ArticleScience and engineering ethics2017
Media Portrayal of a Landmark Neuroscience Experiment on Free Will.
Article in Science and engineering ethics, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- What is the intention to move and when does it occur?Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Automatic or controlled: How does disbelief in free will influence cognitive functioning?British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2022Article
- Non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroenhancement.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2022Review
- What Is the Readiness Potential?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2021Review
- Free will and neurosurgical resections of the supplementary motor area: a critical review.Acta neurochirurgica · 2021Review
- The Principle of Autonomy and Behavioural Variant Frontotemporal Dementia.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2020Article
- Free Will and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction: The Not So Seductive Allure of Neuroscience and Its Modest Impact on the Attribution of Free Will to People with an Addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- A Proposal for a Scientifically-Informed and Instrumentalist Account of Free Will and Voluntary Action.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet's et al.'s (Brain 106(Pt 3):623-642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently interpreted as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.'s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.'s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake.
Indexed as
Identifiers
27882504What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.