Reply to post: Re: If you use something in your work that is a "black box" to you, you take a risk

fMRI bugs could upend years of research

a_yank_lurker

Re: If you use something in your work that is a "black box" to you, you take a risk

You were taught enough to have a fair understanding of how it worked commensurate with the amount of math and quantum mechanics you studied prior. This is true of all areas of science and engineering, you learn your field reasonably deeply but you are relatively weak in related fields.

The problem is when one must rely to on "black boxes" that they did not design, build, and program. One will always be at risk either misusing the black box or, as in the case, the black box has a serious flaw that corrupts the data and invalidates the experiments. I seriously doubt any of these researchers could design, build, and program an MRI machine.

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