You don’t provide enough details for me to really understand the plate glass window story. But it seems to me you are providing an example against yourself here. Because whatever went on before, ultimately, as you say, the sceptics conclusion was revised.
How many believers in psychics or young earth creation or whatever have you heard of who did some research, validated their own beliefs, then did something else and then just said, “OK, we were wrong, we admit it, we revise our conclusions, we don’t believe in Jon Edward (or whoever) anymore?”
Sceptics get in a rut because they just keep finding out that they are right. But I don’t see a lot of evidence that they are so intransigent in their beliefs that they no longer deserve to be called sceptics anymore.
Agreed. I’m particularly hard on skeptics because I consider them the vanguards of truth whose heart and soul is objectivity. Bias is not an acceptable human fault for a professional skeptic.
flowbark and MEBuckner, and KidCharlemagne, I don’t think we’re too terribly far apart from one another.
In re-reading this thread I see that I’ve been nearly incomprehensible. Sorry about that.
What I should have said is this:
First, there are serious problems with data collection in this field.
Second, and closely related to the first statement, there are problems with the analysis of the data which is collected. In cases where the data appears to show “something is going on” I still have a healthy mistrust for it because this field has a long-standing tradition of deception and data manipulation. This is one field of study where a positive-looking result must absolutely take into account the actions and motivations of everyone involved in the experiment.
Third and finally, if and when a measurable, repeatable result is positively established, there still must be a working theory which is supported by the evidence. This is putting the cart before the horse a little bit, but the entire concept of “psi” is essentially a theory–albeit a very broad one. To date, I don’t think anyone can reasonably say that the theory of psychic powers has been reliably supported in any experiments. Therefore I feel perfectly comfortable in questioning the validity of parapsychology itself.
I hope that makes sense, and again I’m sorry if I added to the confusion rather than helped to outline what I think are some of the basic problems which the field of study appears to have inherited from its even more preposterous forebears.
Yes, I’ve pointed this out previously. My point was directed at the statement by DavidB that people who believed in paranormal phenomena believed that skeptics were “out to disbelieve” and for this reason did not want them anywhere near their experiments. I believe the fact that this is in many cases true - the skeptics are out to disbelieve - supports the reasoning of such people.
Quite frankly I don’t know the slightest thing about Truzzi, and he might have been the biggest nitwit around. But I don’t think the failure of his Zetetic means anything. I would bet that the vast majority of people who have enough of an interest in these phenomena to join organizations or subscribe to journals have a firmly established viewpoint, one way or the other. A truly unbiased organization will lack a constituency.
Izzyr, you say “biased” as if that were a bad thing. I would like to quote a James Randi definition:
So would you call the expectation of “horse” instead of “unicorn” biased? Perhaps, but is that bad or just more logical?
For every claim made, there exists a place on the spectrum of “likely” to “unlikely.” For example, how would you rate these two:
[ol][li]An alien spaceship just landed in my front lawn and I am being abducted as I type this, or[/li][li]My cat just jumped on my lap and is purring.[/ol][/li]I would place claim #1 as very unlikely, and claim #2 as very likely.
Is it possible that claim #1 is true? Maybe. Is it possible that claim #2 is false? Yes (I might have lied).
How much proof would you need for claim #2? We know that cats exist, they frequently jump on laps, they do purr, and I might have one. Perhaps a picture, a time stamp, a video or an eyewitness would be sufficent proof. And whether it was true or not would not upset conventional scientific thought much.
But claim #1 – a mere picture, video or eyewitness would not be sufficient proof, for the claim is WAY toward the unlikely/unbelieveable side of the scale. Acceptance of this claim would require serious revision of some scientific thought.
Where skeptics differ from non-skeptics may be where that scale tilts.
The PEAR study is exactly that – small differences. If other studies were able to replicate or enlarge these differences, it might be worth some more study. So far, other efforts, with tighter controls, have not produced better results.
I’m sure James Randi would welcome a formal application from the PEAR team for the $Mil prize, and if they really believe in their research, they should jump at the chance.
That may be, but I have found the street is much larger and faster going in the other direction. The will to beleive is much, much stronger. Look at John Edward and Syliva Brown supporters.
It would also get nowhere. The Forteans tried to be unbiases, and ended up being lightweight beleivers who tried to spit on everyone. I lack respect for smug and smarmy fence-sitters. Nuetrality is fine, but I’ve foudn few who can actually adhere to it for a long time.
