gattino
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2003
- Messages
- 2,525
Whether it is book reviews on Amazon, articles in broadsheet newspapers, or editing wars on Wikipedia, the anti-parasychology skeptics swarm to pass negative comment on anything that purports to suggest there is any scientific evidence for Psi/telepathy whatsoever. Anything that says there is or might be is pseudo-science, gullible claptrap, poorly conducted, wildly misquoted but above all, no matter what evidence may be presented it must, they declare, be BS, and whichever eminent professor is putting it forward doesn't understand science at all, because... "Science does not accept the existence of ESP"/ "There is not a shred of scientific evidence for it".
Those arguing with them on the other hand seem to nearly always accept the claim at face value, and as a given.. because they respond in terms of criticising the conservative dinosaurs of materialist science, protest that science doesn't know everything and how arrogant to assume it does, and appeal to historical examples of denying meteors fall from the sky.....
Which kind of prompts the question: who exactly decided that "Science" - or even "mainstream science" - doesn't accept the reality of psi?
There is no body, no committee, no panel of supreme judges to issue a verdict. So what does it mean to say "scientists" don't believe something?
Which scientists?
Yesterday someone on my Facebook who is a space/science geek, a rabidly anti-clerical atheist and a member of the skeptics society put up a picture of Alan Turing, declaring him "my hero". I wondered if he was aware of Turing writing "How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming." But I decided against posting it, for the same reason one can't mention Einstein (definitely never Einstein) writing a friendly forward to a book on telepathy, Newton being a christian and a mystic, Edison's search for contact with the dead, Tesla's visions, the eminent Victorian knights and heroes of the scientific pantheon who set up the SPR, or Nobel Laureates like Josephson. And why not? Because it's forbidden with a quote from the Second Book Of Dawkins.
The quote is "Argument from Authority". These 3 words can be used to dismiss any subject matter where the views of greater or more qualified celebrity scientists than the sceptic are quoted in support. The very fact of quoting them deems the argument void in some mysterious way, because such views are clearly worthless in the face of what "Science" (capital S) now knows and its an act or desperation to base any belief on what clever men from history have said. Depending, of course, on what they've said...
If there is no supreme panel to declare what science thinks, and the individual big brains of science are not the authority, then what does that leave? The majority opinion?
I found the following passage from Christ Carter "Two surveys of over 500 scientists in one case and over 1,000 in another both found that the majority of respondents considered ESP “an established fact” or “a likely possibility”—56 percent in one and 67 percent in the other."
The exception was in the higher realms of academia and i the field of psychology. The majority of scientists overall however clearly saw the subject as valiid. A list of such surveys appears on wikipedia:
hihttp://en.wikademia.org/Surveys_of_ac ... psychology
Extraordinarily one person - of the type I described in the first paragraph - commented online to Carter's quote the following "who cares if 100 out of 100 scientists believe in parapsychology, unless there is a significant body of evidence to prove something their opinions matter not"
?????????
So now we have no supreme authority called Science to offer a verdict or opinion
No authority from the great names and rock stars of the scientific world to determine the matter
And the opinions of the majority of practicing scientists - which appear to be consistently favourable - are also invalid, as its not a democracy either!
So who, exactly, determined that ESP has not been scientifically proven, or that science doesn't accept it? Who determines what is and is not a "significant body of evidence"?
Can anyone enlighten me?
Those arguing with them on the other hand seem to nearly always accept the claim at face value, and as a given.. because they respond in terms of criticising the conservative dinosaurs of materialist science, protest that science doesn't know everything and how arrogant to assume it does, and appeal to historical examples of denying meteors fall from the sky.....
Which kind of prompts the question: who exactly decided that "Science" - or even "mainstream science" - doesn't accept the reality of psi?
There is no body, no committee, no panel of supreme judges to issue a verdict. So what does it mean to say "scientists" don't believe something?
Which scientists?
Yesterday someone on my Facebook who is a space/science geek, a rabidly anti-clerical atheist and a member of the skeptics society put up a picture of Alan Turing, declaring him "my hero". I wondered if he was aware of Turing writing "How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming." But I decided against posting it, for the same reason one can't mention Einstein (definitely never Einstein) writing a friendly forward to a book on telepathy, Newton being a christian and a mystic, Edison's search for contact with the dead, Tesla's visions, the eminent Victorian knights and heroes of the scientific pantheon who set up the SPR, or Nobel Laureates like Josephson. And why not? Because it's forbidden with a quote from the Second Book Of Dawkins.
The quote is "Argument from Authority". These 3 words can be used to dismiss any subject matter where the views of greater or more qualified celebrity scientists than the sceptic are quoted in support. The very fact of quoting them deems the argument void in some mysterious way, because such views are clearly worthless in the face of what "Science" (capital S) now knows and its an act or desperation to base any belief on what clever men from history have said. Depending, of course, on what they've said...
If there is no supreme panel to declare what science thinks, and the individual big brains of science are not the authority, then what does that leave? The majority opinion?
I found the following passage from Christ Carter "Two surveys of over 500 scientists in one case and over 1,000 in another both found that the majority of respondents considered ESP “an established fact” or “a likely possibility”—56 percent in one and 67 percent in the other."
The exception was in the higher realms of academia and i the field of psychology. The majority of scientists overall however clearly saw the subject as valiid. A list of such surveys appears on wikipedia:
hihttp://en.wikademia.org/Surveys_of_ac ... psychology
Extraordinarily one person - of the type I described in the first paragraph - commented online to Carter's quote the following "who cares if 100 out of 100 scientists believe in parapsychology, unless there is a significant body of evidence to prove something their opinions matter not"
?????????
So now we have no supreme authority called Science to offer a verdict or opinion
No authority from the great names and rock stars of the scientific world to determine the matter
And the opinions of the majority of practicing scientists - which appear to be consistently favourable - are also invalid, as its not a democracy either!
So who, exactly, determined that ESP has not been scientifically proven, or that science doesn't accept it? Who determines what is and is not a "significant body of evidence"?
Can anyone enlighten me?