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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

The article says "Using MRIs to gauge". I've never seen a supermarket with an MRI. I have a seen a mall with an MRI, but it was more of an opportune space. It didn't face inwards into the mall concourse but was on the end.

So in other words, the study probably took people from a mall or supermarket after a set amount of time and MRI'd them in exchange for $25 or something. I really doubt they measured anything relevant here.

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MRIs are highly sensitive and can detect things that you wouldn't think possible.

This study, for example, is quite telling:

https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/

It’s not about what the MRI can measure but whether measuring within an MRI machine lets you extrapolate to real-world behavior in a totally different environment.

They put people in an MRI and then asked them to decide between various discounts and buy-one-get-one-free offers like they would face in a supermarket.

Because the experience of shopping in a super market or a mall is similar to laying in an MRI making all sorts of loud and disturbing noises? How they can even attempt to draw these conclusions is just farcical to me

Obligatory dead salmon study link: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe...

fMRI studies are largely bullshit in the best of times. Using it to study an abstract effect is doubly so.

From your link:

> Some people like to use the salmon study as proof that fMRI is woo, but this isn't the case, it's actually a study to show the importance of correcting your stats.

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