Atheism guide on About.com recently posted an article titled Why Do Some Treat Parapsychology as a Science?. In this article Austin Cline asks the question if parapsychology should be treated like a science or pseudoscience. He writes that supporters do treat it like a science and you can study it in some universities around the world. Then, there are two paragraphs from his articles that I’d like to quote:
Most of mainstream science completely ignores parapsychology, at least when not criticizing it. It’s almost unheard of for mainstream science journals to publish peer-reviewed papers on parapsychology. Funding for research doesn’t come from the usual sources — parapsychologists must rely upon private donors or from other institutions already in the field.
Claims of psychic powers present a problem for traditional science because they imply the existence of powers which are not merely unknown to science, but which in fact contradict well-established scientific laws and understandings of how the universe works. This does not mean that claims of psychic powers are necessarily false, but rather than their existence is a priori unlikely.
He then concludes with the usual note of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”.
Do you think that parapsychology is a real field of science?
Well stated, Topher. Twice. Skepticism of this sort is a belief system. The blanket statement about “no repeatable demonstrations” is one we’ve all seen again and again: the argument from ignorance. If you think a priori that the field is silly and delusional, you’re not going to take the time to research the experimental database for yourself and see that there’s a huge body of solid evidence. Why should you? It’s beneath your contempt. Instead, you’ll take the word of a “real scientists.” Well, real scientists have biases and agenda like anyone else. Review the data and make up your own mind.
I encountered this blinkered way of thinking in my own mind recently when a blog poster started talking to me about he evidence for UFO visits. I found myself scoffing and starting to reply to him that the so-called evidence was obviously a lot of garbage, but then I caught myself. I realized, “Good grief, I sound exactly like one of those uneducated skeptics who say, “Psi can’t be true because I don’t think it can be.” I don’t know anything about the UFO evidence, because it’s not a field I care about. I suspect it’s not real, but I don’t “know” that. And until I take the time to look at the data and make up my own mind, I owe it to myself and the people who do research in that area to not make up my mind. Because I really don’t KNOW. My advance biases don’t count as knowledge. And that’s what I wrote in reply.
You’re right, Topher. It’s a waste of time trying to combat blind skepticism. The data is out there for people who want to find it. I was a completely skeptical journalist, but after a year reading the literature and talking with some of the sharpest minds in the field, I’m convinced about psi. Researchers and their supporters need to move ahead with the business of science in this area and of raising funds and public awareness to support it. Let the skeptics rant and foam. It’s not worth our time trying to hit a moving target.
We all must make decisions about what is true and what is not. Its perfectly OK to say to yourself, “the evidence I have seen for [say] UFOs is completely unconvincing and insufficient to overcome my prior doubt, therefore I will not spend my time looking further at the evidence.” Life is short and we have limited resources to spend, and we must make tentative evaluations. The important thing is to understand that those evaluations are tentative, personal and based on our prior biases, not on firm knowledge. Its OK to say “I don’t believe in UFOs, and I doubt that there is evidence sufficient to convince me otherwise.” Its even OK to say “I don’t believe in UFOs and I believe that the evidence is garbage.” We all have beliefs, based on how we view the world.
What is not OK is to say, “I haven’t looked at most of the evidence but I *know* that UFOs don’t exist and I *know* that the evidence is all trash.” Other people have other experiences and assuming that your differences are because of your intellectual or moral superiority is an intellectually and morally inferior approach to learning about the world.
“Evidence of lack is not lack of evidence” especially when the “lack of evidence” you are referring to is “lack of evidence known to me”. But that doesn’t mean that the issue is worth pursuing. You can respect other people’s opinions without agreeing with them or even keeping a completely open mind about those beliefs.
Science has made certain assumptions and those assumptions have been incorporated into its theories as absolutes. Parapsychology tests those assumptions and has falsified them — repeatedly. That is not to say that those assumptions are not useful under many circumstances or that the theories are wrong — it means that the normal course of the development of scientific theories has been followed and the old theory (e.g., Newtonian gravity) has been discovered to be a simplification of a newer one (e.g., General Relativity).
