Doing Neuroscience, Doing Feminism: Interview with Dr. Sari van Anders

Dr. Sari van Anders

After attending the Neurogenderings Conference in Vienna, where participants debated whether it would be
possible to conduct feminist neuroscience research, I decided it would be
useful to interview an actual practicing feminist neuroscientist – and I knew
just who to talk to. Dr. Sari van Anders is an Assistant Professor in Psychology and Women’s Studies
at the University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in Biological &
Cognitive Psychology from Simon Fraser University. In her social neuroendocrinology lab at the University of Michigan, she conducts feminist neuroscience
research on a variety of topics, with a principle focus on the social
modulation of testosterone via sexuality, partnering/pair bonding, and
nurturance. She has received grants from the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) and the American Institute of Bisexuality and has published articles in Hormones and Behavior, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and Psychoneuroendocrinology, among others.

I
asked her to talk about what she sees as feminist about her own behavioral
neuroscience research, how she has secured support for her work from other behavioral
neuroendocrinologists, and what advice she would give to early career
scientists who want to incorporate feminist concerns into their research. Read
on for Dr. Van Anders’ thoughtful and thought-provoking answers.

I have heard you
describe your research as a behavioral neuroscientist as ‘feminist.’ Can you
explain what you see as feminist about your behavioral neuroscience research?

Feminist science practice, like other aspects of feminism
(e.g., activism, praxis, theory, etc.), is not one thing. So the ways in which
I position my work as feminist may not be the same as the ways in which other
scientists might position their science, or the ways nonscientists might
position my work. With that caveat in mind, onwards! One important feminist
facet of my work is that I see science as one way to approach knowledge
creation/production, as opposed to the only way or the most valuable way.
Science can help us understand certain aspects of certain phenomena and is
valuable as such, but is more valuable when we recognize its limitations and
acknowledge the value of insights gained from other approaches.

Another important feminist facet of my work is that I see
vast gulfs of difference between bioscience and biologically determinist
thinking; so, I separate out natural from material, innate from trait, must
from is, etc. Our bodies and the biological systems inside of them are
recipients of socialization in the same ways our behaviors and cultural
practices are. Social modulation of hormones is a major thrust of my research
program… how could I (or we) think of our bodily systems as only preprogrammed
when we increasingly know how each biobody exists in a social context? A major part
of feminist thought critiques the split between gender and sex because it has
in large part left sex (i.e., biology; nature) as a fixed, natural, acultural
entity. Part of the work my research does is to expand notions of
sex/nature/biology such that we see biological properties as malleable and
socially located.

Another way my work is feminist is that I think about
inequities while I do my work, including how social location might affect the
questions I ask and my own understandings of phenomenon, but also how a gender
or intersectional lens might help me understand my findings better (which it almost
always does). Critically engaging with one’s positionality has been called
‘strong objectivity.’ Theory compelled me and my own research has convinced me
that objectivity works closer to how we want it to when we constantly engage
with and interrogate our own biases and positions.

My work is also feminist because it’s informed by feminist
thought, especially feminist science studies, even when the work is not focused
on gender/sex. It’s feminist because I don’t think that science leads to
simpler answers; I’m not, and I don’t think science intrinsically is (except in
practice), reductionist. I study hormones and this research often leads me to
explode phenomenological categories. For example, we found that cuddling
increased testosterone – and followed up by theorizing and studying both
cuddling and testosterone with fascinating and – to my mind – transformative
findings about both. Similarly, we found that sexual desire is linked to
testosterone in sometimes counterintuitive ways, which has led us to ask: what are people desiring when they desire? These
are far from reductionist implications, because they leave us with more
questions about hormones but also the social phenomenon we’re studying (rather
than simplifying them). The world is complex, and science helps us appreciate
how complex.

van Anders has found that cuddling can increase testosterone levels in women

Image from Flickr by malloreigh

I also see my work as
feminist because I think about it as community- and alliance-building. If
knowledge production were collaborative rather than competitive, what would it
look like? We try to build those sorts of relationships with colleagues, junior
and senior, to make science what we wish it could be (i.e., where we constantly
push at the clarity and meaningfulness of our understandings of phenomena
together, critically, constructively, enthusiastically, and connected to lived
experiences). Finally, I think of my work as feminist because the knowledge we
create is situated, as I and my lab
happily acknowledge that our findings make sense in this time and place because
they were produced in this time and place.

