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I have wanted to write about this issue for a few months now and have finally gotten around to it. Science writer Kayt Sukel created a small splash in the blogosphere in January when she wrote a few blog posts (see here and here ) about her experiences orgasming in an MRI machine (or, as she puts it, “coming for science”) as part of a study conducted by Barry Komisaruk and Nan Wise at Rutgers University. Sukel’s posts were intended to serve as teasers for her book, Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships (full disclosure, I haven’t read her book yet). For an earlier account of an attempt to “come for science” see science writer Mary Roach’s highly entertaining book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex . About the Research and Its Contributions: Barry Komisaruk has been a pioneer in the use of fMRI to study orgasm (for an example of his work, see here ), and a number of other researchers have also used PET and fMRI technologies to try to understand...

I recently found myself thinking about how we would allow evidence dealing with neuroscience into the courtroom. The question interested me because I wanted to know how our judicial system would differentiate between real and useful evidence versus what may seem no better than allowing a Shaman enter to argue a point based on "evidentiary mysticism".  What I found was that there are two different legal rules for allowing use of neuroscience evidence. The first is the Frye rule and the second is the Daubert rule. Daubert applies in Federal Courts and in States that have adopted it, while the Frye rule applies in all other courts. The difference between the texts of the standards can seem nuanced but presents two different outcomes judicially. Joseph T. Walsh has a great primer on the two rules if you would like to explore them more, but the issue that I would like to deal with here is simple and does not require a complete knowledge of both rules. Basically you just have to un...