Scientists' interest in the paranormal

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brimstoneSalad
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Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by brimstoneSalad »

The idea that scientists are biased against the paranormal is absurd, particularly given that many scientists were distinctly interested in the topic in the not very distant past (and some still are).

This was recently brought up in Alexander's intro thread, and I'm posting it here so everybody can follow it and/or provide feedback.
AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:Just with regards to scientists choosing their research in certain directions. It's exactly like you said, they need to allocate time and resources to endeavours they think are likely to be fruitful. To think their assessment of fruitlessness in paranormal/psychic research is based for a 100% on past research is naive to me. There are other contributing factors, philosophical and personal in nature. I accept your point that most if not all scientists care a lot about the truth, but they are still bound by their own positions and beliefs. I never stated there was a conspiracy, that's just you putting words into my mouth. But there's no guarantee there aren't collective biases they aren't seeing.
Assertions of an active conspiracy are common, I'm glad you aren't saying that, but you're very nearly saying that to the extent you misunderstand scientists and the scientific community.

If there is any bias at all, it's in favor of the paranormal.

I'll start with a bit of an anecdote (although it risks dating me):

When I was younger, I was intensely interested in the paranormal. Particularly ghosts and psychic phenomenon.
I accepted the then common belief that these things were true, but didn't blindly accept the common explanation for them; I wanted to know what they were, and how they worked.
I spent time pondering over experiments as I learned more about science, trying to work out theories (testable) about what the mechanisms of ghosts/etc..
Eventually I learned that all of these experiments I was trying to design had already been done. Looking more into them, it was actually pretty disappointing. All of these great ideas, and people beat me to them!
Not only had they been done, but they absolutely failed to show any positive result. Not that ghosts weren't understood, but that there just wasn't even any unexplained phenomena there to begin with. It's not just machines, humans and psychics can't even see ghosts or tell us anything about them when controlled (compared to each other without preexisting knowledge or collusion).
I then went on later to learn about real stuff like quantum physics that is much more mysterious -- and by virtue of being real, more interesting.

There's something very important to understand here: This is not an uncommon story. It's not just my story, but a story you will hear again and again.

The more widespread skeptic movement really only got started in the late 70's with CSI, following the work of James Randi in the late 60's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Milli ... _Challenge).
Many scientists even through the middle of the last century were abuzz with interest in the supernatural. Huge amounts of money spent on it -- not necessarily wasted, if at least we learned something (you do have to at least try, and sometimes you're wrong, but it's not a waste to learn something is a dead end).
This is not an issue science has simply ignored, but has been (mostly) burnt out on by constant experiment.
Scientists were apparently being duped left and right by common magician tricks before Randi came on the scene (it had been a generation since Houdini was murdered for being a skeptic).
There are a number of reasons they were so easily duped. First off they really wanted to believe in the supernatural for personal reasons, and secondly (and more importantly) because of ambition. Even if you hate the supernatural, you find a way to love it if there's any chance of it being real, because you don't hate Nobel prizes.

Science, as you fail to understand, is founded on a sort of one-upmanship and proving each other wrong -- particularly innovating in a new field to prove something as yet uncharted.
There's an enormous bias there to explore the unknown and hope you find something that makes you famous, and that bias overrides anything else you could speculate on; so much so that scientists will readily see things that aren't there, chasing their tails for decades after an elusive proof until somebody corrects them with objective evidence (sometimes they don't wise up after that, even, which is when they become pseudoscientists).

It's more a problem that we spend too much time looking for things that aren't there, rather than too little.
Paranormal research IS still ongoing, by the way.
Here's a list of universities that claim to educate or research parapsychology:

http://www.parapsych.org/section/34/uni ... on_in.aspx
(obviously a biased source in favor of it)

The desire to discover something uncharted is so strong that it even STILL overrides reasonable parsimony for many.
AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:To think their assessment of fruitlessness in paranormal/psychic research is based for a 100% on past research is naive to me.
To think anything else is ignorant of the past research, and of human nature itself. Scientists are humans too, and like the rest have a distinct interest and will to believe in something extraordinary.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could transcend our mortal forms as spirits? If we could bend the laws of the universe to our wills?

