TY - JOUR T1 - On Fallacies in Neuroscience JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0491-20.2020 VL - 7 IS - 6 SP - ENEURO.0491-20.2020 AU - Christophe Bernard Y1 - 2020/11/01 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/6/ENEURO.0491-20.2020.abstract N2 - A fallacious argument is one that seems to be valid but is not so. Why are fallacies so commonplace in scientific papers, and why can we not detect them when we read them? This editorial attempts to address these questions, which are central to do better science.As a working example, let us consider a paper I read in a high-profile journal, which caught my attention. The title was “whoa,” potentially a ground-breaking finding. I read the abstract, in which the authors describe their results: Following a given brain insult, there is cell death. When gene x is removed, cell death is considerably increased. The conclusion of the abstract and title reads: “protein X is neuroprotective.” A red light started to flash in my brain. I thought that, maybe, the authors could not describe all their results in the abstract. After reading the results section, I found that all they had done was to compare cell death following an insult in the presence and absence of X. Yet, the conclusion was “X is neuroprotective.” The latter is a very strong statement, as it implies that we now have a cool target to prevent cell death. However, the paper does not contain any data supporting this conclusion. I then asked myself: how come the reviewers did not notice it? What about the handling editor? Of course, this makes a very sexy title, one that attracts readers.I decided to run an experiment. I contacted several scientists, including editors, and asked them to read the paper and tell me what they thought about it. The answer was “great story.” After asking them to read the title and abstract carefully, still, nothing wrong was detected. I did the same at my institute. Only one PhD student detected it.Why can we not see … ER -