From Lethal Rabbit Tests to Rigorous fMRI Analysis

Key Quotes

"acs has been a huge part of my growth throughout the years and has one of the best communities i've seen inspired by this community since 2022 i've been presenting at various events and conferences advocating for myself and others on the topic of service dogs invisible disabilities and navigating stem careers with a service dog"

Cecilia argues that the American Chemical Society (ACS) has been instrumental in her personal and professional development. She highlights the supportive community within ACS, which has empowered her to advocate for service dogs and invisible disabilities in STEM fields. This demonstrates her commitment to using her experiences to help others navigate similar challenges.

"well it's better than killing a bunny ' to which i said 'wtf ' she then proceeded to tell me how her mom told her that in our grandmother's generation they would inject a woman's pee into a bunny and quote if it died then she was pregnant i did a little digging and lol that's not quite it and then binky puts in quotes 'i'll let you science chicks explain ' but honestly it's kind of worse because they would kill every single bunny pregnant or not to find out if you were in fact pregs by killing dissecting them to see if their ovaries were enlarged"

Caroline, writing as "baby sis," introduces the historical method of pregnancy testing involving rabbits. She relays a story about injecting a woman's urine into a bunny, with its death indicating pregnancy, but clarifies that the actual practice involved dissecting the bunnies regardless of outcome to check their ovaries. This quote highlights the ethically questionable and ultimately inaccurate nature of early animal-based pregnancy tests.

"so in 2012 the ig nobel prize for neuroscience was given to a group of researchers who bought some dead atlantic salmon from the store and put it into an mri machine they showed the salmon pictures of people doing different social things they asked the salmon to figure out what emotion the person in the picture was possibly experiencing and again when i say all of this i emphasize that the salmon was dead so you really should not be expecting any brain activity"

The speaker recounts the Ig Nobel Prize-winning study involving a dead salmon in an MRI machine. This anecdote serves to illustrate the potential for misleading results in neuroimaging if data is not properly filtered. The researchers' experiment, while humorous, underscores the importance of accounting for artifacts and ensuring subjects are actually alive to yield meaningful brain activity data.

"but the fmri data showed that the dead salmon had brain activity like it was like thinking about the pictures so this was all just like a big what like they should not be showing this yeah and also i will i will say also just a side note on the ig nobel prize is that it's a prize that i think on their website says it honors achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think"

The speaker explains that despite the salmon being dead, the fMRI data indicated brain activity, prompting confusion and disbelief. They then provide context for the Ig Nobel Prize, noting that it recognizes achievements that are both humorous and thought-provoking. This quote emphasizes how seemingly absurd research can lead to important scientific considerations, such as the reliability of fMRI data.

"so you know this paper has had this long standing effect on the field including this more recent work that this article was about from 2020 so we're fast forwarding from 2012 to 2020 and scientists are still trying to figure out the reliability of fmri and there are these researchers who are working on a long term study of 1300 duke undergrads looking for biomarkers that might explain why people process thoughts and emotions differently"

The speaker connects the 2012 dead salmon study to ongoing research in 2020 concerning the reliability of functional MRI (fMRI). They describe a long-term study involving 1300 Duke undergraduates aimed at identifying biomarkers for differences in processing thoughts and emotions. This highlights that even a decade later, scientists are still grappling with the consistency and validity of fMRI data for individual analysis.

"so it's just showing that like this individual measurement is like really not that reliable but this also doesn't mean that fmri data is like necessarily bad it just means we have to be really thoughtful about how we use the data for example we might not be able to use it to say like specific things about a specific person's brain but we might be able to average it out and understand like population level responses in general"

The speaker concludes that individual fMRI measurements lack reliability but clarifies that this does not render fMRI data entirely useless. They suggest that while specific conclusions about an individual's brain may be unreliable, the data can still be valuable for understanding general population-level responses when averaged. This points to a need for careful consideration of how fMRI data is applied and interpreted.