Tilting At Windmills: Why Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Are Bad Scientists (Neuroscience edition, round 2)
[addendum added just before posting].....fuck, ya'll, what can I say. I was an inspired insomniac. I hope this makes sense.
In reply to the response my first essay received, I have decided to attempt a further deconstruction of the Fail Neuroscience of Drs. Ogas and Gaddam. In a different approach from my first post, I am going to take this one ( Read more... )
In reply to the response my first essay received, I have decided to attempt a further deconstruction of the Fail Neuroscience of Drs. Ogas and Gaddam. In a different approach from my first post, I am going to take this one ( Read more... )
First I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that the Drs. Incompetent hadn't *yet* linked their questions to specific physiological responses. Given the public timeline of this project (1. Get PhDs. 2. Sign Book Deal 3. ????? 4. Profit) it wouldn't surprise me if they had put together a list of questions quickly that they thought *might* produce data but hadn't yet done the legwork to build a physiological model. Given their assumptions and the distinct possibility that they planned to retrofit their data to a preformed conclusion, it's entirely possible that you'll start running into brick walls because they themselves did not yet know what they were going to do with specific responses.
Second, comparative neuroanatomy is *really* complicated. (I was always bad at keeping things straight. Where's the ventromedial prefrontal cortex? Answer: somewhere, but don't ask me if I don't have a labeled picture in front of me). There are at least fourish...I'm not even sure what to call them, perhaps 'categories', of referring to parts of the brain. First there are clear, distinct structures. Second there are
Brodmann areasin the cortex. Third there is relative nomenclature; referring to areas of the brain by where they are spatially in the head ('ventromedial prefrontal cortex' is an example of this). Fourth there are coordinate systems. There are several different coordinate systems in various forms, all the way up from an archaic one developed off one old french lady's brain all the way to a very 'averaged' brain produced by averaging hunderds of MRI scans. The best fMRI research now tends to use a combination of the spatial distinctions and the MRI-based coordinate systems to explain where they see their activation patterns.
Brodmann areas were one of my professor's favorite whipping boys because we *really* do not fully understand where they are in each brain. They were laid out according to a very small sample size (possibly 1, but I don't remember off the top of my head) and so when people started reeeeaaally looking at dead brains they quickly realized that there were great variations in people's cortexes.
This mostly to say go for it if you want to break their survey down further, but don't be disappointed if you end up not being able to link it to a brain's physiological responses even in the most out-there-trying-to-think-like-ogi-and-sai sort of way.
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It's rudimentary for a lot, but for many others they don't know how surveys work (even poor ones) and how to pinpoint what the researcher is after. The experimental design is pretty much a 2 x 2. Gender x Deviancy (yes or no). Testing it physiologically is another story. :) But even using the horrid study they have, they can analyze quite a bit. They mentioned 2000 respondents. Even taking 1000 out of the picture for filling it out in rebellious ways *g*, you still have 1000.
1. Heterosexual females who only read het masturbate significantly less than those who only read slash. *meep*
2. Heterosexual females who read het relate more to the submissive partner while slash relate more to the dominant partner.
If they use this data, life will not be kind to them.
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