Brain scanners cast doubt on free will?

[Xelios]

I'm putting this in pseudoscience, because I think this experiment (and especially the conclusion drawn) can hardly be called science, but lets hear what you guys think.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions.

I guess my first thought here is their prediction was right a maximum of 60% of the time, hardly more than pure guesswork (50%). Beyond that they seem to attribute excitation in the brain areas responsible for motor control and high level planning as proof that a decision has been made, when really it could just be the first steps to making a decision. You think about what has to be done, plan the two possible choices, then make the conscious decision about which hand to use afterward.

So 2 questions, what do you think, and how is this science worthy of being in Nature?