Re: (f)MRI as a Dark Art ... ?
fMRI is best described as "how do you want the result"? It is a case where a small dataset is not sufficient.
The IGNoble Price 2012 for neuroscience proves this rather drastic.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/
http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
Anything based on fMRI with a test base lower than a few million and sigma lower 5 is tarot reading from an expensive toy. fMRI is used by medical people, but the necessary evaluations have to be done on raw data by professionals in mathematics, statistics an computer science. Not by someone, who can use SPSS.