Last weekend, the New York Times featured an op-ed entitled, "This is Your Brain on Politics." It was authored by a group of neuroscientists who showed Presidential candidate pictures to a few swing voters, measured their neurological response, and proceeded to make sweeping generalizations about the American electorate.
As science, it was a joke. As political theory, it was shallow. As an op-ed, it should have been thrown out at first glance. Uninformed opinion is tolerable in an editorial, but not when it purports to be validated by bad science.
I wrote about the the experiment here. But if you don't want to take my word for it, the *NYT *just published a letter from fourteen neuroscientists, including high rollers like Russ Poldrack and Elizabeth Phelps -- and they tore the Times and the researchers a new ballot box hole.
Kudos to the Times for printing the letter. But if they really want to right their wrong, they'll put the letter in 96-point type, or whatever's big enough to cover three-quarters of an entire page, just like the original op-ed.
Image: I couldn't find any insulting Democrat brains. Any of you Republican cartoonists out there want to try, send it in.