Can you say a little
bit about what you mean by “inclusive research and lab practices”?

I’ve been thinking about inclusive research and lab
practices since early graduate school, and I’ve come to define it for myself as
an ongoing process that involves thinking about how my lab operates, research
methods, and science communication approaches. I could go on and on about this,
and love to, but will limit this to some concrete examples. In the lab, e.g., I
think about how I recruit people, how I make clear the implicit and explicit
‘rules’ of labs and my lab for the people who work in my lab and come from
diverse backgrounds, how diverse perspectives will help us get closer to more
truthful and rounded knowledge. I think about how we treat each other in ways
that are respectful of difference, sameness, and culture, and are realistic
about power.

In my methods, I think a lot about how we recruit
participants and who feels welcome into science and why. I work hard to make
our studies places where people from rightly science-skeptical groups have a
place, for reasons beyond or unrelated to difference (while still making room
to honor those differences). So, posters, questionnaires, recruitment ads, etc.
How do we ask questions - and most of my research is quantitative – that honor
people’s lived experiences? That map onto people’s realities? That reflect
people’s autonomy and respect their self-identities? These are grand goals, and
we are obviously therefore continually striving to do better at the principles that
underlie them.

Inclusive questionnaires as a part of inclusive
research methods

In science communication, I think a lot about the ways I
write papers and the ways that I am allowed
to write papers (I get some pretty hostile reviews that limit my ability to
communicate certain ideas or in certain ways), how I involve my students (e.g.,
I have a lot of undergraduate co-authors, including first-authors on my
papers), whom I speak to at conferences, how I get involved in mentoring, etc.

So... I see inclusive research practices as trying to
provide a model of science that explicitly acknowledges that science is a human
endeavor and therefore political – and a
model that therefore works within a consciously-articulated and progressive
frame. So, inclusive research practices is kind of like saying that ‘the
personal is political and it’s not just Politics that are political’ but in a
science-y way, like: 'the day-to-day of science is political, and it’s not just
Science that is political.'

The fact that you
have received a number of major grants and have published your work in the
leading journals in your field indicates that you have managed to secure the
support of other behavioral neuroscientists. How were you able to get other
scientists to support your research?

“Coming out as
Feminist”:
Feminists come in all sizes

Image from Flickr by Daniel Morrison

Well, one strategy of many feminists in non-feminist-allied
disciplines (of which behavioral neuroscience is certainly one!) is to go into
stealth mode. I had a major strategy which was to build up a large body of
research and then one day be like: surprise! This was feminist all along! I
think I’ve adhered to this strategy somewhat, but there are cues that
scientists pick up on (‘radical’ things like using self-identification terms
for sexuality, using non-binaristic gender/sex language, incorporating social
location) and I think now I’ve been made. Also, it became increasingly
difficult to do the work while straddling a fence – like, have you ever tried
to do anything while
fence-straddling? – because that meant partitioning myself in uncomfortable and
inauthentic ways…I found that the more people could level Feminist! as an 'insult,' the more they would. As soon as I became more explicitly
feminist, it became hard for others to level ‘feminist’
as an insult. Sort of like coming out, as in sometimes people have more power
when they can insinuate something you’re not yet sharing. I also think that my
subfields – behavioral neuroendocrinology (BNE) and sex research – are
feminist-friendly in their own ways. BNE already pays a lot of attention to
sexual diversity and gender/sex, as well as social location in certain limited
ways (e.g., how poverty might affect stress hormones). So it’s less of a leap
to think about how other aspects of social location might matter. Sex research
also has some progressive traditions and elements, and I’ve been lucky in that
I see myself continually able to mine that vein of progressiveness in all my
colleagues. I think I’ve had a lot of privilege that I’ve been able to use too;
I am trained in neuroscience, I’m white, I’ve had financial safety nets, I’m
Canadian and now in the U.S., so I think my position has let me do a lot with
fewer roadblocks than others might experience.

