Point counter point on whether neuroscience is good for something. Gary Marcus in The New Yorker, here. The New York Times’ David Brooks here.

Marcus rightly points out that critiquing functional MRI brain scan data analysis is not the same thing as rejecting all of neuroscience–most of neuroscience (the parts not seen so much in the mass media) is knowledge obtained from a huge variety of robust and elegant methods, ranging from optogenetics to electrophysiology.

But it’s a good debate–perhaps it’ll prevent neuroscience from being oversold.