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Brain testing voters

The Wall Street Journal had a story on Friday about presidential candidates using "neuroscience" to test voters' reactions to certain issues and messages. Market researchers have been doing this for several decades, of course; it's only recently that campaigns have had enough money to spend spare tens of thousands on brain scans.

I probably would be more upset about this practice if I thought it worked. As it stands now, the whole thing smacks of snake oil. But it's worth pausing to consider what's going on here, aside from the colossal waste of money: these presidential candidates are essentially trying to read voters' minds.

Most Americans know that electoral politics here is a joke, that presidential candidates live and die by polls. But brain testing and the public's ho-hum response suggests is that even the pretense of having integrity is scarcely necessary. Now that is terrifying.