I am not so naïve to think that merit is enough for
anything. But I do want to stake a claim to doing good work; I think I do great
work! People know that I love my work, and I think my enthusiasm is catching. I
think that my feminist approaches are intrinsically part of why my work is
great – feminist science is not just ‘good science’. Feminist science is more
than just good science, even while it also is
good science. So, the more critically engaged my science is, the better science I
produce.

I also think that I have worked extremely hard to be
bio-legible and speak to my colleagues in ways they will understand. I used to
think of my work as challenging/pushing/etc., but I now see my research program
as building/reframing/expanding. I think this noncombative approach is more in
line with how I’d like to see change happen when possible (‘be the change you
want to see’ sort of thing). And I think because I work within my fields but on
the margins, this insider/outsider status has given me a lot of space to do
what I do, but also others to be generous and supportive. I’m really careful,
too. I read book and article after book and article about the doing of science
in terms of the politics and management, etc. I’ve never believed that whatever
merit I do have will shine on its own as some sort of Sari-beacon, so I work
hard to connect with people who have shared interests in some way. I’m also
beyond extroverted (I’d way rather talk to a stranger than eat alone!) so that
makes it a pleasure to connect with people. And since science is done by and
with people, I think that this has helped too.

But you know, this question is hard to answer, especially as
I’m pretenure and still junior. I think I’ll have more perspective as time –
and I – march on.

How has your work
been received by feminist scholars and activists who are not scientists?

I often worry about how my work will be received by critical
scholarship audiences when I'm not there to situate it... and even when I am.
So it has been a really pleasant and welcome experience to find that folks from
across women's studies and critical scholarship seem to be really interested in
my work and, moreover, really extraordinarily generous. I think part of the
reason is that I really do listen to and am interested in what people have to say, and make changes in
my science. I think another reason is that I also try really hard to speak the
language. I think scientists are often worried about how their work will be
received and whether it will be attacked, like: why open up another front?! But I think critical thought and careful, conscious positioning go a
long way (in scholarship, and elsewhere!). Like I said about neuroscience, I
try to be biolegible. But I also often joke that I'm 'bilingual' because I can
speak to both groups and even joint groups, so I also try to be WS-legible. In part, I think this is because I
really truly understand that these epistemological approaches are so deeply
different that I can see where there's room for them to come together.

Do you have any
advice for students and early-career researchers who want to incorporate
feminist insights into their basic science research?

I can’t not recommend stealth mode. People are still so
misinformed about what feminist science would be that it could be such a major
and immediate stumbling block, especially to a junior person. I also can’t not
recommend authenticity. We all are most passionate about doing work that has
meaning, and I know those times when I’ve gone into deep stealth have been some
of the most professionally (and personally) deathly stultifying and unfulfilling times.

Sometimes stealth
mode is required

Image from Flickr by jeriaska

There are few guides to doing feminist science practice, but
I’m trying to build some – get in touch with me and others who seem like
allies. I’m also building a feminist science practice website just to
facilitate these sorts of alliances, so look for that! I have other more
prosaic suggestions: remember that you are the person on the ground, so you
have to make decisions that will
sometimes turn out to be wrong in ways you can only realize through
experience. Remember that no matter how grand your audience might be in your
imagination, you have to get through reviewers, editors, program officers, etc.
to get your work published and funded and that doing so involves negotiations
with your principles that not need to be positioned as ‘selling out’ to guilt
trip yourself. Finally, remember that what you’re doing is hard, because you’re
creating new knowledge (which is hard enough) but you’re also creating the ways
to create new knowledge, so be patient with yourself, excited at your successes,
and generous with your colleagues (and maybe also generous with yourself and patient with your colleagues).

Want to Cite this Post?

Gupta, K. (2012). Doing Neuroscience, Doing Feminism: Interview with Dr. Sari Van Anders. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/11/doing-neuroscience-doing-feminism.html.

The Man Who Voled the World

Last Monday, Dr.Hasse Walum gave a talk titled "Genetic and Hormonal Influences on Pair Bonding Related Behavior in Humans" at the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience at Emory. I hadn't heard of Walum's work before I saw the e-mail announcement for his talk, but a little googling got me interested. Here's the most titillating version of his findings: Walum found the gene that makes men cheat.

