Ed Vul’s bombshell of a paper, Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience, is a strong indictment of the spate of studies using fMRI to localize complex brain functions, arguing that the statistical correlations between behaviors and brain activity of many social neuroscientists are spurious. It has provoked a spate of angry responses from other neuroscientists. Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide) interviewed Vul at Scientific American and excerpts the interview at his own weblog The Frontal Cortex.

Related:

• How We Decide (kottke.org)
• In Defense of the Value of Social Neuroscience (sciam.com)
• Skepticism about Neuroscience (bizop.ca)
• Can brain scans read our minds? (sciam.com)