SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY 2012

Mystery Joker Parodies Neuroscience


Someone has created a hilarious spoof paper poking fun at neuropsychoanalysis (but all of fMRI takes some hits too): A Triple Dissociation of Neural Systems Supporting ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO.

Featuring gems such as


Authors "Steven Z. Fisher and Stephen T. Student" with contact details "mother@amaliastate.edu".
"Twenty-four healthy participants (all 19-year-old white, male undergraduates who sat near each other in an Introductory Psychology course and were raised in upper middle class suburban New
England neighborhoods) were scanned but 17 were excluded for not following instructions or falling asleep in the scanner."
"If you’re like us, you’ve probably been thinking that Social Neuroscience, Neuroeconomics, and Developmental Social Cognitive Affective Clinical Neuroscience are just not cutting edge enough
anymore. Do not despair. This study represents the first of what is likely to be a productive and active new field of Psychoanalytic Neuroscience."


It really is very funny, but it's also deadly accurate in its highlighting serious problems that plague a certain genre of neuroimaging papers. Who made it? The PDF appeared on Dropbox a couple of weeks ago and, while a few people have Tweeted about it, no-one has claimed ownership, yet.

For the record, it wasn't me.