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Originally Posted by Venom  [b]
we should (the skeptical mouvement should) have a new, younger "Ray Hyman", dealing with the current parapsychological research. Well Wiseman, Blackmore and Alckock are a little bit like that, but they like to do a lot of research on other fields as well, so we need a guy who do parapsychological criticizing full-time (and not a little bit of part-time). |
With regard to Hyman he didn't conduct much research after dowsing tests in the 1970s. His role has been a critic of other people's research. The 'skeptic movement' is placing far, far too much faith in Wiseman, a trail of controversy follows his psi research. Berger did an meta-analysis of Blackmore's parapsychological work actually shows a weak effect, so Blackmore then dismissed her own work as inconclusive. Has Alcock conducted or published his own research? If so, post link here.
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About skeptics don't supporting research on those topics, it's just plain false. We support good scientific researchs on those topics, not bad one.
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David Marks, CSI (CSICOP) fellow, does not think funding should go on psi. Venom, I suggest you get out of the 'we'. This is not like supporting a football team, it is about trying to get at the truth from any angle.
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That's the main difference. For exemple, the papers published by Olaf Blanke, showing that you can induce out-of-body experiences by stimulating some area of the brain is awsome. It points to neurological explanations for OBE and for some aspects of NDE.
- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Neuropsychology: Stimulating Illusory own-body perceptions; NATURE; Nature Publishing Group; N. 419; p. 269-270; 19 September 2002.
- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin; BRAIN; Vol. 127; N. 2; p. 243-258; February 2004.
Skeptics are all for that kind of good reserachs about those phenomena!
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This research failed to be replicated in a
‘double blind’ controlled trials by Swedish team lead by Pehr Granqvist who found no discernable effects. (If you put a device on people’s head and they are half expecting to experience something weird, many will report it. If the researcher believes in the effect of what they are reporting they can misintepret information).
Even if one assumes the effects claimed by Blanke, Persinger, etc. was correct, it still does rule out the brain is a filter of consciousness, such effects could equally be viewed as disruption of the brain filtering. Quote:
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With that kind of researchs going on, I really can follow you when you start to talk about NDEs like if it was compelling evidence for dualism. It's really not the case, since good scientists are more and more explaining how the brain is generating those anomalous experiences.
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Not really the case in my opinion. They are just not asking the alternative question
'does this contradict the brain is a filter of consciousness?' The answer so far IMHO has been no, that doesn't mean the brain is a definitely a filter, just that some materialists are joining the dots to a materialistic expectation perhaps much in the same way people see faces in clouds that aren't there
