You'll still know nothing 'bout me

In the most recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about having a recreational MRI to see how his brain was "mapped" or "wired." With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, he writes of his concerns about having his reactions to various pictures recorded:

What if the sight of Golda Meir provoked feelings of sexual arousal? What if the sight of David Ben-Gurion provoked feelings of sexual arousal? What if it turned out that I actually feel disgust at the sight of Bruce Springsteen? To think of all the money I’ve wasted on concert tickets and T-shirts. Most worrisome, of course, was the matter of my wife. Inappropriate activations could have lasting consequences.

Goldberg doesn't much to worry about, because it turns out that the findings of his little exercise are far from clear. While some results seem more obvious than others, the "facts" don't speak for themselves. Rather, they require interpretative intervention to become meaningful. A person has to insert himself or herself into the facts to explain what those facts mean, to transform the results from "data" to "knowledge." For instance, a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad creates an unexplainably dramatic reaction, requiring a psychiatrist to search for an explanation.

“Perhaps you believe that the Israelis or the Americans have the situation under control and so you’re anticipating the day that he’s brought down.” He asked me some questions about my view of Jewish history, and then said: “You seem to believe that the Jewish people endure, that people who try to hurt the Jewish people ultimately fail. Therefore, you derive pleasure from believing that Ahmadinejad will also eventually fail. It’s very similar to the experiment with the monkey and the grape. It’s been shown that the monkey feels maximal reward not when he eats the grape but at the moment he’s sure it’s in his possession, ready to eat. That could explain your response to Ahmadinejad.”

Or whatever. The insertion of a person into the process instantly compromises it, because we're no longer talking about data in isolation but data that has become embedded in a web of human biases and understandings. Of course, the biases and understandings in question are those of an expert relying on a body of peer-reviewed scientific research, but they are still problematic because they are still mediated by human thought. In a nutshell, the lesson of Goldberg's experiment is that our thoughts and motivations are far less open to "impartial" scientific observation than one may think. In today's New York Times, David Brooks notes recent genetic research suggesting that there aren't DNA "triggers" for such things as happiness or aggression.

For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, “Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics,” science finds itself enmeshed with social science and the humanities in what researchers call the Gloomy Prospect, the ineffable mystery of why people do what they do.

I think Sting said it best:

Lay my head on the surgeon's table
Take my fingerprints if you are able
Pick my brains, pick my pockets
Steal my eyeballs and come back for the sockets
Run every kind of test from A to Z
And you'll still know nothing 'bout me

Run my name though your computer
Mention me in passing to your college tutor
Check my records, check my facts
Check if I paid my income tax
Pore over everything in my C.V.
But you'll still know nothing 'bout me
You'll still know nothing 'bout me