Ed A call for new open-minded research on psychic phenomena

[Darat]

But what does "open minded" mean in this context? (See also most discussions about alt meds and the like.)

The history of "psychic phenomena" is bedevilled with fraud, fakery, lies, deception, lack of credible evidence, folk refusing to submit to any attempt at objective testing, lack of plausible explanations which don't require re-writing of much of physics, chemistry and biology and all the rest. Why would any scientist these days bother looking at these things?

Warp12 won't tell us what type of phenomenon needs new tools or researching. All they have said is what it isn't so it isn't telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, clairaudience, remote viewing and dowsing.

After taking all that out one is left wondering what there is left?

 

[jnelso99]

Leprechauns?

 

[Pixel42]

Unlikely coincidences, of course.

 

[JayUtah]

It's a change in methods, that I suggest, not targeted at any specific phenomenon.

Then what generalized "change in methods" are you proposing? You won't deal in specifics, and you won't describe specifically what's wrong with the way things were done before. Your argument seems to be, "Well, they haven't found any evidence of psychic phenomena yet, so they must be doing it wrong." You have the responsibility to demonstrate you know what you're talking about if you expect to be taken seriously.

Earlier you proposed that we should consider the vast array of phenomena that fall vaguely under the description of "psychic phenomena." You allude to some number of "anecdotes" but you won't cite a single one to aid your critics, because you say the debate will descend into the details of those few examples. First, what makes you think "all the anecdotes" have anything in common that would benefit from a unified approach? Inappropriately aggregating anecdotes as if they constitute a uniform dataset is exactly what's wrong with reasoning from anecdotes. The first thing you do when formalizing research suggested by anecdotal evidence is confirm that there is indeed any demonstrable effect to which they all refer. We did that in this case, and the answer was no.

Second, why would you think details don't matter? How can you claim two or more anecdotes evince the same effect without examining their respective details? Why would you think the same empirical methods apply to researching remote viewing as apply to telekinesis? Details matter to the claims you're making, whether you want to talk about them or not. Your reluctance to discuss details for fear it will descend into a debate over them doesn't help you portray yourself as honest and forthright. You're backseat driving without being able to articulate clearly either the destination or the route. It doesn't make you look smart, and it doesn't convince the people you accuse of dereliction that you have anything new or helpful to offer.

It is not a condemnation of past efforts, either.

Of course it is. You're saying they gave up too soon and weren't suitably imaginative.

It is like this Thomas Edison quote

No, it really isn't.

You analogize to engineering development, specifically to inventing the light bulb and the airplane. These were difficult tasks, to be sure, with many skeptics. But what they have in common with each other, in stark contrast to chasing some purported new phenomenon, is that they were simply employing known principles of physics, but trying to implement them to tolerances and efficiencies well beyond current practice. They bogged down in the details: the Wrights in search of how to achieve three-axis flight control in wood and canvas and how to eke enough horsepower per pound of engine, and Edison in materials science and manufacturing process. The breakthroughs they were looking for were not vast rewrites of existing principles or proposals for mysterious new ones, which are what is implied in claims of psychic phenomena.

The inventors of which you speak could be confident in their eventual success, despite their naysayers, because they had the evidence in hand that they were on the right track and needed only perseverance according to what they already knew. Claimants for psychic phenomena -- including you -- can't even agree on what the effects should be or what principles of physics ought to look like that produce them. It's entirely speculative from beginning to end, and the purported effects disappear entirely as soon as they are studied outside the "anecdotes."

I don't claim that anything paranormal exists. I claim that IF it does, we are not looking in the right place, so to speak.

But you can't knowledgeably explain what's wrong with the way it was researched before. And you can't knowledgeably explain how it should be improved. Your advocacy begins and ends with a naked declaration that it wasn't done persistently or creatively enough the first time, and therefore that abandonment of the pursuit was improper and preclusory. Your only support for that seems to be the complaint that they didn't find evidence of psychic powers -- that they got the "wrong" answer by somehow shirking their duty. And for some reason you're especially reluctant to consider other ways in which the anecdotal claims can have arisen. Or to consider the implications of failing to find an effect under controlled conditions that would have necessitated a further search for explanation.

While you may not be overtly claiming that you think paranormal causations exist, your bias in that direction is, at this point, fairly hard to overlook.

This will be my last post on the matter, for a bit. I want to compose a more detailed response before I am jumped by people anxious to refute me.

No one is "jumping" you. You've come to a skeptics forum to argue the value of further research in a controversial area. Did you not expect to be challenged?

 

[TofuFighter]

I think what's happening here is a lingering wistfulness for psychic phenomena to be real, and that's it. An unwillingness to let go of that final thread of belief that 'magic', for want of a better word, exists. That's understandable.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I'm perfectly happy for Warp12 to investigate paranormal phenomena in whatever way s/he sees fit, as long as I'm not obliged to (a) pay for it or (b) uncritically accept the results.

