Chronicle weighs in on Neuroethics meeting

Here’s the take from the Chronicle of Higher Education. We rapped up this afternoon and I think it was a fine meeting. The key, as was mentioned by many in attendance, was that there were many neuroscientists there–joining the ethicists. So it was truly a trans-disciplinary discussion, which too often is not the case for the field of bioethics in general.

Tomorrow’s the first day of the Society for Neuroscience meeting. It’ll be competing with the G-20 “Breton Woods II” heads of state conference next door to shut down Washington traffic–should be very exciting. I’m taking Metro.

Jim

Live blogging from the First Annual Neuroethics Society meeting

We’re at AAA headquarters here in Washington DC. This is an incredibly eclectic group that ranges from hard-core neurophysiologists to lawyers. In the last session we heard from the CEO of one of the two private lie-detecting companies that purport to have successfully deployed fMRI–I’m pretty skeptical (as was a lot of the audience).

Here’s an interesting piece of data to come out of the meeting: the general public (think juries) tend to trust statements which include “neuroscience jargon” in contrast to those which don’t. So testimony with a neuroscience provenance could actually act to reduce the critical thinking of a jury.

Pretty worrisome.

Jim