42. Chris Carter, Parapsychology, Skepticism and Ideology (Podcast)

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

This is ridiculous. Every scientist that I know of dreams of making a ground-breaking discovery. Everybody wants to be a Galileo or an Einstein. The intelligent ones also know not to fall into self delusion. The idea that scientists are a mindless bunch of sheeple has to be one of the stupidest, self-serving fantasies ever.

Scientists are people with a normal attachment to their own prior beliefs. Of course they would like to make a stunning, world-changing discovery, but being human they want to find that discovery somewhere that they are comfortable.

Of course, anonymous surveys generally show that a substantial percentage of scientists believe that psi is plausible or likely. It is one of the myths of organized Skepticism that their beliefs are universally shared by all but a small percentage of scientists. The one group in science which has shown a strong antipathy to the possibility of psi, is the so-called "elite" scientists, which refers not to the best scientists, but to the most powerful, those in management positions, those who control science funding, those who are editors of major journals, etc.. This explains in part why most scientists will not admit except in anonymous circumstances their support for parapsychology.

In any case, few of these people are actually aware of the actual evidence for psi so their belief or lack of it, are rather irrelevant.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

Scientists are people with a normal attachment to their own prior beliefs. Of course they would like to make a stunning, world-changing discovery, but being human they want to find that discovery somewhere that they are comfortable.

This is just silly. The most respected and idolised scientists are exactly the ones who revolutionised our view of the world. There is nothing comforting in quantum mechanics or relativity. Every aspirational scientist would like to do the same.

A large percentage of papers are rejected because they lack novelty. The most "paradigm" changing papers are published in the highest ranking journals.

The idea that scientists are just sheeple is by and large a post hoc excuse to explain away the lack of acceptance for somebodies pet idea. I hear it all the time from HIV denialists, ID proponents, homeopaths and physics-kooks who claim that Einstein was wrong.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

Have you ever wondered why Brian Josephson is so deeply interested in these questions?

Also, people feel intense reluctance to admit their enterest/belief in Ψ because that can damage their careers. In just the same way, for several years after the cold fusion announcement, scientists were very reluctant to work in that area, even though it now seems that some nuclear reactions do go on in those palladium electrodes.

David

[Interesting Ian]

Ian
What evidence do you have in mind here and what were these problems?

Chris, is there any chance you could expand upon this?

As far as I am aware, and from what I've read, the situation is pretty much as Topher Cooper has described it 4 posts above. So I would be interested in hearing the opposing point of view.

Is it really true that what was considered the best evidence had serious flaws?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

The debate over the ganzfeld is unusual in the history of the debate with Skeptics in that there is some acknowledgment that science is about replication and the overall weight of the evidence. However, please note: Charles Honorton hoped that the auto-ganzfeld could be turned into a utility experiment that could be run and would reliably generate positive results. This property is certainly very useful, but is not a logical requirement for an experiment to be considered valid, and experiments in other fields are not particularly expected to behave this way. Unfortunately, he did not believe that he had reached that point when he lost funding and later died young.

I agree that it is not a logical requirement. But it is incredibly useful because then you can use the base replicable experiment as a springboard for modified protocols that allow you to test various hypotheses. If the base experiment is squirrely, you don't know how to interpret failure of the modified experiments. It would be like trying to design advanced airplanes even while the base biplane design doesn't fly reliably.

It doesn't make hypothesis testing impossible, but it sure makes the job harder.

~~ Paul

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I agree that it is not a logical requirement. But it is incredibly useful because then you can use the base replicable experiment as a springboard for modified protocols that allow you to test various hypotheses. If the base experiment is squirrely, you don't know how to interpret failure of the modified experiments. It would be like trying to design advanced airplanes even while the base biplane design doesn't fly reliably.

It doesn't make hypothesis testing impossible, but it sure makes the job harder.

~~ Paul

Absolutely correct. A flexible "sausage grinder" experiment would be incredibly useful. Unfortunately, one of the mainstays of Skeptics arguments against the reality of psi is the accusation that psi experiments are "unreplicable" because we don't have such an experimental protocol available, completely confusing the meaning of the term.

