I ask the question because I don’t see much written about parapsychology these days. Many scientists view it as totally false, and certainly many of its adherents have been unmasked as frauds. Is anybody doing legitimate research in the paranormal today? Or is this a “stillborn” field, that has never had (and will never) have legitimacy?
Well, you never know. Probably false. On the other hand, should they actually find proof, then that would be awesome. Imagine the headlines:
Science Proves God Exists!!!
"Earlier today, Parapsychologists announced they had proven that God and the afterlife do definately exist. Other, more mainstream, scientists, described as “totally shocked” confirmed the story after speaking to a ghost nicknamed “Casper”. We spoke to Casper in the run down Old North Hotel, where a series of brutal murders occured in the 1920’s. After speaking to Casper, and seeing that, yes, he is an honest to God ghost, we have used the Afterlife phone (normally used by Casper to commute to heaven and back) to talk to God. Awed by His supreme glory and majesty, we could only listen as he said the GREAT WORDS which will ring out down through all future ages, “WWHHHAAAAZZZZZUUUUPPP?!?!?!?!”
In other news, Tibetan monks finally revealed the secret of life, saying it had been left behind the recipe booklet in the kitchen and forgotten.Whether or not what you do is legitimate science is not dependent upon what you are studying; it depends solely upon the method you are using to study. You can study the habits of dragons in preindustrial Pangea and still be conducting legitimate science. But if you ignore portions of your data, or alter your data, or create false data, then you are still a charlatan even if you are studying the tensile strength of steel I beams, or the annual amount of rainfall in your back yard.
Studying some things is harder to get funding for, of course, because those thing have been studied, and found unfruitful in terms of reliable science. Perpetual motion is an example of that sort of study. No one minds if you spend your own money building perpetual motion machines. You will have a lot of trouble finding people willing to help you pay for them, though. You will probably not even get an answer, if you send in such a proposal to any organization which funds research.
Parapsychology is a broad field, and there is actual scientific study happening. Not much, though. The problem is that there are lots of charlatans out there, and real science is no where near as interesting as wild speculation. Real science is a whole lot of button sorting, and arithmetic. No one wants to do the button sorting, although there are plenty of entrepreneurs who do the mind reading and run training classes for mind readers. (Send in your payment with your application, of course.)
Tris
Rule of Reason: “If nobody uses it, there’s a reason.”
You will have to be more specific with which fields you are interested in, must of it is bunk, but that is not to say some legitimate discoveries can’t be made in areas outside of what is currently considered mainstream science. As an example, cryptozoology is largely a fantasy quest for mythical animals, but new species of megafauna do continue to turn up. On such example is the largely publicized new species of deer discovered in Vietnam. Important to note that it was legitimate WWF (not wrestler) scientists who made the discovery, but it is an openness to the possibility such creatures exist that made the discovery possible using valid scientific technique.
What Triskadecamus said.
It can be hard to persuade people that their beliefs / theories need scientific testing.
Especially if they are enjoying themselves* or maybe earning money from gullible folks**…
*I will be interested to see if the remote viewers cooperate with Triskadecamus’ proposed test.
**Do you want to learn to levitate? I can teach you, but you need to do two things:
- give me money
- believe that you are levitating, because if you don’t it doesn’t work. :rolleyes:
…but avoid studying your levitation manual just before bedtime, because it’ll keep you up all night! 
Tris covered it beautifully. There’s some statistical evidence for the phenomena whose putative existence is the subject matter of parapsychology. Most if not all of it is subject to dispute on the grounds of other possible mechanisms that are known to exist, plus the application of Occam’s Razor to suggest the improbability of parapsychological behavior.
My rare experiences with telepathy lead me to think that people are misinterpreting adequate comprehension of another’s thought processes that one can intuit what he or she is thinking as an act of communication rather than one of insight and caring. Occurrences of true precognition do raise some interesting questions about how the universe is structured, to the extent they are not coincidences or confabulations. Beyond that I maintain a skeptical curiosity.
Parapsychology might be for real?
And there might be turtle holding up the earth?
Some things just don’t deserve scientific time. Any time spent should be done by the justice department to see who these guys are conning to stay in business.
I see.
And from what divine revelation did you get your certitude?
While I think that 99.9999% of what passes for “occult wisdom” is more akin to “occult bleeding” (a term from proctology – there may be some blood there but it’s obscured by the vast amounts of fecal matter;)), I think that anything that bids to advance our knowledge of the world if true deserves careful and thorough investigation – to the extent that we care to finance it.
If somebody thinks they can harness vacuum energy – at the expenditure of $20 billion of taxpayers’ money – then the Congressional committees appropriating money better ask for very thorough peer review. If they claim to be able to do it for $1.98 and two used rubber bands, give it to them, and let them prove their theory or make fools of themselves.
If there is in fact anything to parapsychology, it opens large new dimensions of knowledge, because it takes scientific knowledge beyond the “matters available to the senses” empiricist epistemology now in fashion, with consequent possible benefits to our understanding of the world. If not, it would be useful to know as much, to protect the innocent from charlatans if for no other reason.
