«In one famous example of the flaws of fMRIs [Harris' PHd topic], researchers used a dead salmon as their fMRI subject. The salmon was shown a series of images of various human social situations, designed to evoke an emotional response. The researchers found that, using the standard methods employed by neuroscientists and psychologists, the dead salmon responded to the images, illustrating the insanely high false-positive rate of fMRI research.

[The statistician William Briggs, having studied the thesis] summarises:

“During the course of my investigation of scientism and bad science, I have read a great many bad, poorly reasoned papers. This one might not be the worst, but it deserves a prize for mangling the largest number of things simultaneously.”»