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

This is just silly. The most respected and idolised scientists are exactly the ones who revolutionised our view of the world. There is nothing comforting in quantum mechanics or relativity. Every aspirational scientist would like to do the same.

A large percentage of papers are rejected because they lack novelty. The most "paradigm" changing papers are published in the highest ranking journals.

The idea that scientists are just sheeple is by and large a post hoc excuse to explain away the lack of acceptance for somebodies pet idea. I hear it all the time from HIV denialists, ID proponents, homeopaths and physics-kooks who claim that Einstein was wrong.

Scientists, individually and collectively, strive for certain ideals -- including objectivity. Many people look at science and its ideals and have faith that those ideals are met in practice, except (they will generally concede) for a few minor, short-lived exceptions.

The fact is that scientists are people and its institutions are imperfect compromises of the ideals with non-scientific and non-rational goals. Science as an institution is a wonderful system that works fairly well in most areas most of the time, which makes it far superior to most human institutions. But most areas does not mean all areas and and most of the time does not mean all of the time.

Scientists delight in novelty is balanced by a commitment to the validity of their hard-won understandings, their own philosophies and challenges that endanger the status-quo which provides them with security and comfortable working conditions. Let us not forget how controversial SR, GR and QM were originally, and how much resistance there was to them. Yet these theories provided a great deal of insulation between themselves and scientists' day to day life and work. SR only effected things moving at huge speeds (even less attainable then than now), GR only effected things in intense gravitational fields or unimaginable accelerations, QM only effected things at scales at the lower end of what was then observable. QM eventually produced some more fundamental philosophical challenges, but these were not recognized for a long time, and were (and are) pretty abstract. None of these provided any kind of a challenge to the ongoing careers of more than a few narrow specialists (e.g., someone who had made their career on elaborate theorizing on the nature of the ether) whose main concern was that they might not be able to learn the new formalities well-enough to compete as successfully as they had in the past.

Psi on the other hand implies things about what is going on around each of us in our daily lives. It touches, in one way or another on many fields (consider the poor anthropologists who have spent their professional careers explicating the cultural reasons for the details of various "magical" rituals found in different societies, only to have to face the possibility that they are that way because they work that way; they are faced with the psychological choice of endorsing this "new" discovery and embracing that their careers were mostly a waste of time and they have no significant scientific legacy or to cling to the belief that the research is flawed. It doesn't matter, of course, whether their fears are realistic, only that it might seem that way to them). In fact, psi challenges directly -- might even be said to be by definition a challenge -- to all experimental science. Experiments are based on the assumption that the experimental systems can be effectively isolated, shielded from such things as the intentions of people in the lab when the experiment is being performed. Parapsychology experiments are clear-cut demonstrations that this is not, in practice, generally possible.

Psi gets scientists where they live.

Is it a coincident that the one group in the scientific community that has been shown to be strongly resistant to the possibility of psi, is precisely that group with the strongest personal dependence on the status quo? Perhaps ... but I don't think so

One doesn't to personally witness some respected scientist reduced to a red-faced, screaming rage at the mere suggestion that their might be some evidence that psi exists to have a reason doubt the perfect, cool objectivity of scientists in the matter. An objective assessment of the way that parapsychology and its experiments is treated will do -- you don't need to accept that the evidence is valid or conclusive, just look at the arguments and institutional actions and see whether they are justified, objective and fair. The first step is to not assume that because the evidence for psi has not been publicly accepted by the mainstream scientific community that that evidence has been demonstrated, objectively to be flawed, nor that criticisms have been made and not retracted, that those criticisms are logically and scientifically reasonable or that they have not been thoroughly answered.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris,

Have you ever wondered why Brian Josephson is so deeply interested in these questions?

Also, people feel intense reluctance to admit their enterest/belief in ? because that can damage their careers. In just the same way, for several years after the cold fusion announcement, scientists were very reluctant to work in that area, even though it now seems that some nuclear reactions do go on in those palladium electrodes.