Of course. Nobody (or scarcely anybody) really WANTS to be mortal. We all want superpowers. It it nothing but rational objective evidence that divests us of that belief.
AlexanderVeganTheist wrote:There are other contributing factors, philosophical and personal in nature.
Yes,
Will to believe in the extraordinary, and Ambition. Those favor the exploration and belief/hope in the supernatural for scientists, not the other way around.

Also, scientists in general are only slightly less likely to be religious than the general public (only significantly less likely if they're particularly good at their jobs), but in the field there still are many religious scientists.

Only somewhere around 1/3 of scientists openly identify as atheists, with about 1/3 'agnostic', and 1/3 still believing in some kind of god, and within that third, some half (15% of all scientists) of which are overtly religious, and believe sincerely and strongly in the supernatural. (this from wiki and various surveys)
The study also found that 18 percent of scientists attended weekly religious services, compared with 20 percent of the general U.S. population; 15 percent consider themselves very religious
http://news.rice.edu/2014/02/16/misconc ... new-study/

That's a very strong bias. If you think the fundamentalist Christians wouldn't scramble to research (and fund better than any study in history) anything that even gave a whiff of poking holes in materialism and suggested anything like a soul, you have another think coming.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

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Here's an article discussing the issue as well, with a few great examples that demonstrate that these subjects are not ignored:

http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/do-scientists-fear-the-paranormal-130115.htm
Psychic Powers
A study published in 2011 in a scientific journal claimed to have found strong evidence for the existence of psychic powers such as ESP. The paper, written by Cornell professor Daryl J. Bem, was published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and quickly made headlines around the world for its implication: that psychic powers had been scientifically proven.

Bem’s claim of evidence for ESP wasn’t ridiculed or ignored; instead it was taken seriously and tested by scientific researchers.

Replication is of course the hallmark of valid scientific research — if the findings are true and accurate, they should be able to be replicated by others. Otherwise the results may simply be due to normal and expected statistical variations and errors. If other experimenters cannot get the same result using the same techniques, it’s usually a sign that the original study was flawed in one or more ways.

A team of researchers collaborated to accurately replicate Bem’s final experiment, and found no evidence for any psychic powers. Their results were published in the journal PLoS ONE. Bem — explicitly contradicting Carter’s suggestion that skeptics set out to discredit his work or refused to look at it — acknowledged that the findings did not support his claims and wrote that the researchers had “made a competent, good-faith effort to replicate the results of one of my experiments on precognition.”
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

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Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is a researcher who came up with the theory of "Morphic Resonance". I know he has had a beef with James Randi. The claim, according to Sheldrake is that James announced in a magazine or journal or something that he had repeated Sheldrake's dog experiment and the results where not good. Sheldrake asked James to show the data from his experiment, and James claimed something along the lines of the data was destroyed in a house fire. Sheldrake is one of the persons who is willing to claim that James does not have the claimed 1 million dollar prize.
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by brimstoneSalad »

What was the experiment exactly?

That claim is absurd.

'The money is held in an Evercore Wealth Management account', in negotiable bonds; 'validation of the account and the prize amount can be supplied on demand'.
If people want to know, they can just check.
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by garrethdsouza »

If you believe in an afterlife or a soul, you can read up on the basics of neuroscience to understand why such positions are entirely pseudoscientific, exceedingly infantile and untenable. Popular books by Oliver Sachs who studied neurological disorders or google the basics of the molecular basis of memory (Mandel's work) are pertinent.
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

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brimstone wrote:What was the experiment exactly?
I believe the experiment recorded the reaction of dogs when the owner had left, began there return home, and returned home. The experiment claimed to provide evidence that dogs had reacted when the owners started there return home. I'm on limited internet accesses at the moment, but will try to find the lecture of his, from which I got this information. The theory about
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by NonZeroSum »

Just came across this:

Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg
Jaundice Jape wrote:https://plus.google.com/109962215079387517038/posts/MUXsoYJp1pK
A refreshing open-minded perspective. This sounds ridiculous according to the commonly accepted paradigm, but whether the particulars of what he's saying turns out to be wholly accurate is besides the point (as I think he would agree). Ultimately it's about letting science be a process, rather than just another dogmatic belief system.

