If there are a million or ten million false claims, there is nothing to suggest that hidden among them is a truth–in fact, if I see a huge pile of manure my first thought is definitely not, “this pile of manure is really impressive so there is probably at least one order of fish and chips in it somewhere.”
Every single time a fringe science claim has been tested under conditions that ensure accurate results, the claim has been proved groundless. Every single time. That is why it’s called fringe science.
Skeptics are open to the possibility that fringe claims contain elements of truth, but they are certainly not open to gullibility. Proponents of fringe science, and especially psychic abilities, are legion. Their bogus evidence has never been replicated in a serious laboratory under the necessary guidelines, and it’s not for lack of trying.
Pseudoscience is not worthy of debate after it has been disproved a number of times, save of course for historical purposes. The fact that no serious people listen to them is why they call them “fringe scientists”. Look for similar claims in a book of fiction, and it would be entertaining, possibly even a good story. Disguise it as science, and people who are able to analyze claims (those with skeptical minds) will be understandably upset at what is nothing more than the propagation of falsehoods.
Good scientists who are intimate with theory of knowledge are open to the possibility that any claim could contain truth, which is why they test the claims rigorously–and in the case of fringe science that’s as far as good scientists go, since the evidence is simply not there and thus there is no reason to perpetuate the false hypothesis.
Not one shred of evidence. Ever. That’s pretty heavy for the fringe people, but even that does not seem to change their minds. Given this lack of evidence to date, I will keep an open mind, but would not be surprised to see incoming pseudoscientific evidence continue to vaporize as it always has to this day.
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html#CS
“Sagan’s AAAS critique of Velikovsky in Feb. 1974 (completed with revisions by 1976 and published in Donald Goldsmith (ed.), Scientists Confront Velikovsky (Cornell Univ. Press, 1977) whereas Velikovsky’s finished text was distributed at the event), while a rhetorical tour de force, was a failure as an example of “reasoned argument, celestial mechanics, and the best physical science to counter [Velikovsky’s] sensational claims” (Skeptical Inquirer, Nov/Dec 1999, p. 4). This is because (1) a large portion of Sagan’s “reasoned argument” is against straw men and red herrings, as with, e.g., the manna after the Exodus which Sagan criticizes Velikovsky for accepting the biblical account that it did not fall on the Sabbath when Velikovsky explicitly denies this as unrealistic, while manna-like stories come from many widespread cultures, e.g., “ambrosia” of the Greeks, “madhu” of the Hindus, and “sweet morning dew” of the Scandinavians, (2) Sagan’s critique contains NO celestial mechanics since the celebrated great odds against Velikovsky’s scenario are derived from “ergodic theory”, i.e., ignoring gravitation, as Sagan replied to Dr. Robert W. Bass after his address, and (3) Sagan’s physical science is riddled with errors considering, for example, his Jupiter escape velocity is too great (70 vs. 60 km/sec, which, together with other minor errors, was corrected for the version in Broca’s Brain) and, as revealed by George R. Talbott in Kronos IV:2, 1978, the cooling calculation in Sagan’s Appendix 3 is nothing but a trivial identity: the heat radiated to Venus by the Sun in about one hour at 6000K equals that radiated from Venus in 3500 years at 79K. This was reported in my letter in April 1981 Physics Today which Sagan ignored at the time and claimed ignorance of it in our final correspondence in April 1996. (Talbott’s notions about ongoing, massive volcanism on Venus, however, are contradicted by the stagnant atmosphere below the clouds and the existence of 35+ km. diameter craters.)”
Frankly, Sagan does seem to have made a fairly personal attack against Velikofski’s suppositions. I think that this conclusively proves that if someone persists in spouting bullshit and does it long enough and loud enough, a serious scientist might get a bit peeved and retaliate. Scientists are people too.
Sagan being upset with Velikofski while trashing his gobbledygook in no way invalidates the demonstration that Velikofski was just plain wrong, mixing a huge amount of myth, pseudoscience, and very selective observation together into a theory that doesn’t hold water.