David

Pons and Fleischmann illustrate my point perfectly. They are typical examples of scientists that have a strong desire to make ground breaking discoveries that will revolutionise the world. This is the norm. Scientists don't want to be sheeple.

For the most part scientsist are very careful to avoid self delusion. Before announcing a radical discovery they will spend a lot of time checking every possible source of error. With any luck colleagues will help. In the normal course of science peer-reviewers will point out any shortcomings when the paper is submitted to a journal. Pons and Fleischmann were foolish enough to announce their discovery at a press conference.

I don't think there are any scientists in the skeptic or believer camps who is still claiming that Pons and Fleischmann's experiments were anything other than fatally flawed.

Ther might be a few people still chasing anomalies in electrochemical experiments but the case for cold-fusion is still essentially non-existent.

The strength of some people's belief in cold-fusion is completely out of proportion to the evidence. Some of them like Brian Josephson seem to be contrary for the sake of being contrary. He defends homeopathy!

Kary Mullis, another Nobel prize winner contrarian, believes in astrology, the Urantia book and talking glow in the dark racoons, doesnt believe that HIV causes AIDS or that CFCs cuased ozone depletion.

[Venom]

I listened to the beginning of this episode (I know, I'm late, but it was holliday here in Japan), and I was surprise by the fact that Alex is, as we say in French "mettre de l'eau dans son vin" (translation: putting water in his wine), and starts saying nice things about skeptics.

Well, that Chris Carter was way out there in the woo-woo land, so it's nice to see that sometimes (even if it's way too rare) Alex can be critical of some people who are Psi-believers.

Way to go Alex. Show us some real critical thinking skills. We want more.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Venom

I listened to the beginning of this episode (I know, I'm late, but it was holliday here in Japan), and I was surprise by the fact that Alex is, as we say in French "mettre de l'eau dans son vin" (translation: putting water in his wine), and starts saying nice things about skeptics.

Well, that Chris Carter was way out there in the woo-woo land, so it's nice to see that sometimes (even if it's way too rare) Alex can be critical of some people who are Psi-believers.

Way to go Alex. Show us some real critical thinking skills. We want more.

I completely agreed with almost everything Chris Carter said.

Chris Carter
Chris: Alex, you have to remember that the argument is not really about the evidence. The argument is about their assumptions and their preconceptions. That’s what the argument in this field is all about. Their preconceptions are that these sort of phenomena don’t make any sense and challenge their world-view. So, they’re going to do anything they possibly can to dismiss evidence that challenges their preconceptions, because it’s much easier to do that than to change their opinions.

This is just transparently obvious to me, but then I've made about 15,000 posts on the jref and what Chris Carter says completely reflects my experiences on there. The problem is that they just presume that some sort of materialist based metaphysic must necessarily be correct and they seem to be immune to the many reasons why this metaphysic is so implausible.

My own personal opinion is that debating with materialist/skeptics on this subject matter will never achieve anything. This might seem a remarkable claim, but from my own experience they will not shift from their commitment to some sort of materialist metaphysic, and therefore psi will always be an extraordinary claim. The evidence from parapsychological research will therefore always be unconvincing unless we discover a method of producing positive results much more frequently than can be presently achieved. A fairly unlikely prospect in my opinion, at least for the foreseeable future.

I think it's quite likely that even in something like 200 years time the phenomena studied by parapsychology will still be denied.

I think it's more of a question of ones philosophical presuppositions on the mind body problem and the nature of reality than a question of the evidence.

And I think what Alex says about there being so much bunk out there and so much "crappy science" is wholly irrelevant. They've not being asked to consider the ridiculous claims but rather to open-mindedly consider that certain characteristic experiences that people have had throughout human history, and across all cultures, and which parapsychological research appears to vindicate, actually reflects real phenomena.

The whole problem here is that they are unable to distinguish such phenomena from the bunk because from the perspective of their metaphysic it necessarily is all equal bunk. The problem is that their metaphysical presuppositions are ludicrous.