Annotation
Neuroscience did surge in prestige and funding through the 2010s, but its bid for paradigmatic dominance was undermined by the replication crisis: fMRI studies proved particularly unreliable, and when seventy independent teams analyzed the same neuroimaging dataset, they used seventy different analytical pipelines and reached substantially different conclusions. The two schools did not so much compete as merge into cognitive neuroscience, making the Kuhnian horse race Tracy, Robins, and Gosling anticipated somewhat moot.
What Actually Happened
Neuroscience surged in prestige and funding through the 2010s — the US BRAIN Initiative (2013) and the EU Human Brain Project (2013) poured billions into the field. However, the replication crisis hit neuroscience hard: fMRI studies proved particularly unreliable, and a 2020 study showed seventy independent teams analyzing the same neuroimaging dataset reached substantially different conclusions using different analytical pipelines. The two schools merged into cognitive neuroscience rather than competing for dominance, making the Kuhnian framework largely inapplicable.