OH LOOK its everyone's favourite 'brain science' picture, dusted off today for another circuit of the newspapers that love brain science. 🧠🧠🧠 
Here's The Sun telling us about emotional distress and neglect thesun.co.uk/fabulous/48253…
The Daily Mail describe the differences as 'stunning' dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6…
The Daily Express suggests that this research might 'revolutionise' mental health treatment in schools pressreader.com/uk/daily-expre…
None of these articles mention that this research was first published in 2002 - these are not 'new' findings. Why, then, are they all presenting it as such?
None of these newspaper summaries describe the incredibly limited dataset from which these images are taken. These were small numbers of children, divided into different categories of 'neglect' by researchers using multiple sources (police records for eg)
For the children allocated to the 'global neglect' category (themes extreme one), researchers had just 17 CT and MRI scans.
You can read the original research paper here: its interesting enough, but certainly not the kind of large-scale, robust dataset that is presented by this newspaper coverage researchgate.net/publication/22…
These two images have been used before - they formed the front page of 'Early Intervention: The Next Steps', published in 2011 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
In that report, Graham Allen MP cherrypicked the research to argue that " in a child’s earliest years, the right kind of parenting is a bigger influence on their future than wealth, class, education or any other common social factor" (page 8)
The report stated that "the cycle of wasted potential, low achievement, drink and drug misuse, unintended teenage pregnancy,
low work aspirations, antisocial behaviour and lifetimes on benefits" could be tracked back to early childhood and what mothers do/do not do.
low work aspirations, antisocial behaviour and lifetimes on benefits" could be tracked back to early childhood and what mothers do/do not do.
It also lamented the 'billions and billions of pounds' that were 'wasted' on public services (cast here as 'expensive late intervention') and recommends that state expenditure be transferred to 'private investors, seeking a worthwhile rate of return'
Ellie Lee from @CPCS_UniKent dismantles the prejudices behind this report and its use of these brain scan images, out of context, here: blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingcultu…
It is also worth thinking about why these images of toddler brain scans are being re-circulated today? What ideological work does 'brain science' do, in an era of austerity and mother-blaming? cc @neurobollocks
In a week when the UN poverty envoy described UK austerity as 'punitive, mean-spirited and callous', what hegemonic work is being done when newspapers circulate brain scans from a small trauma study published sixteen years ago?
If you want to know more, I *highly* recommend reading 'Rescuing the Infant Brain', chapter from this amazing book policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/challenging-th…
