Quote:
Originally Posted by NPC3001 
I felt the wish to encourage you to emphasize the need for extremely tight controls on medium experimentation and frankly, more skepticism even than usual.
|
Well there is nothing wrong with extremely tight controls (I support that) but why
'more skepticism than usual' ? If we allow a 'psi conducive environment' for the Ganzfeld experiments, why not for medium research? Helping to make people feel comfortable, wishing them to be successful, using open minded researchers, etc. ....if a degree of telepathy is involved (whether involving the living or dead) ... how does this fit with Randi / debunker style challenge
'we don't believe you, you are misleading society, prove us wrong' sort of mentality? Why must telepathy necessarily be a private communication unaffected by the intent of others?
I would say the opposite, give the mediums favourable circumstances but with a strict protocol. that will adequately remove sensory clues and simple fraud. It is enough IMHO
Quote:
|
I think you could acknowledge its importance even more by encouraging the use of magicians or other performers to observe experiments on mediumship to ensure that the medium isn't deceiving the scientists in some way. Mediums (fake mediums at least, assuming there are mediums out there who don't use trickery) are extremely clever and creative and very fast-thinking.
|
Why do people have such great faith in magicians? Are they incapable of error? Do they never imagine fraud? If one plays them a magic trick do they always give the correct interpretation of how it was done? (No is the answer) Is theoretical method of fraud, evidence that fraud took place? Is there such thing as a fraud proof experiment? (No, according to Ray Hyman) .
If a magician sees someone like Derren Brown pretend to have mental abilities to pick up tiny sensory clues (but is actually doing hot reading or conjuring instead) do they suddenly rush off to report it to the media? No because they keep and share secrets. Many magicians supported Uri Geller's claim, does mean we should believe it? Not in my opinion because I do not automatically trust magicians either.
I propose a scientific trial, lets forget mediums for a minute, lets put magicians under the test of scientists and see how effectively they can cheat. I predict they would do miserably!
No I am not talking about magician on stage getting someone to casually check a few things the magician directs them too, I mean total freedom to check all his props, the set up, the location of others etc. Scientists aren't idiots. Yes it is true Randi was successful with Project Alpha in showing how scientists could be fooled by a couple of young magicians but what would have happened if they had failed? Would any of us have heard much or anything about it?
People look back at the hugely controversial claims of early medium research in séance rooms and think
'what a bunch of gullible scientists' ....I disagree. These scientists detected fraud, reported fraud (the accounts are written in the history of psychical research for anyone to read) but just not with the same media coverage as Houdini did to promote is stage show. These scientists were not debunkers, if a medium was caught once doing something suspicious, they didn't suddenly abort the whole trial and proclaim to the media 'Fraudulent medium caught cheating'. They continued to look properly, this was not gullibility, it is arguably what anyone doing proper scientific research should do, look thoroughly. The trials often ended with split opinions, claims of the odd instance of 'unconscious fraud' (which isn't unreasonable hypothesis if there is such a thing as a hypnotic trance - a highly impressionable state with no memory recall) many agreed things occurred which were beyond fraud, it wasn't clear cut. A magician to the rescue? Not really, several magicians reported seance phenomena was genuine, others didn't. Who were right?
Magicians Who Endorsed Psychic Phenomena by George P. Hansen
It doesn't matter how often a medium is reported genuine on countless occasions, if one person, just one authoritatively claims they caught a medium cheating, whether accurate report or not, it will be written like the only important historical fact in skeptic dictionaries, books etc. Which is why any skeptic, seriously interested should read both sides of the debate.
Parapsychology experiments have been designed and scrutinized by magicians for a long time. Of course they are helpful but lets make sure open minded ones are involved for research purposes, if they wish the medium to fail for political reasons, well I do not consider that psi conducive circumstances
12-13-2007, 01:47 AM
Linear Mode
