The term “computational neuroscience” was coined in the 1980s by the late, great Eric L. Schwartz, a professor at the department where I did my PhD. At the start of his introductory course on comp neuro, he offered up a little ‘sociology’ of the field, which he captured in a diagram called the pentagon of neuroscience1. He also half-jokingly banned the word ‘consciousness’ in his classroom, because no one could provide an adequate scientific definition of “the c-word”2.
Eric was a great teacher — especially of how to be skeptical of grand claims in neuroscience. He would interrupt his lectures on basic electrophysiology with wildly entertaining digressions, anecdotes3, and rants about the various “bogus” and “bodacious” claims made in neuroscience.
He condensed his accumulated exasperation into a list of informal “fallacies” in computational neuroscience. I’ve reproduced his text here (with a few small edits).
All this is to be taken with a sense of humor. I don’t mean any offense — though Eric probably did! This list serves as a handy set of tools for guarding against triviality and/or neurobabble, of which there seems to be an ever-increasing supply.
So here we go!
G.I.G.O.
Garbage in, garbage (or gospel) out. Well known problem with all computational models.
Unity Gain Simulation
You build an elaborate model of a simple phenomenon, including many redundant mechanisms to get out the phenomenon. If done well, you get the result that you wired in, but learn nothing, hence unity gain. If done poorly, reduces to G.I.G.O. True unity gain, although not interesting, is technically difficult, and requires some skill.
The Prayer Wheel
Building merit by turning cycles (on your computer). Your model is conceptually simple, and/or of little interest, but it required a supercomputer to run it. Legitimizing your model by emphasizing that it required the "world's largest computer" to run...
Two Card Monte
The street card game (shell game) played in academia: you sell the computer scientists that your model is an important contribution to biology, and you sell the biologists that your model is an important contribution to computer science. But it is neither. Works even better with more than two disciplines involved. The more remote they are, the better.
The Devil Made Me (Not) Do It
Your implausible and/or poorly constructed model (conveniently) can't be realistically tested due to computational complexity.
Pseudo Biological Detail (PBD)
Related to two card monte. Overload your model with irrelevant biological parameters and metaphors, in an attempt to direct attention away from conceptual weakness.
Bruno’s Lemma
When it is pointed out that the fundamental idea of your model strongly violates basic facts, you claim that your model can be fixed, since it is a model of the brain, and “the brain can do it”.
Proof By Sales Receipt
I'm a neuroscientist. I bought ten Macs (Suns, PCs,etc.) on my grant. Therefore, I'm a computational neuroscientist.
Klaus’s Transform
A colleague publishes a simple version of your complex mechanism. You then claim his simplifying idea as your own, and cite his simplification of your model as one of many complex models explained by "your" simplifying assumption.
Cargo Cult Neuroscience
Some island dwellers allegedly built plywood airplanes after WW2 in order to lure down cargo planes, which were no longer arriving after the war.4
"My network babbled like a baby while it was learning...." therefore my network is mimicking the learning process in a baby... See "totemic model" below.
Totemism
The totem is believed to (magically) take on properties of the object. The model is legitimized based on superficial and/or trivial resemblance to the system being modeled.5
The Hail Mary
After the football play of the same name: you have the ball, but no one is free downfield. So... close your eyes and hurl for the end zone.
You have a fragment of an idea, but don't know how to state, develop, or support it. But, if true, you will be famous. So, embed it in a far-fetched "model" and publish it, in the hope that your "model" will be proven "correct", somehow, someday.
Big Game Fishing in the Goldfish Bowl
You claim "predictions" for your model which are actually trivial and/or unavoidable properties of the nervous system: "A prediction of my model is... the existence of lateral inhibition in the pulvinar".
Neuro-Bagging
See carpet-bagging, as in the U.S. Civil War. (Thanks to Mark Rubin for this one.)
You assert that an area of physics or mathematics familiar to few neuroscientists solves a fundamental problem in their field. Example: "The cerebellum is a tensor of rank 10^12; sensory and motor activity are contravariant and covariant vectors". Related to 2-card monty (above), but distinguished by more extreme bodaciousness.
Scientific Pointillism
See Impressionist painting technique, e.g., used by Seurat, consisting of small dabs of paint creating the illusion of a figural painting.
Your "humanoid robot" is really a pair of active vision cameras and robot arms bolted together, with a flashy plastic body. The rhetoric describing it is laden with terms indicating its humanoid abilities: it "interacts" with humans (and even graduate students); it has emotions. However, when looked at more closely, the thing is supported by simple software that appears to be ten or fifteen years behind the state of the art. If done well, you can enjoy the feeling of metaphorically, as well as literally, being the "star of your own movie".
Are there any more fallacies to be added to the list in this golden age of Neural Networks?
“It’s hard to know what all this means.”
- Eric L. Schwartz, c. 2006 (Carefully transcribed by hand in my notebook.)
Notes
The pentagon of neuroscience. Here’s my version of Eric’s pentagon. I elaborate on the diagram in this essay.
On consciousness. Eric inspired the title and some of the content of this essay: Why some neuroscientists call consciousness “the c-word”.
Eric would sometimes tell us about practical jokes he pulled. One of them involved sneaking a radio receiver into someone’s lecture, enabling the word “bullshit!” to be broadcast at judicious moments. Later some of my grad school friends pulled this prank on him with the help of a well-hidden cell phone. Good times.
On the concept of “cargo cults”. Recent scholarship suggests that “cargo cults” are much more complex than pop culture has made them out to be. I’ve edited Eric’s text slightly here to mitigate any offense to postcolonial peoples accused of ‘backward’ or ignorant practices. See the Wikipedia article on the topic for more information on this tricky issue.
On totemism. As with cargo cults, it is likely that western generalizations about practices like totem-worship, arising so often in the context of colonialism, must be taken with a large pinch of salt. Nevertheless, it seems clear that in every part of the world, objects have been imbued with magical power. Resemblance, symbolism and analogy have each played a role here.