Jaundiced Jape
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+Paul Edwards Ah I should have known you would be familiar with this! Hey, never feel any obligations on my account, life has enough of those already. You get to the email when you get to it; I enjoy seeing you pop up in the threads throughout the day. Man, we had a brutal go of it the last couple of days; it's like we're not speaking English in there -- they just hear whatever they want and then say we're being unreasonable! We're not even trying to prove anything at this point, just asking questions and they still lash out! What manner of rational discourse is that?

Anyway, I like this video because it just feels so open and receptive, and embodies the kind of true philosophical science that I really enjoy; approaching all things with wonder and curiosity and a thirst to know them. Our recent debates are enough to make you forget what a humble, joyous endeavor scientific inquiry can be.

Talking to these rigid, arrogant atheists is no different than dealing with the religious lot of the same make -- it makes you resent what they stand for. In fact, I would say those atheists are the offspring of those religious zealots and behave as they do in direct response to their exposure to those unyielding, judgmental attitudes from the very people they oppose so vehemently. It is much like a child who perpetuates a cycle of violence or alcoholism but insists that they are nothing like the parent they abhor.
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+Paul Edwards Much obliged, as always, Paul. I am very much enjoying our little run here even though we don't seem to be getting anywhere with those we are engaged with currently. But I will offer hope here, as I have reached consensus with a couple of people on other threads that did not start out so amicably -- so it is possible.

You and I are much in agreement, not only in our ideas and opinions (which I am not so concerned about, for friendship need not be based on likeness of mind entirely), but in our enjoyment of the discourse itself. More than enjoying the argumentative nature of it, I think we enjoy the exercise of our own minds as we try to navigate these waters. In this way, it is fun and beneficial -- regardless of the result -- and I believe the people who are so angry with us enjoy this in the same way and that's why they keep at us even though we're "wastes of human life." The moment it ceases to be fun, you will notice me trying to cut the conversation off, but until that time, I'm anted up and all-in!

Thank you for suggesting Terence McKenna, as he is unknown to me and I look forward to the new insights. Oftentimes I have found myself profoundly thankful at the immense amount of material available to us. I would just think "Wow, if I could read a book per day for the rest of my life, I still would never run out of interesting material." This is such a comfort to me, as interest is my chief source of joy. For some it's thrills, or loving communion with others, or achievement, but for me it is being mentally immersed, engaged, and fervently interested.

I understand your appreciation of our friendship at this time, as I share it fully; thank you sincerely for the kind words. Now let's get back out there and "give 'em hell!" Hahaha

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Oh is Jaundice Jape - Brian Blackwell?
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by DarlBundren »

NonZeroSum wrote:Oh is Jaundice Jape - Brian Blackwell?
I know this stuff is online and everyone can see it, but maybe you could have asked him before posting what appears to be a personal and informal conversation between friends. He's a member of the forum.

I find it fascinating that a guy like Rupert Sheldrake - a guy who believes in homeopathy, telepathy and morphic fields- has been watched by so many people. And this, just because they all desire to be told some mystery, to be given the proof that the experts have been lying to them all this time. This thread is two year old, but it could hardly be more pertinent.
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by NonZeroSum »

DarlBundren wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 7:11 am
NonZeroSum wrote:Oh is Jaundice Jape - Brian Blackwell?
I know this stuff is online and everyone can see it, but maybe you could have asked him before posting what appears to be a personal and informal conversation between friends. He's a member of the forum.
Fair enough, I can understand there being a scale of public intellectuals/ politicians to low level youtube content producers, when bringing up and critiquing their ideas, I honestly wasn't even sure if Jaundice Jape was Brian Blackwell that's why I asked, but if a mod or Blackwell feels its in bad taste they have my full backing to delete.
I find it fascinating that a guy like Rupert Sheldrake - a guy who believes in homeopathy, telepathy and morphic fields- has been watched by so many people. And this, just because they all desire to be told some mystery, to be given the proof that the experts have been lying to them all this time. This thread is two year old, but it could hardly be more pertinent.
Agreed, very troubling.
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Re: Scientists' interest in the paranormal

Post by brimstoneSalad »

NonZeroSum wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 9:56 pm Just came across this:

Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg
That was one of the worst things I've ever seen, and I'm including internet shock sites in with that.

A series of lies about science and scientists. Only a couple of his "dogmas" are partially true, but only because they're necessary assumptions, not because they're believed dogmatically. If there were alternatives that could be explored, scientists would be all over that.
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