Okay, that is most definitely not what he found, and I got the sense from talking with him briefly that he would be the first one to tell you that. So why am I misrepresenting his results?

Dr. Hasse Walum: hard-hitting Wired reporter  David Ewing Duncan compares him to Kurt Cobain, but my science and rock star senses detect a David Bowie influence

I want to make some points about how science interacts with the media. Like I said, it was reading news reports that made me want to go hear Walum talk. As a graduate student, in his first published study, Walum reported that different forms of a certain gene are associated with the strength of relationships that men form. As he told me after his talk, he spent the week after the study was published just answering phone calls from the press. On Wired’s site I found an article about the paper that struck me as fairly cautious, even if the author did point out that "Walum did not report if he carries the tell-tale gene". Then again, on the BBC website I found a piece that opened up with a pic of actor George Clooney, pointing confidently at someone off camera, along with a caption that asks if he's "afraid of commitment?" Clearly, the press sensationalized this story. In a recent post on this blog, Emory neuroscience grad student Jordan Kohn put a lot of blame on journalists for the sensationalizing of research results. Unfortunately, there's plenty of blame to go around for the way that science gets represented in the media, and I think some of it should fall squarely on the shoulders of the science establishment.

Let's face it; Dr. Walum's study wouldn't have been published if the title was: "We can't find any evidence that this gene has anything to do with dudes that suck at monogamy". He told me as much after his talk. I don't mean to use Walum's words against him--in fact, I think anyone who's studying anything remotely interesting about the brain faces the same ethical dilemma. I'll say more about that after I sum up the seminar.

Ratty (actually a water vole)

What I didn't realize when I got the e-mail announcement was that Dr. Walum was here giving a job talk. The reason for Dr.Walum's visit became obvious when he got to the slide in his Powerpoint presentation featuring a picture of Ratty from Wind in the Willows. Ratty, for the uninformed, is a water vole, and Dr.Walum's childhood love of Ratty establishes that he's wanted to work with voles ever since he was a kid. If that didn't convince us, he also informed us that he wrote a literature review of filial mate bonding for his degree project as an undergrad, and that the inspiration for his work was Larry Young's studies of the vasopressin receptor gene in voles.

As you are no doubt aware if you have spent more than five minutes on Emory's campus doing something besides playing beer pong, a significant component of Emory's neuroscience research revolves around voles. Voles provide a convenient model for understanding how monogamy works in the brain. Species like montane and meadow voles are promiscuous, but the prairie vole is monogamous. Young's group has shown that this difference is due in large part to a 482 base-pair long snippet of DNA which the prairie voles carry. This length of DNA lies in the regulatory region of the vasopressin receptor gene—that is, the DNA near the gene itself that affects how the cell’s machinery churns out vasopressin receptors. As the name implies, these receptors bind vasopressin, a hormone known to play a role in bonding (and in other more mundane physiological tasks, like water retention). By inserting the same length of DNA in the regulatory region of the vasopressin receptor gene in mice, which are easier to manipulate genetically, you can increase affiliative behaviors in males. Male mice carrying the insert show increased levels of olfactory exploration and grooming of females. Now all we have to do is figure out how that change in regulatory regions translates into a change in behavior, and...viola! We've figured out monogamy. And cured autism. Maybe.

Not everyone feels the love for the Young lab's research agenda. Last week this blog also featured an interview with feminist science studies scholar Angela Willey. While at Emory, Dr. Willey problematized the heck out of the Young lab's research on monogamy. I'm still processing that post. The neuroscientist in me wants to defend the Young group's work with adjectives like "elegant". On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to feminist and queer critiques of neuroscience research, and I think it's important for neuroscientists to engage with those critiques. To their credit, the Young lab did just that. I could echo Willey's points about how their definition of monogamy seems to reduce a very complex human behavior to a single number which they assign to vole behavior--a simplification I'm sure the lab is aware of--but let me stay focused on the seminar.

