In the Lab With the Dalai Lama.

WASHINGTON (D.C.); UNITED States

The article focuses on disputes over the speech of Buddhist leader Dalai Lama XIV at the Society for Neuroscience meeting held in Washington D.C. in November 2005. Choosing the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader to inaugurate the professional association's series on neuroscience and society certainly got people talking. Inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at the meeting created two major border disputes. The first, of modest consequence to religion-and-science debates, was the conflict over the "political agenda" of the exiled Tibetan leader. The second dispute, more insistently debated, was over religion's showing up at an annual meeting of neuroscientists. It was viewed that a science conference is not an appropriate venue for a religion-based presentation.