Bio comp debate Flashcards
Give an argument for the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with treating criminal behaviour.
One argument in favour of neuroscience being ethical is that neuroscience can be used to help ‘treat’ and therefore prevent criminal behaviour.
For example, it could be said that the main aim of any criminal justice system to to try and rehabilitate offenders in order to prevent that individual from committing further crimes against society, some neuroscientists claim that neuroscience can help achieve this rehabilitation, this is because they believe that the root cause of criminal behaviour is abnormal level of neurotransmitters, if this is true it means we can use drugs that adjust the levels of these neurotransmitters to help ‘treat’ criminality.
This belief of criminal behaviour being caused by neurotransmitters also has the support of research evidence, for instance Cherek et al investigated the levels of impulsivity and aggression in males with a history of conduct disorder and criminal behaviour.
Through 21 days, half the participants were put into a control group who were given a placebo and the other half into an experimental group who received paroxetine (an SSRI depressant).
The results showed that those who received paroxetine showed a significant reduction in both impulsive and aggressive behaviours by the end of the study.
This suggests that offering pharmacological treatments to criminals could be used to reduce recidivism and create a safer society.
Give an argument against the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with treating criminal behaviour.
However, a counterargument to the idea that we should use neuroscience to prevent criminal behaviour is that, even if there is indeed proved to be a neurological basis to criminal behaviour, it would not change the fact that using neuroscience to try and prevent criminal behaviour would be an extremely unethical practise.
For example, neuroscience would suggest that in order to help reduce recidivism, we need to introduce mandatory neurological interventions of prisoners. Farah argues that courts using neurological interventions on prisoners signals the denial of an individual’s freedom to have their own personality and think their own thoughts, something that has never happened in history to prisoners.
Additionally, under neuroscience, a court may offer a convicted criminal the choice between a prison term or a course of medication.
This introduces the ethical issue of implicit coercion where the criminal is left with very little choice about if they take medication or not.
Give an argument for the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with enhancing neurological function
Another advantage of the use of neuroscience is its used to ‘neurohenhance’ / improve the abilities of regular individuals, such as improved performance on complex academic tasks.
One example of this is Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS) which involves passing a small electric current across specific regions of the brain.
Kadosh et al found that TDCS leads to improvements in problem solving, attention capabilities, mathematical ability, language and memory for individuals who use it.
This can be useful in the real world, for instance students could use TDCS apparatus in preparation for examinations.
However It could be argued that neuroenhancement is not such a new thing. Many students already neuroenhance themselves whenever they use caffeine based drinks to block adenosine receptors in the brain and are hence more alert when revising.
Give an argument against the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with enhancing neurological function
A counterargument to this also comes from Kadosh et al, who warns of ethical limitations to TDCS technology. For instance there are no training or licensing rules for practitioners. This could lead to poorly qualified clinicians administering ineffective treatments at best or at worst causing brain damage to patients.
Additionally, although TDCS comparatively cheap, the apparatus is not available to everyone meaning it may not be fair to allow some individuals to benefit from a treatment that isn’t available to everyone.
Therefore it makes the question of if this is an unfair advantage to those who use it and we should we consider banning the use of neuroenhancing technologies in the same way as performance-enhancing substances are banned in sport?
This might be especially important when using the treatment on brains that are still developing such as with younger people.
Give an argument for the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with enhancing marketing techniques
One argument in favour of neuroscience being ethical is that neuroscience can be used to help improve marketing techniques. This concept is known as ‘neuromarketing’.
Neuromarketing aims to use neuroscience to eliminate the factor of social desirability bias during marketing researcher interviews on participants. This is because many participants will not give their true opinion because they want to appear in a ‘good light’ to the marketer.
The aim to do this by utilising new technology such as eye tracking in order to provide objective evidence of what really catches a person’s eye when they are shopping or watching advertisements.
Another development of neuroscience on enhancing marketing techniques is the use of EEG, which can also be used to gather and analyse objective neurological responses to what the person sees.
This has been shown to be effective in marketing. This was seen when a company called Sands Research used this kind of neuromarketing research when creating the highly successful ad ‘the force’ for Volkswagen.
Doug van Praet, part of the creative team behind this ad notes that this ad ‘upped traffic to the VW website by 50% and contributed to a hugely successful sales year for the brand, highlighting the effectiveness of neuroscience in this field.
Give an argument against the ethics of Neuroscience in understanding Neuroscience to do with enhancing marketing techniques
However, some critics may argue that the usefulness of neuroscience in marketing does not out way the costs, and also may question the usefulness of neuroscience in this field to begin with.
For instance, advertisers accessing information about consumer preferences and behaviours is not new and exclusive to neuromarketing, for example the use of loyalty cards and analysing the online browsing records of individuals have helped make product marketing much more effective over recent years, which puts into the question the real usefulness of neuroscience and suggests the costs out way the benefits of neuro-marketing, making it unethical.
Additionally, many argue that using neuroscience in this field is extremely unethical compared to these alternative methods of assessing consumer preferences.
This is because neuromarketing such as EEG gains companies access to our inner thoughts. Wilson et al believes commercial integration of neuromarketing research will eventually allow advertisers to deliver individualised messages where our free will is potentially manipulated by large companies’.
Do we really want corporations to be able to produce marketing messages that remove our ability to make informed decisions about whether or not we purchase a product?
Additionally, current neuromarketing firms are not obliged to abide by ethical codes of practise, in fact Nelson found that 5% of the brain scans recorded by neuromarketing firms produced incidental findings such as evidence of a problems with someone’s brain function e.g brain tumour yet because the researchers are not board certified, they are not obliged to follow appropriate ethical protocols such as advising the individual of their findings, which many would consider extremely unethical.
What are the ethical, social and economical implications of improving marketing techniques using neuroscience.
Improving marketing techniques can aid the economy by stimulating sails and profits as discussed on the right. However, these are by no means the only social and economic implications of neuroscience. Some are more beneficial to us all.
For example, the Nuffeld Trust points out that since the financial crisis started in 2007. there has been an increase in the amount of anti-depressants being prescribed to people.
The Trust also noted a greater rise in antidepressant usage amongst areas of the population with higher rates of unemployment. Thomas and Morris estimated that the total cost of depression in adults in England alone was 9.1 billion in 2000. According to Alzheimer’s research UK, the cost to the UK economy of treating dementia is 23 billion each year.
This shows the implications of neuroscience as neuroscientists who help treat or even cure these disorders could save the UK economy billions of pounds and neuroscientists have a responsibility to ensure that the societies in which they work are informed and aware of the implications of their work.
