Originally posted by
[email protected] 4 2006, 09:43 PM
Any talk of "afterlifes" or "life after death" is clearly relgious in nature. Obviously there is no science for "ghosts"! :rolleyes:
I thought this had more to do with parapsychology than theology. And since this branch of psychology is pointing towards a pseudoscience this doesn't make it theologic. Though Theology in itself is a pseudoscience, its a different area than Parapyschology.
The religion forum should be renamed "Pseudoscience" since it also gets thread on Werewolves and Aliens on it.
I'm not trying to prove anything here LSD, I just thought this would interesting
(Though its wikipedia, and it's not a valid source its worth a look)
parapsychology (http://www.en.wikipedia.org/parapsychology)
Criticisms of parapsychological research
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Anecdotal evidence is inherently unreliable. Anecdotes may have natural, non-anomalous explanations such as random coincidence, fraud, imagination, or auto-suggestion. Therefore any parapsychology research relying purely on anecdotal evidence is worthless.
If an experiment is not controlled to prevent fraud, then the results may not be trusted. This is especially so given the fact that a number of people who claimed to possess psi abilities were later proven to be frauds.
Skeptics claim that parapsychology experiments are poorly designed and have a lack of proper controls, allowing paths of intentional or unintentional information leakage through normal means, etc.
Parapsychology experiments require replication with positive results at more independent laboratories than is currently occurring.
Positive results in psi experiments are so statistically insignificant as to be negligible, i.e. indistinguishable from chance. For example, parapsychology may have a "file drawer" problem where a large percentage of negative results are never published, making positive results appear more significant than they actually are.
Currently inexplicable positive results of apparently sound experiments do not prove the existence of psi phenomena, i.e., normal explanations may yet be found.
Psi phenomena cannot be accepted as explanation of positive results until there is a widely acceptable theory of how they operate.
Parapsychologists may prefer and write selective history. The whole story may be avoided.
Parapsychology spends too much time simply trying to show that certain phenomena occur, and too little time trying to explain them — yet it is explanation that constitutes the heart of scientific enquiry, and wider, scientific acceptance of parapsychological phenomena would come only with the provision of explanation. (See King (2003) cited above.)
People who are considered noteworthy psychics could make a lot of money predicting or even controlling (via PK) the outcomes of boxing matches, football games, roulette wheel spins, individual stock price changes, and so on, but none of them seem to do so. Why not?
Responses from parapsychologists to criticisms
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The hard evidence for psi phenomena today is founded on repeatable experiments and not anecdotal evidence.
Anecdotal evidence is considered valid in law and many other fields. The validity of anecdotal evidence does not depend upon the opinion of those listening to it. Memory studies by Elisabeth Loftus show that while memory can be capricious, a majority of people are not affected by many controlled memory manipulations. (See [10] for data.)
There is no such thing as a completely foolproof experiment in any field of science, and it is unreasonable to hold parapsychology to a higher standard of epistemology than the other sciences. [11]Fraud and incompetence in parapsychology is addressed in the same way it is addressed in any other field of science: repeating experiments at multiple independent laboratories; publishing methods and results in order to receive critical feedback and design better protocols, etc.
Experimental protocols have been continually improved over time, sometimes with the direct assistance of noted skeptics. Meta-analyses show that the significance of the positive results have not declined over time, but instead have remained fairly constant.
There are certain phenomena which have been replicated with odds against chance far beyond that required for acceptance in any other science. Meta-analyses show that these cannot be accounted for by any file drawer problem. Dr Dean Radin, in his book Entangled Minds, discusses methods of detecting 'file drawer' errors using a funnel plot.
Anomalous phenomena do not disappear for lack of a theory. There have been many instances in the history of science where the observation of an anomalous phenomenon came before an explanatory theory, and some commonly accepted non-psi phenomena (e.g. gravity) today still lack a perfectly satisfactory, undisputed theory. Isaac Newton, when formulating his theory of gravity, stated that he could not hypothesize a mechanism for it - but it still became a foundation of physics.
Theories abound in parapsychology for aspects of psi phenomena, though there is not any one that is comprehensive and widely accepted within parapsychology.
It is not necessary to be a licensed psychiatrist or acquainted with clinical psychology to test the validity of psi. The field of parapsychology overlaps many disciplines, including physics and biology, and often physicists, engineers and others trained in the hard sciences, in conjunction with stage magicians and other experts in deception, are in a better position to design experiments for certain types of phenomena than are psychiatrists or psychologists.
Concluding inexplicability from lack of existing explanation constitutes the well-known fallacy Argument from Ignorance.