First of all, apologies for participating in a hijack on your thread. I got WAY off topic there.
As far as what fringe theories will prove to be true, I guess I need more definition of what those are. If you mean things like human auras of various sorts, healing crystals, astrology, telepathic pets etc, I really don’t expect ANY of them to turn out true.
Sorry to be such a downer on the thread but there just isn’t any evidence that doesn’t evaporate when it’s examined by an opponent.
And when I saw the thread title I thought we’d be discussing string theory and GUTs and all sorts of fun stuff.
I think that we will have indirect evidence of higher spatial dimensions within the century, but the quantum theory of gravity will continue to lack evidence.
Oh yeah, and computers will get more powerful. (wait, we aren’t just tossing out predictions, are we?)
Ho ho, that’s rich! “Computers will get more powerful” – hah! Next you’ll be telling us that we’ll be able to fit an entire CPU onto a single microchip!
I think I was a little missunderstood here ( or maybe didn’t understand something ) but what I tried to say was that if one of this wildly dubious theories or hipothesis turned out to be true I think it would be somkething related to that “psychic stuff” mentioned above.
I’ve never seen any demonstration of supernatural powers or have believed in any account of one.
Yet I do believe that at least one of these must actually happen even tough it’ll probably have some mundane explanation.
And what of Uri Gheller? Last time I read of him was in some sixties book and he had not yet been debunked.
James Randi did a rather thorough trouncing job on Uri Geller in his book The Truth About Uri Geller, first published in 1975. (I have the revised 1982 edition of The Truth About Uri Geller at home.)
Ah yes, Randi is great…because he didn’t just debunk by saying that Geller was using slight-of-hand, he actually went out there and did the same spoon-bending feats that Geller was doing!
Wow. I just wanted to commend you - that was really stepping out there for this thread and this group of posts. Is there any work out there that has led you to these conclusions? If so, I’d love to read it. Seriously.
Sorry for misunderstanding. I was pointing out the fallacy of the “large volumes of manure must contain some good food” argument though, and not necessarily attacking your position.
Well I think this is speculation not based on any facts, as you say. I would also argue that a mundane explanation would reveal the phenomenon in question to be simple flim flam.
Uri Geller has been debunked thoroughly. I even learned one of his spoon-bending tricks, and am now passing myself off as a psychic! The funny thing is that Uri Geller is not even a good magician; according to professionals in the field of magic his tricks are very obviously tricks, and James Randi had no problems exposing him.
That is what I mean when I say that a mundane explanation for an apparently unexplained phenomenon reveals the phenomenon to be flim flam. It looks like the real thing (to some, maybe to many), it does what the real thing is supposed to do, but as soon as you introduce experimental controls, all the evidence dissipates and a mundane explanation (whether it is illusion, trickery, cheating, etc.) is sufficient to account for the phenomenon.
I don’t see ANY item of pseudoscience or fringe science being proved true in the future. There are too many inappropriate motivators and too much sloppiness involved to take these people seriously. Essentially, if they’re not fruitcakes they are simply deluded.
Sorry, I worked most of these ideas out on my own, though I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody else already had them - one time when thinking about alternate universes and quantum theory I realized that in a way my consciousness is immortal because it can only exist in universes where I continue to live, since it isn’t present to observe the universe and make it real in realities where I died they effectively can never become MY reality. My universe may split off from someone elses when they die in my reality, and I may die in somebody else’s reality, but they are separate. Anyway, I posted this relevation and someone pointed out that someone had the exact same idea 20 years before I was born.
The idea that our consciousness may exist in the past is actually based on something I read, I can’t remember the details but some scientist said it appeared that our consciousness lagged some small fraction of a second behind our actual experiences. I thought this was a neat idea, but thought ‘How do they know the true present as they are defining it isn’t also in the past?’ - maybe there are more layers that aren’t immediately obvious. This kinda ties in with deja vu and memory - we have a short-term memory which is a buffer where what we experience is put in immediately, and stuff is filtered out of this and moved into our long-term memory (which is everything from 10 minutes ago back). Data in long-term memory ‘feels different’ from stuff in short-term memory.
