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closeOn improper use of scientific findings - Ernest Greene, Academic Editor
Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 14 Dec 2007 at 16:04 GMT
This article provides another step in the effort to understand the brain mechanisms that control aggression. Here, I would simply like to amplify the caution expressed by the authors near the end of the Discussion section. Finding experiment-elicited changes in the brains of normal adults should not be extrapolated to imply that these can or should be used as markers for pathological thought or criminal tendency. As this kind of research goes forward, there is a risk that such findings will be used as evidence in criminal proceedings, including prosecution, sentencing, and parole decisions. For this study, and for a substantial amount of related work, the stimulus conditions and emotional responses are comparable to those experienced by hundreds of thousands of movie-goers each weekend. Further, even for studies that find non-normal brain activity in subjects that are known to have aberrant or criminal tendencies, it would generally be unwise to label these measures as having evidentiary value. The scientific process is most often directed toward statistical inference from averaged data, with little or no attention being given to the probability of a false-positive score for a given individual.