Neuro-realism is a widely cited concept describing a textual phenomenon in popular science news wherein brain research uncritically validates or invalidates the “realness” of particular beliefs or practices. Currently, no research on neuro-realism examines the variable rhetorical roles of such statements, that is, how they support specialized arguments or enhance social functions across genres of public communication. This article details the nuances of neuro-realism, arguing that neuro-realism is much more than a singular textual phenomenon but a flexible rhetorical vehicle manifesting in at least three forms: commonsense, judicial, and rational. Each form serves a larger argumentative purpose, and each can be consistently linked to a popular news subgenre, illuminating how neuro-realism’s stunning lack of criticality proves permissible and reproducible in popular science publications.
AgudeloL. Z.FereniaT.OrhanF.Porsmyr-PalmertzM.GoinyM.Martinez-RedondoV.. . . RuasJ. L. (2014). Skeletal muscle PGC-1α1 modulates kynurenine metabolism and mediates resilience to stress-induced depression. Cell, 159(1), 33-45.
2.
AliS. S.LifshitzM.RazA. (2014, May). Empirical neuroenchantment: from reading minds to thinking critically. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 357.
3.
AshwellD. J. (2016). The challenges of science journalism: The perspectives of scientists, science communication advisors and journalists from New Zealand. Public Understanding of Science, 25(3), 379-393.
4.
BarghJ. A. (2014). The historical origins of priming as the preparation of behavioral responses: Unconscious carryover and contextual influences of real-world importance. Social Cognition, 32(suppl.), 209-224.
5.
BarghJ. A.GollwitzerP. M.Lee-ChaiA.BarndollarK.TroetschelR. (2001). The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1014-1027.
6.
BauerM. W.GregoryJ. (2007). From journalism to corporate communication in post-war Britain. In BauerM. W.BucchiM. (Eds.), Journalism, science and society: Science communication between news and public relations (pp. 33-52). New York, NY: Routledge.
7.
BeckD. M. (2010). The appeal of the brain in the popular press. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 762-766.
8.
BellD.HollowsJ. (2006). Historicizing lifestyle: Mediating taste, consumption and identity from the 1900s to the 1970s. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
BrechmanJ. M.LeeC. J.CappellaJ. N. (2011). Distorting genetic research about cancer: From bench science to press release to published news. Journal of Communication, 61(3), 496-513.
13.
BrewerJ. A.WorhunskyP. D.GrayJ. R.TangY. Y.WeberJ.KoberH. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences of the United States, 108(50), 20254-20259.
14.
CallonM. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In LawJ. (Ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196-223). London, UK: Routledge Kegan & Paul.
15.
CalsamigliaH.Van DijkT. A. (2004). Popularization discourse and knowledge about the genome. Discourse & Society, 15(4), 369-389.
16.
CaulfieldT.RachulC.ZarzecznyA. (2010). “Neurohype” and the name game: Who’s to blame?AJOB Neuroscience, 1(2), 13-15.
17.
ConditC. (2007). How geneticists can help reporters get their story right. Nature Reviews Genetics, 8, 815-820.
18.
CortassaC. (2016). In science communication, why does the idea of a public deficit always return? The eternal recurrence of the public deficit. Public Understanding of Science, 25(4), 447-459.
19.
DahlT. (2015). Contested science in the media: Linguistic traces of news writer’s framing activity. Written Communication, 32(1), 39-65.
GeislerC. A. (2003). Analyzing streams of language: Twelve steps to the systematic coding of text, talk, and other verbal data. New York, NY: Longman.
30.
GibbonsM. (2007). Seeing the mind in the matter: Functional brain imaging as framed visual argument. Argumentation and Advocacy, 43(3-4), 175-188.
31.
GitelmanL. (2014). Paper knowledge: Toward a media history of documents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
32.
GoldmanS. R.MurrayJ. D. (1992). Knowledge of connectors as cohesion devices in text: A comparative study of native-English and English-as-second-language speakers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 504-520.
33.
GoyalM.SingS.SibingaE. M.GouldN. F.Rowland-SeymourA.SharmaR.. . . HaythornthwaiteJ. A. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357-368.
34.
GreelyH. T. (2012). What If? The farther shores of neuroethics: Commentary on “Neurosciencemaysupersede ethics and law.”Science & Engineering Ethics, 18(3), 439-446.
35.
GregoryJ.MillerS. (1998). Science in public: Communication, culture, and credibility. New York, NY: Plenum.
36.
GruberD.DickersonJ. (2012). Persuasive images in popular science: Testing judgments of scientific reasoning and credibility. Public Understanding of Science, 21(8), 938-948.
37.
HansenA. (1994). Journalistic practices and science reporting in the British press. Public Understanding of Science, 3(2), 111-134.
38.
HansenA. (2016). The changing uses of accuracy in science communication. Public Understanding of Science, 25(7), 760-774.
39.
HanuschF.HanitzschT. (2013). Mediating orientation and self-expression in the world of consumption: Australian and German lifestyle journalists’ professional views. Media, Culture and Society, 35(8), 943-959.
40.
HauskinL. (2015). The visual culture of brain imaging. Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, 48(1), 68-69.
41.
