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Friends Matter To Your Brain Essay

The article deals with a social issue. It seems to me patent that the author, working for a popular media outlet (CNN) chose an issue that has popular appeal. Friends and strangers are an issue that everyone from a child as young as six or seven (or younger) to an adult (particularly adolescent) would be interested in.

The article is written in an appealing manner, obviously slanted to a lay rather than professional audience. The vocabulary is simplistic; popular imagery is included (such as the TV show "The Newlywed Game"); technical terms are simplified; and explanation of related neurological material is excluded.

I find the article deceptive, even dangerous, in that it excludes essential details such as the characteristics of the 94 participants, the environment in which the study occurred, characteristics of friends and strangers,...

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All of these details, and more, are essential in assessing the reliability of the study.
The author also neglects to mention the fact that fMRI experiments, although widely used, are only arguably accepted as conclusive evidence. As some of the readers, in comments tagged to the article, observe: life is more complex.

The author writes for a popular magazine, therefore selects a topic that is bound to be appealing to her targeted market and slants that topic in a correlationally warped manner. The pity is that, by doing so, she presents distorted conclusions.

Source

CNN Health. How friends matter to your brain. Web. Accessed on 10/12/2010 from http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/12/how-friends-matter-to-your-brain.

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The author writes for a popular magazine, therefore selects a topic that is bound to be appealing to her targeted market and slants that topic in a correlationally warped manner. The pity is that, by doing so, she presents distorted conclusions.

Source

CNN Health. How friends matter to your brain. Web. Accessed on 10/12/2010 from http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/12/how-friends-matter-to-your-brain.
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