How Neuropsychology Lost Its Mind

Is the pilot on your airplane fit to fly? Is your surgeon too old to operate on your heart? Does your daughter have brain damage? Such are the serious questions that neuropsychologists must answer daily, and to ensure that we reach the right decisions, we spend years in advanced scientific study and training.

But since 2022, neuropsychology has suddenly found itself confronted by far-left activists demanding to transform it based on unfounded accusations of systemic racism. They are doing so under the guise of the “Minnesota Conference,” a meeting filled with representatives from the field’s professional associations and charged with recommending updates to neuropsychology’s training guidelines — guidelines that will be finalized in the coming months. The ideologues opened the conference by demanding “paradigmatic changes” in how neuropsychologists do science to make it more “equitable and just,” effectively decentering science to “center social justice and representation.” Among other deeply concerning citations, the conference pointed to a reading that explained that science contributes to “systems of oppression” and is corroded by “colonial and capitalistic mentalities.” For a science-based field, antagonism toward science is intellectual suicide.

LB

About the Author

Larry Brooks

Larry Brooks is a board-certified neuropsychologist and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm.

Featured Tags

Is the pilot on your airplane fit to fly? Is your surgeon too old to operate on your heart? Does your daughter have brain damage? Such are the serious questions that neuropsychologists must answer daily, and to ensure that we reach the right decisions, we spend years in advanced scientific study and training.

But since 2022, neuropsychology has suddenly found itself confronted by far-left activists demanding to transform it based on unfounded accusations of systemic racism. They are doing so under the guise of the “Minnesota Conference,” a meeting filled with representatives from the field’s professional associations and charged with recommending updates to neuropsychology’s training guidelines — guidelines that will be finalized in the coming months. The ideologues opened the conference by demanding “paradigmatic changes” in how neuropsychologists do science to make it more “equitable and just,” effectively decentering science to “center social justice and representation.” Among other deeply concerning citations, the conference pointed to a reading that explained that science contributes to “systems of oppression” and is corroded by “colonial and capitalistic mentalities.” For a science-based field, antagonism toward science is intellectual suicide.