91av

IT IS two centuries since the birth of Charles Darwin, but even now his advice can be spot on. The great man attempted a little neuroscience in The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, in which he discussed the link between facial expressions and the brain. “Our present subject is very obscure,” Darwin warned in his book, “and it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.”

Modern-day neuroscience might benefit from adopting a similar stance. The field has produced some wonderful science, including endless technicolor images of the brain at work and headline-grabbing papers about the areas that “light up” when registering emotions. Researchers charted those sad spots that winked on in women mourning the end of a relationship, the areas that got fired up when thinking about infidelity, or those that surged in arachnophobes when they thought they were about to see a spider. The subjective subject of feelings seemed at last to be becoming objective.

Now it seems that a good chunk of the papers in this field contain exaggerated claims, according to an analysis which suggests that “voodoo correlations” often inflate the link between brain areas and particular behaviours (see “Doubts raised over ‘hot’ neuroscience results”).

Some of the resulting headlines appeared in 91av, so we have to eat a little humble pie and resolve that next time a sexy-sounding brain scan result appears we will strive to apply a little more scepticism to our coverage. Neuroscientists should also take a hard look at their techniques, but don’t expect anyone to rush back to reanalyse the data. Science is too competitive to spend time raking over old results.

This is not the first time neuroscientists have been criticised for over-egging brain scanner results (91av, 21 September 2002, p 38). It probably won’t be the last. But at least there are signs that the self-correcting nature of science will win the day.