>> If they claim to be able to do it for $1.98 and two used rubber bands, give it to them
You need to read my proposal more carefully. It’s two rubbers and $1,980 (for the hookers). Can I still have it though? 
The rubbers, sure. Talk to Zotti about the $1,980; he controls the money around here. But I see typical government-price-inflation stuff going on – I’ll bet you can find hookers much cheaper than that. Check out the flirt threads in MPSIMS; you might get volunteers!
I don’t see how someone can be doing legitimate science if he is trying to study the habits of non-existent creatures. It would be like saying that a person trying to study the habits of leprechauns is doing legitimate science.
Now, if that person were trying to determine why certain people believe leprechauns exist, he would be doing legitimate science. A person trying to determine why certain people believe telepathy exists would also be doing legitimate science. A person trying to determine if telepathy exists would be doing legitimate science IF he does not already believe that it exists.
Good science == good methodology.
Good science topic == opinion of scientific community, which is notoriously close-minded (oh, wait, they’re human!)
Parapsychology: eh. It can be studied effectively; to my knowledge none of those studies has shown statistical significance, especially with regards to ESP. Still wonder about stopping the heartbeat of a frog, though. Fucking frogs (oh, wait, we’re not talking about the French? ;))
Of course you don’t see it they don’t exist! Err, wait…
Huh? Why does that matter? That’s an awfully misplaced “if” IMO. I believe in the second law of thermodynamics; am I forbidden from studying Brownian motion now?
I’ll clear up what I said if you clear up what you said. It looks to me like you said that Brownian motion violates the 2LoT. I don’t see how.
Naw, jab, I was just wondering why it mattered one way or the other what the scientist believed if he followed the scientific method.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jab1 *
**
A swing and a miss, Jab! Strike one.
Science is a method, not a belief.
You are a believer, not an investigator. The fact that your belief is negative (belief in non-existence rather than in existence) doesn’t change that. If I ignore all evidence that fails to support my non-belief I am just as guilty of bad methodology as someone who ignores evidence for any other reason. Your assumption of the truth of your antecedent denial is not more logical than the assumption of truth for an antecedent acceptance. Science is a method of examination, not a realm of suitable investigation.
You can scientifically study anything. Fairies, Quarks, Plate Tectonics, or Evolution. You might well be ridiculed for your efforts, but that has been the case in examinations that eventually turned out to be true.
There are some matters, which, because of their inherent nature, are not resolvable by factual, or logic based evaluation. Attempting to create an impression that Science (with a capital S) can or does evaluate that matter is argument by authority, and is as erroneous in that application as in any other. Subjective perception and opinion are not resolvable in any but a human conceptual consensus. But Unicorns, Dragons and Logical Humans are not inherently mythical, or inextant. All we can say is that it seems unlikely that we will be able to find examples for study.
Tris
“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” ~ Hippocrates ~
{fixed code. --Gaudere}
[Edited by Gaudere on 11-15-2001 at 07:38 PM]
Parapsyschology CAN and has been studied scientifically. So has the Loch Ness Monster, pyramid power, and prayer.
Scientific study has just not come up with sufficient evidence to make much in the way of conclusions.
Yes, there is still plenty of research going on today. Here in the UK it has always been a relatively minor field, but even so we have at least two or three permanent, staffed and funded palaces of higher learning which study nothing but parapsychology. It is not a ‘stillborn’ field. I’d say its legitimacy is greater now than at any time in the past. A lot of the silliness previously associated with the field - such as scientists beng taken in by clever tricksters - is gone now.
There is as much written about it now as there ever has been - you just need to look in the right journals. I don’t know who these ‘many scientists’ are who see it as ‘totally false’ (whatever that means) but it is still an active field which attracts funding and on which scientists publish papers. As for ‘adherents’ being unmasked as frauds, again, it is hard to know what you mean. A few people who claimed ‘psychic powers’ were exposed as fakes. And a few scientists in this field - as in every field - were found to have some unreliable data. But the vast majority of psi research stands as perfectly good research, albeit research which has yet to arrive at widely-agreed and non-controversial demonstration that psi exists.
If one had to summarise the state-of-the-art at the moment, one would have to say that there may well be such a thing as psi, but it seems not to be the kind of faculty which yields to normal scientific testing. This doesn’t necessarly mean it’s a myth. It may just mean we need to re-think how we go about detecting things scientifically. After all, 100 years ago no scientist on earth knew how to detect or measure the bending of light due to gravity. Today nobody doubts that this has been detected and measured.
Good job on the code fixin’ there, gaudere 
I was talking about keeping an open mind. A scientist who already believes telepathy exists will very likely focus on the “positives” and ignore the “negatives” when investigating the phenomenon. A person who does that is not conducting legitimate science. He has to consider ALL the facts.
I know next to nothing about parapsychology, but what little I do know suggests to me that it probably isn’t what I would call science as much as… eh, cataloguing, or something like that.
That is, it involves observation, and trying to find natural phenomena, but this isn’t by itself enough to make something a science (on my view). After all, isn’t the hallmark of a science the ability to make testable predictions? Is there anyone out there in parapsychology who does make testable predictions, or is it still in the “we’re just observing” stage?