> So for your example, what is the dead salmon study satirizing? Is there some other study that did something similar that they're making fun of? Is there a broader scientific movement that they're criticizing?

Yes. fMRI studies are used to "prove" this and that about cortex activation under certain kinds of tasks, and they're demonstrating that even a dead salmon shows significant activity under fMRI if you analyze it "in the standard way". Thus, it's absurd to draw conclusions in a psychological or psychiatric context without screening for false positives.

The arch-satirist Jonathan Swift is always my archetype. A modest proposal was about the famine in Ireland, but more than that, it was about a certain kind of English attitude that external technocracy could solve problems in the face of exploitation and callous disregard.