What makes psi an extraordinary hypothesis (beyond purely emotional reactions by people) is that it has been assumed to be false for a long time, and its truth would make the world a much more complex place from the view of experimental science. That does call for “extraordinary proof” — a few dozen very carefully done experimental replications. We have thousands, so the requirement has been met.
Fundamentalist disbelievers (“Skeptics”) use the “extraordinary claims” dictum to justify a never ending quest to set the goal-posts higher every time their previous requirements have been set — without any need to make their requirements conform even vaguely to anything required for evidence anywhere else in science or logic.
For example, Bryan once again puts up his requirement that there is an unstated time limit (apparently independent of the available resources during that time period) by which an experiment producing definitive demonstration of the phenomenon in question and which can be done at will. Note that this is quite a distinct requirement from the requirement of “independent replication” usually required in science.
Note that there is no such requirement in any other field. In fact, a very large percentage of “cutting edge” research in most fields would be tossed out if it were imposed. You can look elsewhere in this blog for his special pleading as to why this should be required of parapsychology but not fields that he feels comfortable with.
What is required for a phenomenon to meet Bryan’s requirements? It must be simple, easily isolatable from influences that affect it, and thoroughly understood. Of course, none of these are true — or would be expected to be — of parapsychology. So as long as the true disbelievers can continue to make progress difficult for parapsychology, and keep moving their proverbial goal-posts, they can be secure in their knowledge that no one will ever prove that the world is round … I mean, that psi phenomena exist.
Other fields, real sciences, have robust, repeatable demonstrations, but of course experiments do not start that way. Obviously “cutting edge” research is not repeating established demonstrations; that means nothing to the reliable results at the foundation of a field. Why does the parapsychology apologist have to try to drag down science?
Topher says, “Bryan once again puts up his requirement that there is an unstated time limit…” Six or seven decades of research without a single repeatable demonstration is not a deadline; it’s where things stand. The conclusion I’ve stated — and quoted from a real scientist — is that continued failure is a good bet. Possibly the latest psi experiment will turn out to be repeatable. Yogic flyers might levitate, and the zoo might get a yeti.
Note my actual answer to Jacob’s question about whether Parapsychology is a real field of science: “The field is not a science because it lacks predictive theory; it is immune to refutation.” When Topher talks about “Bryan’s requirements”, well, I wish that were smart enough to originate an idea like that. The requirement is basic to the scientific method and I’m just pointing out how parapsychology flunks.
If parapsychology could falsify current scientific theories, that would be terrific; falsification results have won Nobel prizes. If one disproves an accepted theory of, say spectroscopy, that’s not a new field of science, not by itself anyway. It’s a spectroscopy result, publishable in the spectroscopy literature. Spectroscopy is an arbitrary example here; in fact parapsychology has never contributed any such result to any field.
Who’s theories, specifically, does parapsychology claim to disprove? Pretty much just the skeptics. We skeptics have a theory, and that theory makes a prediction: when we ask for the demo under expert controls against folly and fraud, the psi-believers will flee or fail. So far it looks repeatable.
–Bryan
There was a fair question in there.
There is a general assumption throughout experimental science that systems can be physically isolated. This is fundamental to how experiments are done. Parapsychology has demonstrated that when far more care is taken than is used elsewhere in experimental science to isolate systems frequently an effect still occurs. No system of isolation — neither physical barriers, logical complexity, distance, nor time — has proven consistently effective. All leave a consistent residue effect at about the same rate as most accepted scientific experimental results.
Does the effect show up every time? No, clearly there are limits but we have no control of them. Is it really true that for something to be falsified that it must be obviously false all the time?
