The most bothersome thing to me isn't these silly will power studies, but rather the whole new fields of "neuropsychology" and "behavioral neuroscience" that are getting so many billions of dollars and one press article after the next to espouse that which we know to be false (and have known since very shortly after Watson). Next week someone will come along and "prove" that the cookie-will-power theory is "correct" because they hooked the subjects up to an fMRI and their brains "lit up" every time they denied themselves a cookie. The truly sad thing isn't that there are no scientists doing psychology; it's that there are no requirements to have any kind of philosophical moorings to get into experimental science.

So, er, how do you propose studying the brain? Behavourism is bunk, brain imaging is bunk? If a brain area lights up consistently when you deny yourself something, that sounds like something is going on there, don't you think? If it was the prefrontal cortex, that would be exciting, actually. Screams cognitive control.