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Evaluating Evidence

First thing I do with something on this board is enjoy it :)

Then I get down to it!
 
So what did you have in mind...?
My first question would be are there any actual 'scientists' (or persons with forensic knowledge) on the forum who are experienced at
evaluating evidence? I would guess that most of us are from occupations/backgrounds that don't fit that specific category.....so we would be evaluating only by 'common sense'?
 
Archaeology, research in AI and ethics? probably not what you are looking for @dr wu
 
So what did you have in mind...?
My first question would be are there any actual 'scientists' (or persons with forensic knowledge) on the forum who are experienced at
evaluating evidence? I would guess that most of us are from occupations/backgrounds that don't fit that specific category.....so we would be evaluating only by 'common sense'?

I found that investigating all sorts of stuff over nearly 3 decades, I came to trust common sense over the opinion of most "experts". That's just me of course.
 
So what did you have in mind...?
My first question would be are there any actual 'scientists' (or persons with forensic knowledge) on the forum who are experienced at
evaluating evidence? I would guess that most of us are from occupations/backgrounds that don't fit that specific category.....so we would be evaluating only by 'common sense'?
I used to be a private detective with training in criminal investigation. Does that count?

There is a lot to be said for common sense, however.
 
I used to be a private detective with training in criminal investigation. Does that count?

There is a lot to be said for common sense, however.
You must have had some forensic training then......how would one apply that to a specific case of the paranormal?
 
Expertise in forensic evidence analysis is most relevant where there is an original specimen available for examination. Such CSI-style analysis is typically limited to testing and evaluating features of the specimen per se, and they don't necessarily yield results that are definitive with regard to the incident at issue.

For example ... One could determine all sorts of facts about a revolver found near a murder victim with a gunshot wound, but it still wouldn't necessarily prove that particular gun was the murder weapon unless you also had the lethal bullet to check against known parameters, the victim's wound, and the gun itself.
 
I have a question for all......the ghost hunter shows often have people using these devices that 'roam frequencies' and then words or phrases come out that are allegedly from ghosts, spirits.... etc.....does anyone know exactly how they work and the actual science behind them.
It seems to me that this is nonsensical to assume it's actually picking up ghosts.
 
I have a question for all......the ghost hunter shows often have people using these devices that 'roam frequencies' and then words or phrases come out that are allegedly from ghosts, spirits.... etc.....does anyone know exactly how they work and the actual science behind them.
It seems to me that this is nonsensical to assume it's actually picking up ghosts.

You're talking about a 'spirit box' which according to this site

works by scanning the FM band and AM band along with a unique high frequency synthetic noise, a.k.a. white noise, where spirit voices seemingly are able to form words. Key is to focus hard and train the ear to distinguish messages formed in the white noise. A voice recorder or other recording device is important to use so one can review the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). There is free audio software on the internet that one can download to in detail analyze an EVP.
They also

highly recommend using a Portal in conjunction with any spirit or ghost box. A portal amplifies EVPs coming through, which makes it possible to capture EVPs that would otherwise be too low to be audible. Having a Portal significantly increases the amount of potentially intelligent communication during a paranormal investigation.

Fortunately they also sell portals from 'compact' at $349 to 'Special Edition' at $699.

Quite why spirits would be using the FM & AM wavebands I don't know.
 
Yeah, they should have moved on to DAB by now. Or podcasts.

I've read a theory that the voices aren't spirits themselves. Rather the spirits are using fragments of speech being broadcast across various radio stations in order to assemble messages.

(A bit like the old fashioned way of creating ransom notes by cutting words out of various newspaper articles and pasting them together. IIRC Brian Eno does something similar to create lyrics.)
 
You must have had some forensic training then......how would one apply that to a specific case of the paranormal?
I've read books on crime scene investigation but have no formal training in it. Still, asking the right questions is a big plus in fortean inquiries, as in most cases there is little or no physical evidence to look at. The best thing to do in such a case is to look, first, at what the witness said. Is the statement internally consistent, for example. Ask the person to explain the inconsistencies. Consider the person him (or her) self. Does the person have any sensory or mental impairment that could cast doubt on their account? An example would be if a cryptid, ghost or UFO is sighted by a person with poor eyesight. Is a UFO sighted by a UFO buff, or does the person have motivations for hoaxing?

Obviously, this is merely scratching the surface and I'd think that in many such cases, it is advisable to 'play it by ear'.

