You are going to nationalgeographic.com/tv and different terms of use and privacy policy will apply.
The brain has hit the big time. Barack Obama has just announced $100 million of funding for the BRAIN Intitiative—an ambitious attempt to apparently map the activity of every neuron in the brain. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Human Brain Project will try to simulate those neurons with a billion euros of funding from the European Commission. And news about neuroscience, from dream-decoding to mind-meldingto memory-building, regularly dominates the headlines.
But while the field’s star seems to be rising, a new study casts a disquieting shadow upon the reliability of its results. A team of scientists led by Marcus Munafofrom the University of Bristol analysed a broad range of neuroscience studies and found them plagued by low statistical power.
Statistical power refers to the odds that a study will find an effect—say, whether antipsychotic drugs affect schizophrenia symptoms, or whether impulsivity is linked to addiction—assuming those effects exist. Most scientists regard a power of 80 percent as adequate—that gives you a 4 in 5 chance of finding an effect if there’s one to be found. But the...
Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society.
Copyright © 2015-2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved