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Posted: 19-06-2012 13:23 Post subject: Psi: Who decides what "Science" thinks?

Whether it is book reviews on Amazon, articles in broadsheet newspapers, or editing wars on Wikipedia, the anti-parasychology skeptics swarm to pass negative comment on anything that purports to suggest there is any scientific evidence for Psi/telepathy whatsoever. Anything that says there is or might be is pseudo-science, gullible claptrap, poorly conducted, wildly misquoted but above all, no matter what evidence may be presented it must, they declare, be BS, and whichever eminent professor is putting it forward doesn't understand science at all, because... "Science does not accept the existence of ESP"/ "There is not a shred of scientific evidence for it".

Those arguing with them on the other hand seem to nearly always accept the claim at face value, and as a given.. because they respond in terms of criticising the conservative dinosaurs of materialist science, protest that science doesn't know everything and how arrogant to assume it does, and appeal to historical examples of denying meteors fall from the sky.....

Which kind of prompts the question: who exactly decided that "Science" - or even "mainstream science" - doesn't accept the reality of psi?

There is no body, no committee, no panel of supreme judges to issue a verdict. So what does it mean to say "scientists" don't believe something?
Which scientists?

Yesterday someone on my Facebook who is a space/science geek, a rabidly anti-clerical atheist and a member of the skeptics society put up a picture of Alan Turing, declaring him "my hero". I wondered if he was aware of Turing writing "How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming." But I decided against posting it, for the same reason one can't mention Einstein (definitely never Einstein) writing a friendly forward to a book on telepathy, Newton being a christian and a mystic, Edison's search for contact with the dead, Tesla's visions, the eminent Victorian knights and heroes of the scientific pantheon who set up the SPR, or Nobel Laureates like Josephson. And why not? Because it's forbidden with a quote from the Second Book Of Dawkins.

The quote is "Argument from Authority". These 3 words can be used to dismiss any subject matter where the views of greater or more qualified celebrity scientists than the sceptic are quoted in support. The very fact of quoting them deems the argument void in some mysterious way, because such views are clearly worthless in the face of what "Science" (capital S) now knows and its an act or desperation to base any belief on what clever men from history have said. Depending, of course, on what they've said...

If there is no supreme panel to declare what science thinks, and the individual big brains of science are not the authority, then what does that leave? The majority opinion?

I found the following passage from Christ Carter "Two surveys of over 500 scientists in one case and over 1,000 in another both found that the majority of respondents considered ESP “an established fact” or “a likely possibility”—56 percent in one and 67 percent in the other."

The exception was in the higher realms of academia and i the field of psychology. The majority of scientists overall however clearly saw the subject as valiid. A list of such surveys appears on wikipedia:

hihttp://en.wikademia.org/Surveys_of_academic_opinion_regarding_parapsychology

Extraordinarily one person - of the type I described in the first paragraph - commented online to Carter's quote the following "who cares if 100 out of 100 scientists believe in parapsychology, unless there is a significant body of evidence to prove something their opinions matter not"

?????????

So now we have no supreme authority called Science to offer a verdict or opinion
No authority from the great names and rock stars of the scientific world to determine the matter
And the opinions of the majority of practicing scientists - which appear to be consistently favourable - are also invalid, as its not a democracy either!

So who, exactly, determined that ESP has not been scientifically proven, or that science doesn't accept it? Who determines what is and is not a "significant body of evidence"?

Can anyone enlighten me?

Posted: 19-06-2012 14:31 Post subject:

But who do you mean by "the really big beasts"? Clearly not historically big if all the figures I mentioned are to be discarded...so presumably currently so. But who would they be? Hawkings is the only big name scientist familiar to the man in the street today I imagine.. Dawkins is a celebrity writer more than major scientific brain...who else is there to give their seal of approval? And why would their comments been any less irrelevant to anyone else's.

Brian Josephson is a nobel winning physicist, Rupert Sheldrake's academic qualifications are legion...but the fact they turn their attention tot he subject has not enhanced the reputation of hte subject but diminshed the reputation of the scientists in question.

So again who is the unimpeachable authority who would declare that there IS overwhelming or even sufficient evidence?

Posted: 19-06-2012 14:38 Post subject:

The current state of science, in the form of neuroscience, is that human beings are basically robots, whose actions are predetermined by subconscious zombie processes with only the illusions of conciousness and free will as rather unfortunate by-products.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/free-will-is-an-illusion_b_1562533.html

So, before you can expect scientists to wrap their heads around ESP and parapsychology, you have to get them to believe that human beings are really sentient, in the first place.

