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Brain damage linked to increased likelihood of religious fundamentalism, new study finds (www.techspot.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, took an innovative approach by examining two groups of individuals with focal brain lesions resulting from injuries or disorders. One cohort consisted of 106 Vietnam veterans who suffered traumatic brain injuries in combat decades ago. The other included 84 patients from rural Iowa who experienced strokes, surgical complications, or other brain injuries.

Study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2322399121

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm gonna copy my unedited response to this when someone posted this study as a Psypost link because I can't be arsed to change it and it's the exact same problem.

I like the overall lack of bullshit psypost articles on Lemmy and would like to keep it that way.

If you see a psypost article you should be suspicious.

If you see a psypost article about a paper with a conclusion that you agree with you should be extra suspicious.

EDIT: And now I’ve bothered to read the abstract of the paper and the first bit of the psypost article and they don’t say the same fucking thing.

The journal article is saying they identified brain regions associated with fundamentalism by looking at brain lesions. There may be a seemingly obvious connection to say that the brain lesions caused the fundamentalism, but I don’t see them actually say that after skimming the full text. They focus on what regions are associated with fundamentalism using lesions as a tool to find them.

The psypost article says in the first sentence the damage changes the likelihood of fundamentalism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah. Sadly it's a trap that no one is immune to. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply Causation.