Of course, the tale of Myth Busters calling the “Dude plunges out of a skyscraper while demonstrating how strong the windows are” story is a perfect example. The story SOUNDS like an urban legend… in fact, it has every element of an urban legend:
It’s a story about someone getting killed
Due to his own recklessness and egotism
In spectacular and wickedly ironic fashion
And he’s a lawyer
And the specific facts never got mentioned
So it’s commonly dismissed as an urban legend - but, of course, it really did happen, on July 9, 1993, in Toronto. Gary Hoy, a lawyer with Holden Day Wilson, was demonstrating (to visiting law students) how you couldn’t break the plate window in his office in the TD Centre when it broke out and he fell about 250 feet to his death. He had done the same thing before, which would suggest he’d gradually weakened the window. If you ever see a skyline of Toronto during a sports broadcast or something, the TD Tower is the black one. But you know, if I didn’t live in Toronto and know that really happened, and heard that story for the first time, I’d assume it was an urban legend too.
There are generally a pretty limited number of supernatural and pseudoscience scams, and at any given time about a dozen or so are really popular. Each type has certain characteristics that easily identify it, like urban legends, so you don’t have to be too far into the sales pitch before you recognize what it is and say to yourself, “Huh, this is one of those unlimited energy machine scams” or “Copper bracelets AGAIN??”
We have to create - I hate using this word - paradigms to filter things in order to make data manageable. Skepticism is not a perfect filter through which all truth shall pass and all lies shall be screened out. There IS an element of judgement necessary in being a skeptic, just for virtue of efficiency. But again, that’s why it’s incipient on the claimer to prove the claim.
Skeptics, for instance, are relatively open-minded to the rather flaky and mind-bending possibilities inherent in quantum physics - because those things are the product of real science and experimentation.
Well, I’m going to challenge this idea that “bias” is unacceptable. It is a common misconception that individual scientists are supposed to be “unbiased”. However, science does not rely on individual scientists being unbiased as long as they are honest and don’t actively deceive (and don’t actively try to suppress other points of view and evidence that disagree with their biases). It is perfectly fine for scientists to have biases and, in fact, it is quite advantageous to science. Otherwise, as has been noted by philosophers and historians of science, scientists would (for example) be too quick to abandon a theory in light of “evidence” when in fact it turns out that the evidence is wrong.
On a personal note, I will tell you that, as a practicing scientist, most of the best scientists I know are extremely biased in the sense of having strong points of view about various scientific issues in their field!
And how is that different from what I said? For example, I don’t believe that ESP exists. I have a skeptical viewpoint about it. Why? Because there is no good evidence that it exists. However, if some such evidence were to be presented, I would take a look at it.
How’s this for an example that I was just thinking about this morning: For several years some astronomers have been talking about “dark energy” causing expansion of the universe to accelerate. Personally, I was skeptical. Sounded a bit too freaky for me. Many other astronomers were as well. But you know what? More and more good solid evidence came in and now this is pretty much the dominant theory (and has been bolstered yet again by new images by an x-ray satellite, which is why I was thinking about it this morning).
At first, I was skeptical. I didn’t believe that this so-called “dark energy” existed. I wanted more evidence. That evidence came in. I changed my mind, as did many others.
The difference, of course, is that with psychics and the like, the evidence has not come in.
Yes, that was his claim. Of course, he went on to believe in psychic detectives and other pseudoscientific claptrap without the proper evidence, so he might have been just a teeny bit biased when he wrote that.
I also said:
You replied with one word:
Care to explain that?
I wouldn’t exactly rely on that particular incident to base too many conclusions on. Both sides came away with very different stories. And even if it happened the way the believers claim, you can’t indict all skeptics because of what a few allegedly did.
In a later message:
I have yet to see any evidence that skeptics are “out to disbelieve” other than this one controversial case you’ve mentioned. Once again, being skeptical is not the same as being “out to disbelieve.” If there is honest to goodness evidence out there, I – and every other skeptic I know – want to see it. But meanwhile, that’s not going to stop us from pointing out the crap when believers try to call it gold.
Then you will always be disappointed. Scientists are not robots. They will have biases. The true test is whether they allow those biases to interfere with the theories and hypotheses.
Hell, just to be ornery here, I will even go further than that and argue that it is fine if they do allow their biases to interfere with their theories and hypotheses.
Let me give a concrete name and example here: Bob Laughlin won the Nobel Prize in Physics in like 1998 or 1999 for explaining the fractional quantum hall effect. (He shared it with the experimenters who discovered the phenomenon.) When high-Tc superconductivity was discovered in the late 1980s, he was hot off his FQHE success and he tried to apply similar ideas to the high Tc superconductors. He had a theory that he was so convinced was right that he was just being insufferably obnoxious to people who dared to propose alternate theories at a conference that I attended at IBM…so much so that the organizer of the conference came in on the second day with a pie, placed it down on a table in the middle of the auditorium and said, “Anybody who wants to take this and throw it in Bob Laughlin’s face at any time is welcome to do so!”
