[SubiculumCode]

The prior probability of you being wrong about facts in another field is fairly high.

The prior probability of the researcher being wrong about facts in their own field is much lower.

Therefore the default assumption one should have when reviewing research from a field that is NOT their own is closer to "I am the idiot" than "The researchers are the idiots".

in my humble opinion.

[acrefoot]

The years I've gone to SFN, I've been amazed at how fragmented the field is. People get into neuroscience from all sorts of places. Neurosurgery, C. elegans research, optogenetic studies, fmri studies, biochemistry: these approaches to neuroscience are often so different they don't know about the advances of the others.

[SubiculumCode]

Should have gone to HBM I guess ;) I suppose my comment was a bit strong. My Ph.D was on the the hippocampus and the development of binding operations supporting episodic memory using standard MRI and cognitive tasks, and I already know I don't understand half of what they are doing in more basic neuroscience articles.

[acrefoot]

No worries!

I have no problem with the paper authors. Most of the authors on the paper come from neurosurgery/neurology, and I don't doubt for one second that they have a strong grasp of "I can mess with the human brain in these ways and I'll get these behaviors". They shouldn't be expected to know everything we've ever looked at for time in the brain.

I am frustrated at one of the ways science journalism tends to report on neuroscience. I think they want to do it like they do physics, and it affects how people outside the field think. Rather than considering the brain as a complex system, we're looking for the Jennifer Anniston neuron, or time cells, or some single component that explains consciousness, much like we looked for the "god particle" (Higgs) or gravitational waves. It's not a great way to look at things.

My original comment on fragmentation is just my own opinion. Maybe it's not as much of a barrier as I think it is.