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Can 'brain games' really help you improve the way your brain functions?
You've probably seen ads for apps promising to make you smarter in just a few minutes a day. Hundreds of so-called "brain training" programs can be purchased for download. These simple games are designed to challenge mental abilities, with the ultimate goal of improving the performance of important everyday tasks.
But can just clicking away at animations of swimming fish or flashed streets signs on your phone really help you improve the way your brain functions?
Two large groups of scientists and mental health practitioners published consensus statements, months apart in 2014, on the effectiveness of these kinds of brain games. Both included people with years of research experience and expertise in cognition, learning, skill acquisition, neuroscience and dementia. Both groups carefully considered the same body of evidence available at the time.
Yet, they issued exactly opposite statements.
One concluded that "there is little evidence that playing brain games improves underlying broad cognitive abilities, or that it enables one to better navigate a complex realm of everyday life."
The other argued that "a substantial and growing body of evidence shows that certain cognitive training regimens can significantly improve cognitive function, including in ways that generalize to everyday life."
[...]The most important lesson from the literature on training is this: If you want to improve your performance on a task that's important to you, practice that task. Playing brain games may only make you better at playing brain games.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:11PM (3 children)
"The scientific consensus is" is shorthand for "We have a mountain of data and experiments that all agree with this conclusion, and since we lack the resources needed to perform a more specific experiment the people who've studied the field are going with what all our agreed-upon knowledge tells us. There are a few contrarians who disagree with this, but so far they haven't produced any data or experimental results that has withstood scrutiny and successfully challenged our conclusions."
For example, if you were to take the Empire State Building, and lift the whole thing 500' upwards and let go, the scientific consensus is that it would fall back to the ground and be really destructive wherever it landed. Do I have the experimental evidence to prove it? No, because you'd never get approval to actually lift the Empire State Building 500' upwards, and getting the equipment together to do it would present a bit of a budgetary problem and engineering challenge. But I can start with principles of Newtonian physics and the limits on materials to flex and compress and shear to reach a reasonable guess about what would happen.
I know you want to be able to conclude that the "scientific consensus" is a giant conspiracy of eggheads trying to mislead the public for some reason, or a bunch of fools deluding themselves via groupthink, because you want to be able to ignore certain scientific findings. But whether you believe in those scientific findings or not has no bearing on whether those findings are true.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:26PM (2 children)
I have no problem with a concrete scientific concensus. I object to the reliance on references to an abstract scientific consensus as a line of argumentation. It's at least 2 logical fallacies. Do you not see the words "when one side claims" in the subject line. It's the *claiming* that's the warning flag. "Double blinded studies show...", "A metaanalysis of NNN papers publised in XX high impact journals shows..." is how you should be starting your argument, not "The scientific consensus is that...".
Can you think of any issue where the strongest argument put forward by one side begins "The scientific consensus is..." where there isn't a group of scientists who are vehemently on the other side? That's not how you win science arguments, so it isn't how you should be presenting science arguments.
/Logos/ trumps /ethos/ (and /pathos/).
> I know you want to be able to conclude that the "scientific consensus" is a giant conspiracy...
You don't know that, as it's not true. Please retract that assertion.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday June 13 2019, @03:23PM
No, but that's not because the evidence isn't clear. When you have issues with approximately 99.5% of professionals in the field reaching conclusion A, and 0.5% of professionals in the field reaching conclusion not-A, and that hasn't changed in a long time, especially when the evidence for conclusion A continues to pile up over that period, and especially especially when that 0.5% of professionals in the field is getting their salaries paid by people who would benefit from not-A being true, yes, I think it's reasonable to say that that 0.5% of professionals in the field is almost definitely wrong. Particularly if the people arguing for not-A don't have their opinion change when presented with new evidence supporting A.
A real-life example of why this matters: There are a few biologists who are vehemently arguing against evolution, and are trying to look for biological structures that could not have come about naturally. These biologists are getting paid by the Discovery Institute and other creationist outlets to try to push the creationist viewpoint. From that, should we be concluding that the Theory of Evolution is wrong or undecided?
Without a doubt experiment is the strongest possible evidence. What you're trying to oppose is that the next-strongest evidence, when direct experiment is impossible, is widespread agreement of the vast majority of experts backed by past experiments and data. Continuing with the evolution example, we have examples of evolution happening in modern times, boatloads of fossil data consistent with evolution happening, several known mechanisms for evolution to happen (genetic mutation, sexual selection, natural selection), but what we don't have is direct observations of what happened in the Cambrian because we don't have a time machine. And creationists use that little bit of uncertainty to convince people who think like you do that the Theory of Evolution is a tool of Satan to convince you to deny the truth in Genesis.
And this is important because some people have decided that "somebody wrote it on the Internet" is even remotely the same level of certainty as "99.5% of experts agree". It's not.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @08:30PM
The cold fusion / free energy group seem to fit that description, but in that case the consensus is formed around the lack of evidence rather than the abundance of evidence.
The "creation scientists" also fit the description very well. The consensus side has a ton of observations that are largely consistent with the consensus model, and the other side has a slew of ad hoc explanations that are generally not consistent with each other. You can show the evidence, explain the model, show how they hold together, but if the group you're talking to ignore all of that and base their model upon their belief system rather than the observations, you have nowhere else to turn to except "the scientific consensus is . . . "
Somewhere along the way climate science became a political issue (basically when the big fossil fuel industry made it into one). It is now the same as with creation scientists, where you have a mountain of diverse measurements that are consistent with a general model of what is going on, and you have a vocal group nitpicking details with ad hoc and outright wrong counterpoints (like how the sea level is rising due to rocks falling into the ocean [sciencemag.org] (and all the other stuff in that link). And, more importantly, and just like with the creation scientists, there is no alternative model being put forward.
"The scientific consensus", in this case at least, is the scientific consensus model because there isn't another credible alternative to debate against, and the one we have was arrived at by consensus.