Neuroskepticism - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 180

First, I readily acknowledge that neuroscience offers unparalleled opportunities
to transform our lives, and (for some) it has already done so. Few of these oppor-
tunities are more dramatic than the potential use of functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) to identify patients with impaired consciousness who might be can-
didates for rehabilitation (Owen and Coleman 2008), and of deep brain stimulation
to release them from imprisonment in hitherto unresponsive bodies (Schiff et al.
2007). However, my thesis here is premised on what might be called neuroskep-
ticism —that is, a perspective informed by science studies scholarship that views
with some healthy skepticism claims about the practical implications and real-world
applications of recent developments in neuroscience. The need to probe and question
is, I contend, especially acute in the context of national security neuroscience—
where the translation from research laboratory to real life may involve great leaps,
among them the troubling jump from brain scanning to terrorist screening.
The approach I adopt here is consonant with and sympathetic to the goals of
“critical neuroscience”—a multidisciplinary project defined by some scholars as “a
reflexive scientific practice that responds to the social and cultural challenges posed
both to the field of science and to society in general by recent advances in the behav-
ioral and brain sciences” (Choudhury et al. 2009). The proponents of critical neuro-
science aim to bridge the gap between science studies and empirical neuroscience by
engaging scholars and practitioners from the social sciences, humanities, and empiri-
cal neuroscience to explore neglected issues: among them, the economic and political
drivers of neuroscience research, the limitations of the methodological approaches
employed in neuroscience, and the manner in which findings are disseminated. The
project's avowed and worthy goals include “maintaining good neuroscience, improv-
ing representations of neuroscience, and … creating an awareness of its social and
historical context in order to assess its implications” (Choudhury et al. 2009, 66).
Second, I acknowledge the legitimate aims and objectives of the national security
enterprise and of the officials solemnly charged with its pursuit. However, sometimes
national security threats may be overstated or invoked for political ends, and the means
employed in the pursuit of these objectives are often fundamentally violative of the
human rights of others (for a more detailed explication, see Marks 2006). In addition,
as I outline later, there are many examples from the Bush administration's “war on
terror” of medicine, other health sciences (including behavioral psychology), and
polygraphy being abused in the name of national security. So, while there are risks
that the national security community may be misled about what neuroscience can
offer, I am also concerned about the ways in which national security may pervert
neuroscience.
NEUROSCIENCE NARRATIVES AND SECURITY SEMANTICS
Neuroscience and national security both jealously guard their own argot. In the
case of neuroscience, the lexicon is replete with Latin and Greek and innumerable
portmanteau constructions that fuse (or confuse) both classical languages. Consider,
for example, the subthalamic nucleus, a neuroanatomical term that sandwiches a
Greek derivative between two Latin ones and is (infelicitously) susceptible to the
translation “the nut under the bedroom.” For some cognoscenti, there may be a