Posted: 19-06-2012 14:44 Post subject:

'Institutionalized science' represents an orthodoxy - an orthodoxy whose methodological tenets have afforded results that are relatively demonstrable, reliable, and useful. These results have accorded 'science' an aura of defensible authority that more rigid and less rigorous orthodoxies (e.g., religion) have never achieved.

However, 'science' has always run into difficulties addressing personal / mental phenomena. The sort of accusations and criticisms thrown at 'parapsychology' today were once heaped upon 'psychology' in general. It is still the case that some (e.g.) physical scientists don't consider psychology to be 'science' in the same sense as their own field.

Classical scientific method works best for phenomena that are relatively indisputable in terms of their observability, replicability, universality, and reliability (of occurrence / manifestation). All these four factors are difficult to establish for 'psychological' phenomena, and they're even more difficult to establish for 'parapsychological' phenomena.

The main problem (IMHO) in both cases lies in the fact that the phenomena of interest are both allusive and elusive. They are 'allusive' because they are attributed to varying degrees on the basis of personal reports rather than independently observable evidence. They are 'elusive' because they are not universal (across all humans) or necessarily uniform (in their manner of realization).

Mainstream science can't handle phenomena that are so allusive and elusive unless they can encompass them within the context of a theory that can be empirically tested. Psychology has struggled for well over a century to emulate hard science's methods without ever consistently achieving the sort of conclusive results one expects to obtain in (e.g.) physics.

Parapsychology is at an even greater disadvantage. For one thing, its focal subjects are even more allusive / elusive than the ones mainstream psychologists study. Another problem is that the field of parapsychology represents a haphazard collection of topics that don't fit anywhere else, as opposed to a coherent set of foci circumscribed by a specific class of entities, processes, etc. With no agreement on the subjects at issue or even a focal mechanism or phenomena tying them together thematically, there's little chance that parapsychology can achieve respectable status in the context of scientific orthodoxy.

Because mainstream science is not configured to address the allusive / elusive character of the paranormal, parapsychology's aspirations for operating in a 'scientific' manner might well be considered an exercise in futility.

If parapsychology wants to be accepted as 'science', they have to conform to the scientific orthodoxy. This means they need more empirically demonstrable evidence, coherent and testable theories for their subject phenomena, and tests whose outcomes represent more than statistical suggestions of 'maybe'.

As to why 'science' thinks so little of parapsychology - I can't see any reason why their mindset should allow anything more positive than what they've typically said. I'm not saying I think they're necessarily 'right'; I'm only saying they're practically obligated to dismiss anything that doesn't conform to the orthodoxy upon which their own careers and commitments are based.

As to who decides what 'science' thinks - it's a matter of whom a given journalist happens to contact in pursuing a given story.

Posted: 19-06-2012 14:54 Post subject:

Posted: 19-06-2012 15:08 Post subject:

There's been some misinterpreting of the point I was making.

I wasn't saying "Damn you, Science/scientists! Who do you think you are!" nor asking "Why don't they just accept psi?!"

In fact my point was the complete opposite.

I'm questioning the very assumption that science.. as a discipline or a community of individuals - has any such consensus (be it "general" or "overwhelming") against the established reality of Psi at all.

The key is in those surveys which appear to show a favourable disposition amongst the general body of the scientific community... a fact which appears to be either unknown, ignored or deemed irrelavant by the "skeptical" lobby.

To put it another way, my whole point is to suggest that when someone online claims that "most scientists" dismiss or remain unimpressed etc etc....wouldn't the appropriate response be to ask "who told you that, and why did you believe them?"

Posted: 19-06-2012 15:33 Post subject:

Posted: 19-06-2012 15:35 Post subject:

Posted: 11-07-2012 22:19 Post subject:

I've always felt that the main problem with stating that Psi is false is that in many cases it is based on experiments that have a low chance of success even if pSI was true, for example take telepathy, you need to prove Person A can obtain information from the mind of Person B without any technological aids, unfortuneately many experiments are done by picking an item at random that person B cannot know so that in order to prove that A can read a piece of information from b that B knows at any point over a day or longer they instead try to prove A read b over a few seconds, imagine trying to prove sight by putting a sign on a shed a t the back of a garden for five minutes then removing it and asking someone to write what it said.
Also none of the reports I have read include any mention of how the conditions will affect the results, if a requirement for mentally contacting the dead is complete darkness and relaxed then tying someone up in their underwear in a fully lit room will disprove the theory even if the theory was correct, science acts on the assumption that to prove something only certain conditions are acceptable, without feeling it neccessary to have those conditions match the real worldit would be easy to perform an experiment to prove the "someone is talking about me effect" is potentially real (and yes I have the basics of one) but it would be impossible to do so under scientific conditions.