HookC. J.FarahM. J. (2013). Look again: Effects of neuro-images and mind-brain dualism on lay evaluations of research. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(9), 1397-1405.
42.
HuangC. (2014). Double media distortions for science communication—an analysis of “compiled science news” transforming in Taiwan. Asian Journal of Communication, 24, 128-141.
JackJ.AppelbaumG. (2013). “This is your brain on rhetoric”: Research directions for neurorhetorics. In JackJ. (Ed.), Neurorhetorics (pp. 9-36). New York, NY: Routledge.
KoubeissZ.BartolomeiF.BeltagyA.PicardF. (2014). Electrical stimulation of a small brain area reversibly disrupts consciousness. Epilepsy and Behavior, 37, 32-35.
52.
KuhnT. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
53.
LakoffG.JohnsonM. (1980). The metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
54.
LandisR. J.KochG. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33(1), 159-174.
55.
LatourB. (1988). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
56.
LatourB. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
LittlefieldM. M.JohnsonJ. (2012). The neuroscientific turn: Transdisciplinarity in the age of the brain. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
59.
LonsdaleS. (2015). Roast seagull and other quaint bird dishes. Journalism Studies, 16(6), 800-815.
60.
LuzónM. J. (2013). Public communication of science in blogs: Recontextualizing scientific discourse for a diversified audience. Written Communication, 30(4), 428-457.
61.
LyngS. (2009). Brain, body, and society: Bio-ethical reflections on socio-historical neuroscience and neuro-corporeal social science. American Journal of Bioethics, 9, 25-26.
62.
MerriamS. B. (1988). Case study research in education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
63.
MikhaylovS.LaverM.BenoitK. R. (2012). Coder reliability and misclassification in the human coding of party manifestos. Political Analysis, 20(1), 78-91.
64.
MillerC. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151-167.
65.
MillerC. (2010). Should we name the tools? Concealing and revealing the art of rhetoric. In AckermanJ. M.CooganD. J. (Eds.), The public work of rhetoric (pp. 19-38). Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
66.
MillerG. A. (2010). Mistreating psychology in the decades of the brain. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(6), 716-743.
67.
MillerS. (2001). Public understanding of science at the crossroads. Public Understanding of Science, 10(1), 115-120.
68.
Molek-KozakowskaK. (2016). Stylistic analysis of headlines in science journalism: A case study of New Scientist. Public Understanding of Science. Advance online publication.
69.
MoskowitzG. B.GollwitzerP. M.WaselW.SchaalB. (1999). Preconscious control of stereotype activation through chronic egalitarian goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 167-184.
NickersonR. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220.
72.
O’ConnorC.JoffeH. (2013). How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? a review of the evidence. Public Understanding of Science, 22(3), 254-268.
PattonM. Q. (2013). What brain sciences reveal about integrating theory and practice. American Journal of Evaluation, 35(2), 237-244.
75.
PickersgillM. (2013). The social life of the brain: Neuroscience in society. Current Sociology, 61(3), 322-340.
76.
PickersgillM.MartinP.Cunningham-BurleyS. (2015). The enduring brain: Neuroscience and the enduring import of everyday experience. Public Understanding of Science, 24(7), 878-892.
RacineE. (2010). Pragmatic neuroethics: Improving treatment and understanding of the mind-brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
82.
RacineE.Bar-IlanO.IllesJ. (2005). fMRI in the public eye. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 159-164.
83.
RacineE.Bar-IlanO.IllesJ. (2006). Brain imaging: A decade of coverage in the print media. Science Communication, 28(1), 122-142.
84.
ReinerP. (2011). The rise of neuroessentialism. In IllesJ.SahakianB. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of neuroethics (pp. 161-175). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
RhodesR. E.RodriguezF.ShahP. (2014). Explaining the alluring influence of neuroscience information on scientific reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(5), 1432-1440.
ScottS. D.Brett-MacLeanP.ArchibaldM.HartlingL. (2013). Protocol for a systematic review of the use of narrative storytelling and visual-arts-based approaches as knowledge translation tools in health care. Systematic Reviews, 2, 19.
91.
ScottT. (2012). Neurosciencemaysupersede ethics and law. Science and Engineering Ethics, 18(3), 433-437.
SmagorinskiP. (2008). The method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. Written Communication, 25(3), 389-411.
SwartsJ. (2010). Recycled writing: Assembling actor-networks from reusable content. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 24(2), 127-163.
97.
UttalW. R. (2011). Mind and brain: A critical appraisal of cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
98.
van AtteveldtN. M.van Aalderen-SmeetsS. I.JacobiC.RuigrokN. (2014). Media reporting of neuroscience depends on timing, topic and newspaper type. PLOS ONE, 9(8), e104780.
99.
VatzR. E. (1973). The myth of the rhetorical situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 6(3), 154-161.
100.
WalshJ. (2014, January30). So it’s true, I do have a conscience, even if it does bear an unfortunate resemblance to a Brussel sprouts. Independent.
WardyR. (2005). The birth of rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and their successors. New York, NY: Routledge.
103.
WeisbergD. S.KeilF. C.GoodsteinJ.RawsonE.GrayJ. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477.
