Yes but those 50% (or whatever…) of the population include qualified scientists and students, and if their personal experience/belief causes them to pursue research, that is understandable and the way a whole lot of science has gotten done in many topics.
In general, that would be true - if a treatment that’s viewed as quackery turns out to work, it would quickly be embraced and then be called “medicine.” It would probably be fun to come up with a list of what these have been - I’d bet it’s a very short list, and I can’t think of any examples right now.
And if something considered “paranormal” proved to be real, then “science” would be all over it, and it would no longer be called “paranormal.” But are there any examples of that at all?
The problems with both medical quackery and paranormal stuff is the epistemology of the beliefs. If they don’t have sufficient evidence, it’s a bad idea to believe them and worse to promote them. It’s OK to investigate, but acceptance and promotion, no.
What percentage? And what, in your mind, qualifies them?
Try to follow the conversation and those answers will be clear.
Try to answer the questions directly, and your purpose in this thread will be even clearer.
Paranormal, no. There are a number of theories once considered to be fringe that were later adopted by the mainstream. Aside from continental drift, there was heliocentrism and the Big Bang. Pandas were considered mythical to the western world until the early 1900s. But to find examples of the “paranormal” becoming science you’d probably have to go back to the beginning of real science, when people stopped assuming paranormal explanations for things like electricity and the sun and began trying to explain them with natural laws.
Again, if you read the conversation immediately preceding your post you will find those questions are already answered.
Qualified in the context of this statement means they are in a position to do research correctly.
But within, say, the last hundred years or so? Has anything "paranormal’ turned out to be true?
Ghosts? ESP? Telekinesis? Talking to the dead? Even spoon-bending?
I think there is a distinction to be made between “paranormal” and “supernatural”.
Anything that doesn’t currently fit the known theories/laws of established human knowledge is paranormal. Paranormal, when understood to have this distinction from supernatural, could include a whole ton of things. I mentioned the Big Bang theory way back in the thread. There are probably countless such examples.
Let me explain to you how reality works: If 90% of the world’s population believed in the Easter Bunny, and 90% of that 90% were sufficiently trained to search for the Easter Bunny, they still wouldn’t find the Easter Bunny, because you can’t vote the Easter Bunny into existence!
ESP and the like has been researched to death and nothing has been found. The fact that a shitload of charlatans and misguided true believers have kept the interest up, and the fact that the internet makes it easier to spread crap “science” among those without the skill to tell shit from shinola should have no bearing among those who practice real science. Reality is that which exists whether you believe in it or not, so your supposed “>50%” figure doesn’t mean jack without facts.
No, the “Big Bang Theory” is not paranormal. It does not fall outside the range of scientific possibility.
That’s why I think it is important you understand the distinction between paranormal and supernatural before engaging in debate with people who do.
Here is one person’s explanation of the difference which I think is adequate for this purpose.
It did when it was first proposed.
Neither she, nor you, understand the definition of paranormal. Rocks falling from the sky were never paranormal-they actually happened. The Big Bang Theory was never considered paranormal by any reputable scientist at any time, not even when it was first proposed. Where are you getting this stuff?
The mere fact that you say this is indication enough that you still aren’t grasping the distinction of the terms. My guess is that since it would not suit your aims to do so, you never will.
I have this aversion to believing bullshit, even if it suits my aims.
That person has a non-overlapping magisteria view of the supernatural, a view that I (and most here) would reject. IF people who believed in supernatural things thought that they never had any interaction with the material world, then I would agree that science can’t address those beliefs. However I’ve never met a person like that - all the people I know who believe in the supernatural, think that there is an effect on the material world, and we just haven’t figured out yet how to measure it.
I agree with Czarcasm - the Big Bang Theory would never have been called paranormal. If you define the term that loosely, any new idea would fit. Higgs Boson? Paranormal! Gravity waves? Paranormal! The word just doesn’t mean that.
Rocks falling from the sky maybe would fit it. The idea was rejected by most of academia, and viewed as nonsense, until a couple hundred years ago.
The point is there are some experiences, or claims that simply could never have a natural explanation. Their very premise is already so far disconnected with the most fundamental tenets of the known universe they are in the realm of the supernatural.
There are other experiences and claims which could easily have a simple, natural explanation but we just don’t know it. These could be deemed to be in the realm of the paranormal, whether they involve ESP type things or any other previously inexplicable phenomena.
The argument Czarcasm is making is that ESP and the like are supernatural, not paranormal, whether he realizes it or not. And once again a semblance of interesting discussion on the topic of the OP is pulled down into the quagmire of semantics and misread statements.
If you agree that theories about rocks falling from the sky went from what could be considered paranormal to an easily explained natural phenomena, then I think we are in agreement in a general sense. Something observed by a lot of people that simply has no explanation is only paranormal until an explanation is found.
Confirmation bias and imagination don’t seem to be adequate explanations to the myriad claims of various psi experiences that many people, ranging from lunatics to highly skeptical scientists, have observed and agree warrant more research.
To most of us here, that paragraph entails a contradiction between the two sentences.
If ESP has a “natural explanation” which we don’t know yet, then it is not in the realm of the “paranormal.” It would be completely normal.
Paranormal refers to spirit, miracle, magic, etc. It’s the home to non-physical claims of ESP, where (as in any number of anecdotes) someone “suddenly knew their loved one, a thousand miles away, was in trouble.” Transmitting a signal, without actually having any transmission of energy, is “paranormal” in essence.
(This was why Einstein didn’t believe in ESP. Signals, to him, and to most of us, require an energy-based system of transmission.)
No it doesn’t. It just means outside the normal, or without scientific explanation.
1n 1920 or so, continental drift was paranormal. It was a hypothesis rejected by conventional science, with little evidence to support it. It fit the dictionary definition of paranormal.
From the Greek para, a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, most often attached to verbs and verbal derivatives, with the meanings “at or to one side of, beside, side by side” ( parabola; paragraph; parallel; paralysis), “beyond, past, by” ( paradox; paragogue);
1 of or relating to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena.
1 beyond normal explanation
Yes and the last 10-15 posts to the thread have been interspersed with discussion about how an observation about the world could be considered to be paranormal if there is no known explanation, but later understood to be perfectly normal once a natural explanation has been found. I don’t see the contradiction there.
Strictly defined paranomal just means outside of that which is normal. It has been heavily associated with psi type stuff because that represents a lot of things people claim to observe that has no explanation. But the things they claim to have observed are not outside of the natural possibilities (i.e. supernatural).
Another example that just popped to mind are these ‘ghost spheres’ or whatever people were calling them, that appear in photos and are widely proclaimed to be proof of some form of supernatural, well something. They were observed by lots of people. Ensuing investigation produced evidence that they are a product of digital photography, flash, and dust particles. These observations could be considered paranormal, the claims people made about them were supernatural, and the natural explanation, gleaned through research, made them completely normal.