

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  • R Grant Steen

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