Data in long-term memory ‘feels different’ from stuff in short-term memory. Maybe our universe is a simulation created by our minds as a side-effect of our existence in the ‘real’ universe.
See? The first sentence above was something that was still in your short-term memory - when you saw it you were thinking ‘I just saw this’, the second sentence was in your long-term memory, ‘I saw this earlier’. Some people explain deja-vu by saying that sometimes something you experience goes into your short-term memory and your long-term memory at the same time, so as you see it you think ‘I am seeing this’ and ‘I saw this before’, even though you can’t place when you saw it before (because you didn’t, it’s not a true long-term memory and has no context). I liked this explanation, it makes sense with 99% of my deja vu experiences, but I think everyone has occasionally felt deja vu and then was able to remember exactly when they experienced it before, whether in a dream, imagination, whatever. In some cases we even have evidence that it isn’t a fabrication of our mind, we told people about it or wrote it down when we first experienced it (this happened to me with a dream about December 31, 1996 that I had in the mid-80s and told my parents about that later happened). I think the reason we sometimes ‘see the future’ is that our consciousness is actually operating several layers back in our memory but occasionally experiences that are supposed to remain in memory buffers ‘upstream’ from our consciousness for some time before being processed are accidentally transferred straight back to the wrong type of memory. Since we are apparently able to access information from several years ahead of when we think we are, our consciousness (or a portion or version of it) may be operating considerably further back from true reality than a fraction of a second.
aynrandlover and Badtz Maru:
your ideas tie in so closely with a story a friend of mine and I are working on that I almost crapped my pants. It actually solidified a lot of ideas for us. I read the consciousness thread, but a missed your comment the first time, aynrandlover. Thank you both for your responses.
As to the OP, I tend to agree with Abe:
I believe there are energy forces, for lack of a better term, that influence us physically and psychologically and can be used in a positive manner. (Something akin to negative ions comes to mind, but on a grander scale.) In the past these may have been referred to as “gods” or “spirits”. Unfortunately, the “Holistic” movement is filled with too many fruitcakes for the mainstream culture to take them seriously.
I suggest that those who are interested in the idea of consciousness as an artifact of memory/past sensation read Francis Crick. The Astounding Hypothesis is well worth reading even if you don’t like his model of consciousness, actually.
Um, what physical and psychological influence do negative ions have? (Other than giving us a tiny negative electric charge?) I’ve heard many claims about the wondrous properties of negative ions by people selling negative ion generators, but no hard evidence that they have any real effect above-and-beyond a placebo effect.
Today, we call them “hallucinations” or “sleep paralysis”.
you’re right. that was a bad example. I had a hard time finding any research that wasn’t backed by someone trying a hock an ion generator. there were a few, however - not worth citing.
Has there ever been a thread on enthogenics? A fringe science?
I agree that there is a great deal of fakery going on in the world. Even so this argument is bunk.
This is essentially saying that if it could be done some other way then that proves it MUST have been done some other way.
This is essentially the same argument the moon mission hoaxers have been using to “prove” we never went to the moon.
Just for the record I think Geller is a sham myself. But I didn’t come to that decision based on the fact that there is more than one way to bend a spoon.
Based on this theory if I were to develop a convincing way to duplicate what you or I see looking at pond water through a microscope I would have succeeded in debunking microbiology. Because it “could” have all been faked as I have demonstrated.
Randi is a great showman but just a mediocre scientist.
I agree that there is a great deal of fakery going on in the world. Even so this argument is bunk.
This is essentially saying that if it could be done some other way then that proves it MUST have been done some other way.
This is essentially the same argument the moon mission hoaxers have been using to “prove” we never went to the moon.
Just for the record I think Geller is a sham myself. But I didn’t come to that decision based on the fact that there is more than one way to bend a spoon.
Based on this theory if I were to develop a convincing way to duplicate what you or I see looking at pond water through a microscope I would have succeeded in debunking microbiology. Because it “could” have all been faked as I have demonstrated.
Randi is a great showman but just a mediocre scientist.