Walum’s began his with that first paper on the human vasopressin receptor gene that got him all the press. I'll state what he and his colleagues reported in scientific terms. Then I'll explain those terms, just in case anyone finds them as opaque as I once did, before undergoing years of training that allow me to speak complete gibberish to strangers. Their results show a correlation in humans between scores on a Partner Bonding Scale and variations in a microsatellite upstream of the human gene for the vasopressin receptor. Dr. Walum created the Partner Bonding Scale, as he proudly told us, basing it on the behaviors that are measured to put a number to the strength of pair bonds between great apes and other nonhuman primates. By sequencing microsatellites in roughly two thousand Swedes, Walum et al. were able to show an association between scores on his scale and the version of the microsatellite that men carried. Microsatellites are short regions of repeats in DNA. When they occur in the regulatory regions outside of a gene, these microsatellites can affect gene transcription, and by extension the protein that the gene encodes. Case in point: the vasopressin receptor has a different distribution in the brains of the monogamous prairie voles and the promiscuous montane voles. As outlined above, the Young lab has shown that a 428 base pair insert in the genome of the prairie vole, right next to one of the vasopressin receptor genes, causes this change in receptor distribution. Similarly, Walum et al found that men who carried the so-called "334 allele" were significantly more likely to receive lower scores on the Partner Bonding Scale. You might know that alleles are different versions of a gene, or in this case microsatellite. There’s not 334 versions—the number refers to the length of the repeat. The effect they found was “dose-dependent”: men that carried one or two copies of the 334 allele were much more likely to have lower Partner Bonding Scale scores. It’s worth emphasizing, though, that the 334 allele does not show any sequence similarity to the 428 base pairs of prairie vole DNA that supposedly make that species more monogamous, and neither does any other part of the regulatory region flanking any of our vasopressin receptor genes. Different microsatellites, related effects. At least that’s what Walum et al. argue.

Cyberball: image taken from a study

of "social exclusion" (Bolling et al. 2010)

Dr.Walum went on to talk about the other studies he carried out as a grad student. One set of experiments looked at the effects of oxytocin, another hormone that some argue increases trust. To try and measure the bond that female subjects formed with males they were partnered with during the experiments, Walum and company used a videogame of sorts they called “cyberball”. In cyberball, the female subjects could choose to “throw” a ball to either an icon of their partner’s face or to an icon of an unfamiliar male. If female subjects that recevied intranasal oxytocin more readily trusted the male partners, it should show up in the cyberball score. After the talk was over, I went up talk with Dr. Walum. I had to know, did the data from cyberball tell them anything? At first he said he couldn’t remember. Then he said something about “trending in the same direction”, only to interrupt himself and say that the scores had only been significant when lumped together with other metrics they’d used. I replied sympathetically. “It’s hard to find a way to measure human behavior.” Then I told him that the Cyberball game reminded me of the Partner Preference Test, a behavioral assay designed by the Young lab to measure monogamy. In the test, voles are put in a three-part cage, with their partner on one side and a stranger on the other. Prairie voles tend to spend more time with their partner. I asked Dr. Walum if he was trying to find a way to do the Partner Preference Test with humans. “Yes, exactly,” he said, “but you can't do that with humans. You can't do the experiments you would like to do." I agreed. "I don't think that an experiment proposing that you put humans in a large plastic tank would make it past the Institutional Review Board." He went on: “With human subjects, it's all about variation. You can do some pharmacological manipulations, like with the intranasal oxytocin, but with our first study [on the vasopressin receptor allele] we had to think more about our story than about our results”, he said. “In a way we published the story that everybody wanted to hear.”

Again, I’m not trying to use Dr. Walum’s words against him. While I might not have the expertise to critique his study’s use of Generalized Linear Mixed Effect Models, I also don’t have any reason to doubt his results. As Dr.Walum made perfectly clear in the Karolinksa Institute press release that the Wired and BBC alike were so quick to quote, “There are, of course, many reasons why a person might have relationship problems.” What am I trying to say is that we should keep the economic realities of science in mind when we talk about how research filters through to the media. Every neuroscientist who complains about how the only things the press can do is cut and paste pretty pictures from fMRI studies should remember that, right now, those are the studies that get published, and by extension, the studies that get media attention. Like it or not, the axiom of “publish or perish” still applies. All these papers that only trot out sexy results “provide strong evidence”, as us science types like to say,  that studies should be registered and accepted by journals before the experiments are carried out. Scientists already write their grants this way—they sell the research they’re going to do—so why shouldn’t that be what journals are buying? This is the system that Neuroskeptic has advocated on his blog (here’s a hyperlink by way of citation). If the experiments don’t provide any evidence, then publish that lack of evidence, and save everyone else the effort of pointlessly repeating the same study.