The opinion of parapsychologists regarding the overall evaluation of the body of evidence to date is divided. As noted above, some parapsychologists are skeptic and do not believe that there is anything observed so far which cannot ultimately be explained within the existing framework of known science. Probably a majority of parapsychologists believe in the likelihood, or at least the possibility, of actual psi phenomena, though there is a range of attitudes toward the evidence.
Regarding the evidence, the rule of the thumb of the skeptical community is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Since skeptics may consider paranormal claims extraordinary, they may think that the evidence needs to be better than what normally would be required. However, this puts the responsibility for investigating seemingly paranormal phenomena squarely on the shoulders of proponents and "internal" skeptics. Not only is research conducted by "external" critics and skeptics useful to the field as a whole, but it also imparts a kind of craft knowledge to critics and skeptics that makes their criticism and counter-hypotheses more productive and more useful. Further many of the counter-hypotheses proposed by skeptics are so unparsimonious as to be extraordinary claims as well, and in that case, those counter-hypothesis, also require extraordinary evidence.
Most people use this approach to evidence in everyday life. For instance, if the news reports that the president of the USA has just arrived in South Korea for a state visit, most people will take this at face value. The news is considered a fairly reliable source of information, and the president visiting a country such as South Korea is not an extraordinary claim. However, if the same news broadcast later mentioned that a 92-year-old man has improved the world record time on the marathon by half an hour, many reasonable people would require more evidence, even despite the assumed reliability of the source, since the claim is extraordinary. This analogy might be flawed, however. In the case of the 92 year old man, we have positive evidence gained from a lifetime of experience and the reassurance of physiologists that this feat is indeed extraordinary (i.e., improbable). When it comes to parapsychology, however, some would argue we have no positive evidence that it is improbable, only our own cultural bias and a subjective sense that Psionic powers are extraordinary. Hence, some would argue, it is not the sort of extraordinary claim which necessarily needs more evidence than a mundane claim.
Some parapsychologists agree with critics that the field has not yet reached the degree of consistent repeatability of experimental results needed for general consensus. John Beloff, in his book Parapsychology: A Concise History, notes the evanescent – some have said the apparently evasive – nature of psychic phenomena over time, and that the range of phenomena observable in a given era seems to be culturally dependent.
For example, in earlier times, psychic research studied physical phenomena demonstrated by spiritualist mediums that, according to the reports passed down to us in the literature, far surpassed anything that any of today's "psychics" can demonstrate. Skeptics consider this more evidence of the non-existence of psi phenomena. Frequently this particular claim is the result of the proponent community having cut itself off, because of political pressures of conforming to the scientific Zeitgeist, from the community of modern mediums and psychics who operate today. Whether or not the phenomena being exhibited by modern day mediums can provide proof of traditional notions of spirituality or can be attributed to the operation of mundane psychological processes is mostly an open question, due to the lack of research. So it is possible that physical phenomena is being exhibited today, but to what cause the effects may be attributed is an open question, even among parapsychologists.
Many people, especially like John Beloff and Stephen E. Braude, cannot easily dismiss the entirety of all the positive accounts – many of which came from scientists and conjurors of their day. Many began as skeptics - but then changed their minds to become believers and supporters of psychic phenomena when they encountered the inexplicable; and so believe that continued research is justified. Easily recovered critical historical research reveals these individuals were certainly out of their league when it came to the close up deceptions of fraudulent mediums and adept charlatans. (Podmore, 1910 & Price and Dingwall, 1975)
Other parapsychologists, such as Dean Radin and supporters such as statistician Jessica Utts, take the stance that the existence of certain psi phenomena has been reasonably well established in recent times through repeatable experiments that have been replicated dozens to hundreds of times at labs around the world. They refer to meta-analyses of psi experiments that conclude that the odds against chance (null hypothesis) of experimental results far exceeds that commonly required to establish results in other fields, sometime by orders of magnitude.
Skeptics say that this is an old argument (eg. see Rawcliffe 1952, pages 441 & 442). For meta-analyses to be useful, the question of whether or not each of these experiments themselves have been efficiently carried out must be addressed. In the unsophisticated "language of the street" this would be known as "garbage in garbage out". All of the early experiments that were conducted by noted men of science in Italy and Germany with Eusapia Palladino "proved positive".
Skeptics say that 'enthusiastic' parapsychologists prefer to dismiss proof-oriented research, intended primarily to verify the existence of psi phenomena and, as in the past, jumped to "process-oriented" research, intended to explore the parameters and characteristics of psi phenomena. The past history of repeated psi failures and short comings has given parapsychology a poor reputation.