Beware the Neuromarketers (and the NYT Op-Eds)
Oct/02/2011 07:46 Filed in: Current Events
Martin Lindstrom's Op-Ed in the Saturday New York Times on how brain science confirms that people love their iPhones is causing quite a stir in the scientific community for two reasons. First, his analysis makes no sense based on any understanding of how the brain works. Second, and probably more troubling, is that the NYT was willing to print an op-ed that references data from experiments that haven't been peer-reviewed and are not publicly verifiable.
The Neurocritic does an excellent job of debunking the logic of Lindstrom's claims based on neuroanatomical function. As a start, the brain region Lindstrom identifies as the center of love and compassion (the insular cortex) is active in over a third of all neuroimaging studies, most of which have nothing to do with any "warm" feelings. There's no reason whatsoever to associate this brain region with love. Herein lies the problem with much of neuromarketing. The data are "proprietary," which means they are never subject to peer-review or available for critique like true scientific data. Therefore, there just isn't any quality control.
The New York Times got lambasted in 2007 for publishing a similar op-ed from about predicting voting behavior. Looks like they didn't learn their lesson. An op-ed that is an opinion piece is subjective by definition. But when it refers to experiments, it is rather unconscionable to publish it without having the data vetted. It's not an opinion piece anymore if the author purports using the scientific method to back claims. A letter to the editor signed by numerous luminaries in neuroscience has already been submitted to the NYT.
Beware the neuromarketers. They're not called neuroscientists for a reason -- they're marketing a message, not using science to find objective truth.
The New York Times got lambasted in 2007 for publishing a similar op-ed from about predicting voting behavior. Looks like they didn't learn their lesson. An op-ed that is an opinion piece is subjective by definition. But when it refers to experiments, it is rather unconscionable to publish it without having the data vetted. It's not an opinion piece anymore if the author purports using the scientific method to back claims. A letter to the editor signed by numerous luminaries in neuroscience has already been submitted to the NYT.
Beware the neuromarketers. They're not called neuroscientists for a reason -- they're marketing a message, not using science to find objective truth.