Under this system, if neuroscientists find themselves angry about how the media represents their results, at least they can tell themselves it’s not because they're only publishing what gets them funding. I don't think that system would put an end to press releases that tout tantalizing findings, though. After all, someone has to sell the science so more science can get done. I'm guessing that's the explanation I'd get if I talked with the Man who Voled the World.

Want to cite this post?


Nicholson, D. (2012). The Man Who Voled the World. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/07/man-who-voled-world.html

The [insert adjective] Brain: Implications for Neuroscience in Popular Media

Via amazon.com

The Addicted Brain. The Female Brain. The Male Brain. Chemobrain. Buddha’s Brain. The Winner’s Brain. The Republican Brain. These days, it seems that everybody’s brain is being scanned and their behavior analyzed. In fact, these are all titles of books published in the past decade that communicate the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology research to lay audiences. As a budding neuroscientist, I am excited that science, and neuroscience in particular, has now flooded into popular American culture. Evidence of its expanding domain is everywhere: in magazines (Scientific American’s “MIND”), blogs (Neuroskeptic), radio programs (NPR’s “Radiolab”), podcasts (Nature’s “Neuropod”) and books. For further examination of the reasons for this cultural shift, see the discussion of the phenomenon in the new book “Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media,” by Davi Johnson Thorton, Southwestern University's Assistant Professor of Communication Studies.



I’m hopeful that this increase in neuroscience reporting will precipitate more public support for neuroscience research (as well as for other fields, of course), funding for and enrollment in STEM education, and improvements in scientific literacy among the American public (whose children currently rank 23rd out of 30 in science achievement scores among OECD nations [PISA 2009]); however, after sampling and digesting a smorgasbord of popular neuroscience reporting, my idealism is tempered with concern. While independent book authors and magazine editors have often received formal scientific training, many others lack the expertise required to accurately interpret science. In addition, media pundits are typically affiliated with corporate news agencies or non-profit groups that carry sociopolitical agendas, resulting in consistently biased reporting. With the advent of neuroimaging technologies, scientists are addressing highly evocative questions in neuroscience and psychology, such as the neurological underpinnings of political or sexual orientation, which the popular press is quick to pick up and spin for shock value. I will argue that the media’s frequent misrepresentation of neuroscience research poses serious threats to the public’s accurate understanding of the brain and human behavior, as well as to the neuroscientific community at large. Neuroscientists have an ethical responsibility to the public to promote fair and balanced reporting of their findings. I propose a first-step solution to this growing problem, wherein academic institutions support neuroscientists in developing an independent system of media fact-checking. Within this framework, neuroscientists can comment on the veracity of brain science reporting by the popular press.



Typically, more information is a good thing. In economics, having complete information about a product empowers the consumer to make more informed purchasing decisions and ultimately select the most suitable one. Science follows the same general principle: more data points equal more statistical power, allowing us to draw conclusions and generate theories. Once extensive data are compiled, conclusions reached, and theories refined, scientists are subjected to rigorous peer-review. Experts in each respective field meticulously verify a researcher’s claims and then either accept or reject her findings. Finally, theories are validated by other researchers’ attempts to reproduce the results or collect data that affirm or refute said theory. This empirical process forms the backbone of the modern scientific method. On this foundation, neuroscience can advance its theoretical framework explaining the brain’s structure and function.



In its truest form, journalism adheres to the same process. According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “journalism’s first obligation is to the truth,” and is in essence a “discipline of verification.” More extensively, the PEJ’s Statement of Shared Purpose calls for:



“A consistent method of testing information—a transparent approach to evidence—precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work…Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. The discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction, or entertainment.”



These principles clearly fall in step with good science. Accuracy (rigorous data collection), transparency (comprehensive detail of materials and methods), objectivism (allowing data to speak for itself), and validation (inviting other experts to comment) form the basis of sound science and sound reporting. While this scientist believes that the scientific community has done well in adhering to these values and policing those who fall short (largely through the process of peer review), many in the journalistic community who report on neuroscience have repeatedly failed to hold themselves accountable to their self-proclaimed empirical ideals.



