47. Skeptical Researcher, Dr. Clive Wynne Tackles DogsThatKnow (Podcast)

[eyemsougly]

1. I'd rather underuse quotation marks than risk overusing them. I strongly believe we need to be conservative with our use of quotation marks... for the sake of our children.

2. I like Randi, but he is a very eccentric guy and goes overboard with his rhetoric.

[eyemsougly]

In all seriousness, while I might have technically mis-used the term, the idea of a Scientific Orthodoxy didn't start with me. You will here people say things like, "Science has established that _____". Maddox could call Morphic Reasonance "heresy" with a straight face because Morphic Reasonance does violate current Scientific understanding of how the world works. Blackmore is correct when she says the same thing about Psi.

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by eyemsougly

In the same way, if Psi exists, it violates the law of physics.

Which laws of physics would psi violate?

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by eyemsougly

Yes it does. That is why Sheldrake's work was condemned as heresy, and why so many pro Science people really do hate Psi.

From "The Conscious Universe" by Dean Radin

All this leads us to predict that a person's level of commitment to the current scientific worldview will determine his or her beliefs about psi. Because perception is linked so closely to one's adopted view of reality, people who do not wish to "see" psi will in fact not see it. Nor will they view any evidence for psi, scientific or otherwise, as valid. This effect should be strongest in people who are committed to a particular view, motivated to maintain it, and clever enough to create good ratinalizations for ignoring conflicting evidence.

The book supports this statement with a graph of percentage of people who believe in psi: public 68%, professors 55%, AAAS members 30%, and NAS members 6%

This is not due to education.

In "Entangled Minds" Dean Radin discusses several different polls that found more education is correlated with greater belief in psi. Students with more knowledge about science were not less likely to believe in psi. And while more education correlates with greater belief in psi there is a negative correlation between education and belief in "religious paranormal".

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by eyemsougly

In all seriousness, while I might have technically mis-used the term, the idea of a Scientific Orthodoxy didn't start with me. You will here people say things like, "Science has established that _____". Maddox could call Morphic Reasonance "heresy" with a straight face because Morphic Reasonance does violate current Scientific understanding of how the world works.

You just equated "orthodoxy" with "current understanding of the way the world works." As long as the orthodoxy is subject to change in the face of new evidence, I'm happy. In fact, I'm not precisely sure how else it could possibly work.

~~ Paul

[eyemsougly]

Originally Posted by anonymous

Which laws of physics would psi violate?

well, I guess Psi really wouldn't violate any physical laws but it is regarded as impossible under the current worldview because there is no mechanism that could explain it. So if Psi is real, it is basically "magic" since it is inexplicable, at least under our current understanding.