Current information and clarification is available on an article that was originally brought up on the College of Business website and then published on the Auburn University home page.
Joe McAdory, communications editor of the College of Business, published an article for the College of Business website on September 15.
The article, “MRI scans reveal if nutritional labeling impacts consumer choices,” deals with the research of Brian Bourdeau, associate professor of marketing.
The article was then published on the Auburn University home page on October 2 with the guidance of Charles Martin, communications editor of the Office of Communications and Marketing, according to Mike Clardy, interim assistant vice president and director of university communications.
With his research, Bourdeau hopes to find out how and why people react to nutritional labels in determining if the labels are effective health and marketing tools by possibly using the MRI scans in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s MRI Research Center.
The article published on both websites in conjunction with what Professor Bourdeau said sparked some concern in regards to the time period of the research being conducted, how the research is being carried out and the inferences that can be drawn from the research.
Jennifer Robinson, assistant professor of psychology, is on staff at the MRI research center.
Robinson said that the article came as a surprise to herself and her fellow employees because they had not heard anything about Bourdeau’s research.
“It hasn’t been brought up at the MRI center staff meetings either, so it was kind of like – we’re a little confused with who he’s working with at the center and if he’s done MRI research before,” Robinson said. “It’s kind of an odd paradigm to make a story on research that might be conducted.”
Currently, Bourdeau said he is still in the process of figuring out how he will set up his research.
“We’re really in the early stages,” Bourdeau said.
Bourdeau said he hopes to complete his research in the next six months to a year.
McAdory said that his article describes the general plan of Bourdeau’s research and that he did not try to make the article seem as if he has already been doing the research.
“It’s just a grand idea – here’s what he’s going to be doing – here’s how it works even though an actual person has not been in [the MRI scan] yet.”
McAdory said he is looking forward to do a follow up article on Bourdeau’s research.
“Once it comes back out, I can’t wait to do the follow up,” McAdory said.
An aspect of the research that raises some questions is how Bourdeau plans to conduct his experiment.
Bourdeau said that he will use the MRI scans in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s MRI Research Center to complete his research, and the article claims the same; however, staff from the center said they were not aware of the research.
Thomas Denney, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is the director of the Auburn University MRI Research Center.
Denney said he talked with Bourdeau about two to three years ago in regards to his research.
"Nothing really happened after that," Denney said.
Bourdeau has not talked to the MRI research center staff recently about his research, according to Denney.
"It's pretty common for a project to lie dormant for a while then all of a sudden it pops back up," Denney said. "I'm sure he's planning on doing [the research]; much has not happened lately."
Bourdeau said he has not reached out yet because he is still in the process of collecting initial data.
"We want to make sure that we get it right the first time," Bourdeau said. "So, we just haven't gotten to that point yet."
Another area of confusion that is brought up in the article is the idea of the type of inferences that can be made from this research.
Robinson, who has research involving the use of fMRI and MRI in her examination of how emotions and cognition relate and how they are affected by stress hormones, said that she has some concerns regarding the article.
“It’s really interesting because I read the blurb on the [Auburn] home page about this, and there were a couple things that were not off putting but just incorrect about the conclusions that you can make from these types of brain data,” Robinson said. “It said that fMRI was basically a lie detector test, which it totally is not."
Robinson said the fMRI is an amazing instrument to look at brain activity, but caution needs to be taken when making conclusions about the data.
“The inferences that you make regarding what data you get out, so from my understanding comparing situations where people are reading nutritional labels versus situations when they’re not, you just have to be very, very careful about the types of conclusions that you draw from those data, so that’s kind of where it gets a little messy,” Robinson said.
Bourdeau said he understands how careful he has to be with making inferences from the MRI data, and he is using a multi-method multi-trait approach in order to help with making those inferences.
"Once we get the data from that, that's going to really kind of hone in on what we want to look at in terms of using the MRI," Bourdeau said.
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