Brain Image Bias

A NeuroScience Marketing blog post: Brain Image Bias, talks about the use of brain scan images in marketing. I agree that bright brain scan images attract your attention and might lead you to believe that the claim is credible and statistically significant. Bright images like the fMRI scan at the right do capture attention. This is the model visualization effect I have written about before. The observer is not shown the details behind the scan's acquisition, so has no way to judge the bias of the display.

Ironically, a bar chart in the post is itself misleading by starting its scale at two as opposed to zero, implying more difference between the 'with and without' brain scan image' articles. Although it depends on a number of other factors, eyeballing the graph would seem to show there is little statistical significance in how compelling the articles are.