Be skeptical. This field of inquiry is full of charlatans and hoaxers, as well as folks who have honest, but mistaken beliefs that they have seen something unusual. A good example of this would be in the 1982 BBC Horizon presentation The Case of the UFO's. that I posted here some time back. There a person reported a UFO, and an honest, reputable UFO center checked it out and determined that what the caller saw was the planet Venus. An example of a well-known hoax would be the Piltdown Man.

The majority of fortean inquiries will have conventional answers, however there are a few cases that will not. Those will be the interesting ones.
 
You're talking about a 'spirit box' which according to this site


They also



Fortunately they also sell portals from 'compact' at $349 to 'Special Edition' at $699.

Quite why spirits would be using the FM & AM wavebands I don't know.
I've listened to a few recordings from such devices, posted on the web here and there. They all seem to be saying the same thing: "Paul is dead." Whatever that means.
 
The question becomes whether you investigate as if we're looking at a criminal case, or if we investigate as if we're looking at Fortean events as a scientific hypothesis. Both would have different measures of what would be considered "proof" or "evidence". I'll start by saying I have considerably more experience of the latter!


This might sound slightly out of left-field, but for the layperson (as the majority of us are), I would recommend the recent book, Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology by Michael J. Benton.
It does an excellent job, not just of explaining the developments in what we know about dinosaurs and how that knowledge has grown over the past 50+ years, but crucially explains how we know.

For each advancement in knowledge, the book explains how this conclusion was reached and - more importantly - how other possibilities were ruled out.


Because that's the most important thing to remember about science and the scientific method - it is not a dogma, or a sacred text, but a constant strive not to prove, but to disprove. It's the constant revision of knowledge to encompass new theories, and the constant ruling out of possible explanations.


One of the problems in Fortean terms is that we're normally given examples that aren't falsifiable, and also tend to compound multiple assertions into one hypothesis.

For example, the suggestion that Bigfoot is a paranormal entity, belonging to another dimension or "spirit realm". In order to prove this point, you would have to not only prove that Bigfoot exists, but also prove that alternate dimensions exists, and that Bigfoot is able to access them. Where do you even begin?

You could begin by looking at physical evidence for Bigfoot - but the burden of proof is on proving that Bigfoot exists, not that he doesn't.
If science is the act of disproving null hypotheses, then we can say the null hypothesis is "Bigfoot does not exist". To disprove that, we would need proof that it does. But to approach that scientifically, you need to evaluate evidence for the existence of Bigfoot and prove that there is no alternative explanation.

The beauty of it, and the area where Forteana thrives, is that even if we say "these footprints were made by hoaxers", "this video was a man in a costume", "these eye witness accounts are from dubious sources" and "these hair samples belong to known species", the null hypothesis remains. All we have done is prove that none of the evidence presented to us is evidence of the existence of Bigfoot, we haven't ruled out that there's an unknown ape/hominid out there somewhere, waiting to be found, leaving no physical evidence behind whatsoever. We've rendered that possibility extremely unlikely, but not impossible. And isn't "unlikely but not impossible" what Forteana is all about?


I'm rambling already, but I'll add that it's not just scientific, there's another side of academia that could be well used here, and that I hope most of us are familiar with, and that's knowing well enough how to examine sources. How trustworthy they are, what the quality of research that's gone into a cited book or paper is, if there's any contrary evidence, and so on.


There's plenty of room for good old common sense, too. I'm sure we're all familiar with the concept of Occam's Razor - it's usually phrased as "the more likely explanation is most likely correct", but more accurately it's that that conclusion which requires the fewest assumptions is correct.

To go back to our Bigfoot example - if the statement given is "nobody has ever retrieved the body of a Sasquatch", and the possible explanations are "there's no such thing as a Sasquatch", "they're too well hidden", or "nobody's seen a body because they exist in another dimension"; the first requires the assumption that Sasquatches don't exist and that those who claim to have encountered them are either mistaken or dishonest, the second requires the assumption that they do exist but are capable of hiding from us, the third requires the assumption that other dimensions exists, which sasquatch are capable of travelling into, and they go there to die.

The final explanation requires far more assumptions than the previous two, which are arguably up for debate as to which is the more likely. Though I would assert that because the second explanation still relies on the assumption that sasquatch exists, that there's more burden of proof sitting with that one than with the first.


Hopefully some of that made sense! The abridged version is - both science and humanities give us a whole toolkit with which to examine and evaluate evidence and theories, and both should be applied to Forteana, along with a healthy amount of scepticism and common sense, and try not to be too blinded by that which you hope to be true.
 
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