Raise of Snake Oil Neuroscientists

Welcome to Planet Earth - the fight of all fights is in the horizon:

"I have such high hopes for neuroscience that I’m so upset by two trends in financing of the field. One involves neuroscience’s growing dependence on the Pentagon, which is seeking new ways to help our soldiers and harm our enemies. For a still-timely overview of neuroweapons research, check out the 2006 book Mind Wars by bioethicist Jonathan Moreno of the University of Pennsylvania. (PR disclosure: I brought Moreno to my school to give a talk on March 10.) Potential neuroweapons include drugs, transcranial magnetic stimulators and implanted brain chips that soup up the sensory capacities and memories of soldiers, as well as brain-scanners and electromagnetic beams that read, control or scramble the thoughts of bad guys.
 
Here are some ethical questions: Will the militarization of neuroscience really make the world safer, or just trigger a new arms race? Have researchers considered how non-Americans are likely to perceive our neuroweapons program? Some neuroscientists dismiss bionic warriors as a sci-fi fantasy unlikely to be realized soon, if ever. But then should researchers exploit the U.S. military’s gullibility?
 
What about taking advantage of baby boomers—like me--desperately trying to ward off the effects of aging? That brings me to another disturbing neuroeconomics trend. A firm calledPosit Science recently started sending me unsolicited emails bragging about how its software programs, which cost about $400 each, have been “clinically proven to help you: Think Faster. Focus Better. Remember More.” The marketing reminded me of cheesy infomercials for exercise gadgets like the Ab Rocket or Bowflex. The Posit Science website revealed, to my surprise, that the company was co-founded by Michael Merzenich of the University of California at San Francisco, an authority on neuroplasticity."