Neuroscience reporting has the potential to inspire and stimulate dialogue, often managing to do just that. Part of my decision to undertake a PhD in neuroscience hinged upon the intriguing pieces I picked up on through radio and print, such as NPR’s “Radiolab,” or specialty magazines, like Scientific American MIND. Quality neuroscience reporting is typically written or edited by academics (Emory’s own Scott O. Lilienfeld edits SciAm MIND, for example) and is unencumbered by sociopolitical bias. Unfortunately, less informed or politically motivated approaches to neuroscience reporting seriously compromise the public and the research community in several ways.



Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies like fMRI and PET have enabled neuroscientists and psychologists to probe with ever-increasing accuracy the neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior. Often the most interesting research in the public eye is the most evocative. In the scientific literature, topics include the neural correlates of behavioral differences based on political affiliation, sexuality, morality, socioeconomic status, and race. For this reason, some media outlets are quick to pick up on and spin the results of such research to conform to the mores of their organizations and audiences. Poor neuroscience reporting tends to fall into one of two categories, depending on the degree to which the research aligns or misaligns with their ideologies. The “aligners” tend to hyperbolize scientific findings, overgeneralizing the scope and impact of the research, while the “maligners” discredit the findings or simply don’t report them. In extreme cases, maligners spew vitriol, exclaiming that neuroscientists are motivated by “eugenics” or “phrenology.”



A great example of this is the recent outrage expressed by the authors of “Science Left Behind,” Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell, in response to a Huffington Post article entitled “Why Republicans Deny Science,” written by author and podcaster, Chris Mooney. In his article, Mooney cites recent findings from a handful of studies illustrating, among other things, that self-identified “conservatives” exhibit stronger physiological responses to aversive stimuli and have larger amygdala volumes (a part of the brain involved in fear-processing). While Mooney accurately reports the findings and believes that this sort of science “ought to prompt more tolerance and understanding across our political divides,” a seemingly noble cause, he ventures into overgeneralization by claiming that such research may help explain “the conservative denial of science.” Berezow and Campbell angrily counter by claiming that Mooney is a eugenicist who “distorts science in order to fit a preconceived narrative.” Libel among journalists is one thing, but when they target the scientific community, things get personal for this neuroscientist. USA Today’s Jonah Goldberg, in response to Mooney, asserts that this type of “fad” neuroscience research is really “the new science of conservative phrenology.” While Goldberg keenly points out the limitations of such studies, such as sampling bias and their lack of ecological validity, he erroneously implies that no valid conclusions can be drawn from them. Obviously, misreporting and mud slinging do not constitute “excellence in journalism.” If journalists want to engage in such unprofessionalism, can they please just leave neuroscience and the public out of it?

For non-scientists who rely on news media to communicate new science, overgeneralization by the press can mislead people to draw conclusions that may incorrectly or even dangerously influence their thinking and behavior. For instance, by contending that studies in social neuroscience demonstrate how personality traits and behaviors, such as political affiliation, are “hard-wired,” reporters (such as Goldberg) misrepresent science and promote public misconceptions about the brain. It is well accepted that the brain is highly organized in advance of experience, but I challenge you to find a psychologist who will concede that behavior is “hard-wired.” In fact, quite the opposite is true; the brain is plastic, continually reorganizing itself in response to the internal and external milieu. An overwhelming body of research supports the notion that our behavioral outputs are similarly malleable. I take issue with any popular news article, book title, or headline containing the hackneyed phrase, “the [insert adjective] brain,” on similar grounds. The nuance contained within the original research can never be distilled into a single compelling phrase about a group of people. Learning about the plight of another group, also known as "perspective-taking," can increase one’s empathy for and understanding of that group, and this type of research has the power to do just that; however, do pithy headlines and brief reports like these lead people to further stereotype and distance themselves from those who are portrayed as categorically and neurologically different?



