russ poldrack, whom i admire greatly, (and who you last heard of as inspiring a discussion about abductive reasoning and cows) gave a talk at the ccn today. he's still going strong with his beef about reverse inference, except that he's now powered up and started socking it to people who make these claims in the popular press to the collective horror of everyone who would like to use fmri to do, oh i don't know, real science. the more i go to talks by people like poldrack and morse and illes and gazzaniga, the more i realize that science+policy might be my thing. much as i love the basic research, i've also reached a point where i know i'll never be great at it -- and this isn't being defeatist in any way; it's just taking a calm look at the people around and ahead of me and realizing that if i only do basic research, i'll have a mediocre career at best. sidebar: i was pondering the other day on two of my favorite shows, house and battlestar galactica, and i noticed that one thing they had in common is that david shore and ron moore both managed to reach millions of people to deliver them this message: "don't be an idiot". and yes, bsg did it in a ham-handed way at times, and house occasionally goes off the rails because it's on the friggin' fox network which has gouged my eyes out again and again, but my point is that we need more of that, and better. this brain stuff, even stripped of its glamor and razzmatazz, is powerful, and we need more people out there saying hey, let's do this responsibly, we only get one shot at it.