Now, personally, I find Laughlin a little over-the-top and will not defend all of his antics but I don’t think one can dispute the fact that he is not only a competent scientist but a damn good one! They don’t hand out Nobel Prizes for nothing and it is especially impressive for theory. (In experiment, you can get a little lucky and stumble across something that turns out to be much more important than you could have imagined, but you can just stumble across a good theory!)
So, KC, throw away your cute little textbook picture of the very objective scientist who is always super-duper careful to never let any sort of bias enter into his formulation of hypotheses and theories. It is a silly myth.
Of course, that should be “can’t”. (By the way, my own biases as a theorist may be showing here although I think I have heard agreement on this point from experimentalists too.)
Hell, since it is late and I’m too tired to resist another post, I will clarify a few things: I’m not advocating that all scientists should be the way I described. In fact, I think those of us who are less creative can sometimes do better by playing the role of the more objective unbiased adjudicator. But, it seems like an interesting fact that the most creative scientists seem like the ones who least fit this sort of mold.
At any rate, it takes all kinds. But, the point is that what makes the scientific process so successful is that it is able to proceed and make progress despite the fact that the individual participants are all too human. It doesn’t rely on some sort of super-human impartiality and, as I have tried to argue, it is probably the case that it does better when some of the participants deviate quite dramatically from such impartiality.
Hey, if you want to, fine with me! I was kinda proud of that line myself although KC didn’t give it such a rousing endorsement. It’s nice to have another [more unbiased ] opinion.
The distinction is between thinking that it doesn’t exist because you happen to have not seen any evidence for it, and believing that it does not exist. The difference will manifest itself in whether you approach a test as being a legitimate test of a possibility or as an assumed fraud.
Actually all this shows is that you were not biased against that particular theory. I am NOT saying that being skeptical is the same as being biased. Only that many “skeptics” about paranormal phenomena (& similar) happen to be biased about it. Apparently this is not the case (at least with you) with “dark energy”.
Off the top of my head, I would offer three reasons for the bias in this area.
As noted by a previous poster, many people put their faith in science, and are reluctant to admit the possibility that forces that seem at odds with science as we understand it can exist.
There are an enormous amount of claims of this sort which have turned out to be hoaxes and folklore. Antipathy towards such claims has led to an attitude that all such claims are similarly worthless. (This also applies to matters that are not ruled out by science, such as the existence of a yeti or the notion that a game show contestant has said “up the butt, Bob”).
In the case of “professional” skeptics such as Randi et al, they have spent enormous amounts of time over many years of their lives fighting for this viewpoint, and have even made something of a name for themselves in this field. To admit at this point that “uh, on second thought it seems that I was wrong all along” would be untenable. This is a factor that has much impact on legitimate science as well (along the lines noted by jshore. I’ve seen the assertion made - I forgot by who - that new theories gain acceptance not by convincing opponents, but by winning over the next generation of scientists who start with a clean slate).
I was objecting to the term “close-minded” and noting that the claim was about bias (which is more limited to the specific issue as opposed to a general mentality). Sorry - I should have been more clear there.
Of course not, although these were (as I understand it) some of the biggest names in the business, and the type who would be monitoring the experiments suggested by the OP. My opinion is formed by general observations - that particular incident is a dramatic illustration.
Again, having a firm opinion is not a bad thing. But it does make you prone to interpret things your way.
If you were to assert that the rationale for disbelieving in paranormal phenomena is overwhelming, even if you were right you would not be the person to supervise an “let’s settle it once and for all” test of such phenomena. From your perspective there might be no need for such a test, as it couldn’t possibly show anything. But in the context of this OP, saying “let’s let the skeptics run a test” will not settle anything. They are as prone to misinterpret against a positive result as the believers are to misinterpret in favor of a positive result.
Interestingly, Gardner, in his chapter on ESP in his Fads and Fallacies, is pretty upfront in noting that his biases against ESP should be taken into account when reading his analysis - as should the biases of believers when reading theirs. He also notes that tests have shown that testers tend to make errors that favor their particular belief, whether for or against.
In sum, whether skeptics are right about their beliefs is another debate. But once they have them, they are biased in favor of that position, and as incapable of running or interpreting a neutral test as believers.
Well there’s an appeal to authority if I’ve ever seen one. But anyway, I don’t have a cute little textbook picture of the objective scientist. The very definition of “bias” (which I posted above) includes a reference to impartial JUDGEMENT not opinion. Opinion = ok science, impartial judgement = bad science.
The only thing I ask of scientists is that they not make fallacious arguments. I count three in this thread already.