Discrediting neuroscientific findings is similarly detrimental and promotes public distrust of neuroscience and the importance of such research in elucidating the neurological mechanisms underlying human thought and experience. Take Roger Scruton's recent article in The Spectator, which introduces terms like "neurobabble" and "neurononsense," in reference to studies that link social behaviors to their neurochemical correlates (think oxytocin and pair-bonding). Scruton voices skepticism about the extent to which neuroscience can uncover the seat of human consciousness. Don't get me wrong: dissenting opinions like these are important scientific debate. I agree with Scruton that the whole of human experience cannot be distilled into a "brain in a box" theory. Nevertheless, debasing cognitive science research as pseudoscientific nonsense fosters public distrust in the pursuit of scientific explanations of human behavior. The public rightly expects neuroscientists to pursue avenues of research with the potential to enhance their understanding of themselves and others, but reading Scruton's commentary may lead a non-scientist to ask himself, "why does the public fund this kind of research if it has no value whatsoever?"



Scientists have a lot to lose here. Most research in this country is publicly funded and relies on governmental support for its advancement. Distrust of the scientific community may lead policymakers and their constituents to further restrict our meager science budget and slash discretionary spending for science education. If we are to prevent ourselves from falling even further behind other nations in science achievement, neuroscientists must step in and advocate on behalf of their own research to assure that it is communicated accurately to the American public. As scientists, we strive to better our understanding of the human condition through our research with the end goal of improving health and well-being. It’s our responsibility to make sure that our findings are presented to the public in meaningful, accurate ways that clearly illustrate the implications of our work for their individual and collective lives. I believe that scientists are falling behind in this area. However, there is hope.



Such hope may exist in the new wave of dedicated neuroscience journalists, some of whom have received formal scientific training in academia and/or industry (consider Jonah Lehrer, for example, who formerly worked in the lab of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel). This group of reporters can act as unofficial go-betweens, translating neuroscientific findings into widely accessible dialogue unencumbered by sociopolitical bias, just as the PEJ’s Statement of Purpose suggests. The hope also lies with neuroscientists themselves. Nowadays, researchers are burdened by budget constraints that have created more and more competition for grants (less than 20% of NIH grants are funded) and publications in order to secure tenure. Coupled with advising grad students, managing a lab, teaching undergraduate courses, and attending conferences, neuroscientists are extremely busy people. This leaves very little time to engage with the public, although many rock-star neuroscientists still make time to do this public service. Given the present economic and political climate, it is of utmost importance that neuroscientists are accurately portrayed as the beneficent agents of change and discovery that they actually are.



I propose two changes that neuroscientists and their institutions can enact to begin rectifying these problems in neuroscience reporting. The first is on a neuroscientific community-wide level, the second on an institutional level. With respect to the neuroscience community, I believe that an organization could be established to “fact-check” the media’s reporting of research findings. Specialists in a given field could comment openly and publicly on the veracity of journalistic reports, in similar fashion to Politifact.org’s fact-checking of political candidates’ public statements. Alternatively, websites like Scholarpedia.org could be utilized more widely by researchers to make their ideas and findings readily accessible. Recent interest in open-access publishing for academic journals (see commentary in Science Magazine news) may be part of the solution; however, the esoteric language of research science may limit public gains from this strategy. Some neuroscientists directly engage with the public already, and are active on social networking sites like Twitter (see “Neuroscientists Who Tweet”), and I think this is a step in the right direction. On an institutional level, service and community outreach are encouraged for research faculty, and basically required for junior faculty seeking tenure. However, this could be better organized to encompass participation in fact-checking organizations or informational curation sites like Scholarpedia.



In summary, as lay interest in popular neuroscience continues to proliferate, journalists eschewing their obligation for fair and balanced reporting jeopardize both the public and the neuroscientific community. It is imperative that journalists recognize the importance of their position and act in accordance with their self-defined governing principles of ethics, as many already do. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that dissenting opinions are uncalled for. Rather they ought to avoid overgeneralization and discrediting. It is also incumbent upon scientists and the academy to engage the public in accurate, thoughtful, yet accessible dialogue about their research, and to find effective ways of doing so. Failure to do this has profound implications for the future of neuroscience research and science education in this country, and it is our ethical obligation to ensure that neuroscientists are portrayed as the good guys and gals they actually are.






Want to cite this post?


Kohn, J. (2012). The [insert adjective] Brain: Implications for Neuroscience in Popular Media. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/06/insert-adjective-brain-implications-for.html