For well over 100 years the Skeptics have demanded that demonstrations be given that falsify their beliefs. Time and time again, that has been done. Time and time again they have said “do it again, that one didn’t count”. Repeat, repeat, repeat — “Wait that one didn’t work! That’s the one that counts, obviously the others were poorly done even though I can’t find anything different about it”. It’s a sucker’s game, we need to get on with doing science and stop wasting resources — personal and collective — on letting scientismist zealots play their game.
Chuck Honorton wasted too much of his tragically short life on this. He got together with major Skeptic Ray Hyman. He designed an experiment, the Auto Ganzfeld, that met every one of Hyman’s criticisms, however far-fetched. Hyman signed off on the design, as did outside experts. Results were positive. Hyman made up some new criticisms out of thin air. Those were met in the next round. Finally Hyman had to admit that there was nothing wrong that he could see, but that it was still obviously flawed “somehow” and therefore “unconvincing” and not evidence for anything.
Hey Bryan you should read professional parapsychologist George P. Hansen’s book http://tricksterbook.com he has lots of articles available at his website as well.
After six or seven decades of fairly serious research, Parapsychologists still do not have a single repeatable demonstration that what they are studying even exists. The field is not a science because it lacks predictive theory; it is immune to refutation. Psi can explain *anything*.
Mainstream scientists ignore Parapsychology because they have work to do. They have little time to study and assess results that do not impact their own research. An individual astronomer might coincidentally be interested in sea life, but Marine Biology is essentially irrelevant to Astronomy. Parapsychology is conveniently irrelevant to all.
Criticizing Parapsychology is unprofitable to mainstream scientists, and best left to the few dedicated skeptics. Parapsychology’s apologists just drag scientists down and waste their time. The evidence for psi is terrible, but the quantity of bad evidence is daunting. The simple observation that Parapsychologists cannot actually demonstrate anything is easily overwhelmed by the mass and volume of their special pleading.
Parapsychologists are ever bemoaning their lack of funding. The Psychic Power industry is huge — where is the research budget? The truth is that Parapsychology is irrelevant not only to science, but also to psychics and their believers.
Lest I fall afoul of the Law of Attraction, let me point out that the absence of psychic phenomena might be a *good* thing. Our minds do have amazing abilities — better than what the psychics pretend. In a world that works on consistent and discernible principles, we command the powers of observation and intellect.
–Bryan
This is from “the psychological side” of science by Nobel physicist Brian Josephson — readable on his website.
Other popular forms of attack are “if X were true we would have to start over again” (as we of course had to do with Relativity and Quantum Theory, and so the argument proves nothing), and then there is the dictum “Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence”, which has the marvellous feature of allowing the requirements for acceptable proof to be stretched indefinitely as more and more support for a contested claim comes in. Its originator, the late Marcello Truzzi, later decided that his comment was ‘a non sequitur, meaningless and question-begging’, and had planned to write a debunking of his own creation (5). Ref. 6 takes a light-hearted look at a range of strategies used by critics.
By the way my new book is now readable as a blog entry:
http://mothershiplanding.blogspot.com
“When the Mothership Lands: Secrets of the CIA’s Psi-Plasma Vortex.”
The book focuses on philosophy of science and parapsychology.
[He then concludes with the usual note of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”.]
Your use of quotes implies that he used those words when he didn’t. He said something different: If truth of A means the falsehood of B, then the evidence for A ought to be better than the evidence for B if we are going to believe A.
In this case, we have lots and lots of very good evidence for B. Nothing is said about the evidence for A needing to be extraordinary – just that we need more and better evidence than what we currently already have for B. The evidence for A might all be very “ordinary” evidence, but if it remains less in quantity and less in reliability than what we have for B, then B should continue to be favored.
Actually when writing in quotes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof I didn’t quote Austin but an often quoted sentence by Marcello Truzzi, later popularized by Carl Sagan. This sentence is often used by skeptics when talking about parapsychology. Austin used a different wording but had a similar meaning.
By the way, I think that there is a lot of logic in this phrase but I don’t like it being thrown by skeptics when they have nothing better to say.