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

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

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?

Hello? Chris?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

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

Not if it's used in technology.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Not if it's used in technology.

~~ Paul

Eh? Yeah you mean something like the transducer in "the girl from tomorrow"?

From here.

The Transducer is a tool that is used by everyone in the year 3000. Alana was only learning to use the Transducer when she was kidnapped by Silverthorn. The Transducer looks like a headband with a crystal in the centre of a black drop-like plate. The Transducer from the year 3000 has several colours of radiation. Blue is used when the carrier tries to levitate objects, pink for healing, purple for specific interactions with other force fields, and red radiation forms as a result of strong feelings (intentional or unintentional) which destroys matter. The first transducer uses white radiation. The Transducer was invented in the year 2500 by a woman named Maeve. She invented it to be a tool of healing. After The Great Disaster occurred in the year 2500, the Transducer was mass produced and the people were taught how to use it. It was to be used as a tool to rebuild the planet. A replica of the original Transducer is held in the Science Dome in the year 3000. The Transducer functions by enhancing and magnifying the telepathic function of the pituitary gland, by doing this the user is able to levitate objects and heal wounds. If used in the wrong way the Transducer can be used as a weapon to destroy things, this is why the people of the year 3000 are taught from an early age to control their emotions.

Yes, having a transducer would be super.

[alextsakiris]

[quote]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

I completely agreed with almost everything Chris Carter said.


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.

Of course, we've all experienced this kind of dogmatic Skeptic, but these fundamentalist foot solders don't really matter in the big picture.

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.

You may be making my point here... yes, it's going to take a lot of evidence to uproot the existing paradigm, but that's to be expected.

At the same time, we have to be honest about the amount, and quality, of evidence put forward so far -- it's not enough.

This is not to say the dogmatic Skeptics are right/fair/well-reasoned. They often ignore and distort the evidence that does exist. And, they've actively pursued a course that makes further research very difficult. But, the real question is wheter or not more evidence will change things... I think it will.

I did a quick Google on mind/body medicine to support my earlier comparison with psi:

"Twenty years ago, the mind-body connection was largely dismissed by U.S. doctors as a wacky concept in healing. Today it's a staple of integrative medicine, the discipline that blends complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with conventional treatments and places more emphasis on treating the whole person.

About 75 percent of medical schools now have some CAM courses in the curriculum, and the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine includes 39 academic health centers, including the Mayo Clinic plus Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Duke and Yale Universities."

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

Yes, having a transducer would be super.

Stupendously useful, to be sure.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"Twenty years ago, the mind-body connection was largely dismissed by U.S. doctors as a wacky concept in healing. Today it's a staple of integrative medicine, the discipline that blends complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with conventional treatments and places more emphasis on treating the whole person.

About 75 percent of medical schools now have some CAM courses in the curriculum, and the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine includes 39 academic health centers, including the Mayo Clinic plus Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Duke and Yale Universities."

And the best example of a safe and efficacious alternative medical treatment would be ... what?

~~ Paul

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

I did a quick Google on mind/body medicine to support my earlier comparison with psi:

And you found something written by a journalist who supports CAM. How convincing.

The popularity of so-called alternative medicine practices such as homeopathy and therapeutic touch has absolutely nothing to do with the evidence for any efficacy.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

You already know in outline how alternative medicine works - it is called the placebo effect. Whatever medicine you test, and more or less for whatever disease, there is a serious chance that those on sugar pills will get better of their own accord. Although this has become a commonplace, it is still remarkable, and from the point of view of the patient, the important thing is that they recover, not the theory behind it.

The best alternative therapies presumably activate the placebo effect most efficiently. If I were to fall ill, I would like some of that!

From the point of view of orthodox medical research, the placebo effect is just an irritation - but there are other points of view!

David

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

And the best example of a safe and efficacious alternative medical treatment would be ... what?

~~ Paul

Take your pick: meditation, acupuncture, chiropractic. All have been shown to be safer and at least as effective as "mainstream" treatments for a range of ailments -- and we are talking about multiple, replicated, double-blind studies using the accepted standards for medical research, published, in many cases, in mainstream medical journals.

[pacificwhim]

I can bring an interesting spin to the CAM question. In my guise as a nonfiction ghostwriter, I'm helping an equine chiropractor write his book about working on some of the top racehorses in the country. I could get quotes from a dozen top racing trainers (as well as hunter/jumper horse owners, one of whom, a Ph.D. psychologist, was a 100% skeptic about chiropractic) about how chiropractic adjustment has completely changed their horses' careers and improved their racing performance. In fact, I believe one of the horses my author worked on, Costa Rising, was voted Horse of the Year by the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn.

What makes this especially interesting is that with a horse, there obviously can be no question about the placebo effect.