“Science consists of measuring, with great precision, that which does not matter.” So says the brain researcher Jerry Lettvin, both very much joking and very much not. Brain science is an especially good example of what he’s talking about, as you can see by glancing at some old and some new research. A hundred years ago, scientists measured and mapped the bumps on people’s heads. Calling themselves phrenologists, they issued reports about what parts of the brain did the heavy thinking about calculation, combatativeness, love and any number of other subjects. Nowadays, phrenology has the reputation of being wrong and stupid.
Modern brain scientists do something that looks, on the face of it, a lot like phrenology – and other brain scientists, rightly or wrongly, like to make fun of them….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column (the first of two parts) in The Guardian.
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UPDATE, IN RE THE PHOTO: Thanks to several investigators who pointed out a recent photo-essay by Carl Zimmer about tattooed scientists.