Dave

 

[JayUtah]

I'm perfectly happy for Warp12 to investigate paranormal phenomena in whatever way s/he sees fit, as long as I'm not obliged to (a) pay for it or (b) uncritically accept the results.

It's unclear where the funding for any of this proposed new research would come from. And indeed, funding is a major issue for getting any science done whether it's controversial or straightforward. But Warp12 seems to disavow any responsibility for any aspect of their proposal that requires any actual effort. I too would say, "Sure, go study whatever you want on your own nickel and present it in any way you like." But that's not the proposal here. The proposal argues that entirely new methods must be developed by other people, without any guidance from him, in order to do what is proffered to be a more thorough investigation.

 

[xjx388]

The old methods have satisfactorily debunked the existence of paranormal stuff. There is no new compelling evidence to inspire scientists to develop new methods. Meanwhile, believers in woo will just continue saying stuff like "we need new methods," as a lazy cop-out without giving any input (because they lack the expertise to do so) as to what those methods might be. Therefore: no new methods will ever be developed and believers won't stop believin'.

It's the skeptic's Kobayahsi Maru. We can't really win this argument (in the sense of convincing believers), so it's more about how we engage and advocate for science during the argument.

 

[Myriad]

For what it's worth, I chose to discuss seeing auras because it's a very common personal claim, not just that certain rare prodigies can do it, like e.g. spirit channeling or telekinesis, but also "I do it myself." And unlike premonitions, which in my experience is an even more common claim, seeing auras is perceived to happen frequently and routinely rather than at rare unpredictable times. It's also very consistent with, almost fundamental to, the narrative that psychic energy exists and is an innate part of (at least human) life. And as the experience is typically described, it shouldn't be all that much more difficult to test for than an eye chart test at a doctor's office.

Of course, the doctor with the eye chart doesn't just ask the patient whether or not he can read the letters on line 4. She asks him to prove it by stating the letters. That's a little harder to test in the case of auras, where it's as though the doctor has no way to tell what the letters actually are except for what the patient says. There should still be many ways around that problem. Ask ten patients (one at a time) who all claim to see line 4 clearly what the letters are, and compare later to see whether they agree. ("But naturally we'll see different color auras, because everyone's second sight is different.") Or, for the auras, use darkness as I described, or screens that hide any direct view of whether or not a person is present but would not block ones view of an aura that supposedly extends several inches from the body.

There are perverse incentives on both sides of such a research program to try to test the most dramatic claims, rather than the simplest to test. So besides testing to see whether an aura reader can use aura perception to detect whether or not a person is present or not, there have been attempts to test whether an aura reader can diagnose illnesses. That involved recruiting sick and healthy people for a controlled study, trying to eliminate all ordinary sensory clues (like those I mentioned in the OP) to the target's health, verifying to everyone's satisfaction that the sick are truly sick and the healthy are truly healthy, and so forth, making the tests much more costly. Susan Blackmore observed that research efforts that started out with sophisticated designs to test for instance whether psi abilities worked better under certain conditions than other conditions eventually, in the face of negative results, ended up defaulting to what she regarded as the least interesting question: does psi (that is, any objective manifestation of any parapsychological phenomenon) exist at all? (Her book The Elusive Open Mind, recounting her experiences as a parapsychology researcher, is recommended reading for present company.)

Blackmore started getting positive results, at long last, when she started testing for correlations between individual cognitive abilities and paranormal experiences, such as between the ability to accurately visualize a scene from a different angle than it's being viewed from (such as imagining you were looking down from above) and having certain parapsychological experiences (such as out of body experiences during which the person experiences viewing their surroundings from above). I'd like to see more research of that kind, where the supernatural qualities of paranormal experiences are neither being assumed nor explicitly tested for, and their detectable measurable qualities are being elucidated instead.

 

[theprestige]

Even if there's an as yet undiscovered psychic force, sooner or later it has to impinge on or couple with the forces we have already discovered. Otherwise there'd be no observable psychic phenomena.

Clairvoyance must at some point affect the electrical fields of the clairvoyant's brain. Otherwise they'd never notice the vision, remember it, and report it.

Ghosts, too. If they are supposed to be the residue or continuation of a psychic field, it must be a field that triggers photon emission and other electromagnetic effects. Otherwise nobody could see them and report on them.

Dark matter is a good analogy. Here we have a particle we never predicted and cannot directly examine. We have no idea what it actually is or how it is created. It barely interacts, or does not interact at, with pretty much every particle and field we do know about. But it sure does interact with gravity. That is the only reason we know it's there. But now we know what to look for, we can see it just fine, via its observable gravitic consequences.

Same with psychic fields. Even if we can't see them, we must be able to see their consequences on the fields we can see. Otherwise, they effectively don't exist. You can't have telepathy without altering the electrochemistry of the telepath's brain. Even if the telepathon carrying the message is almost entirely undetectable, it must be detected by the electrons of the recipient's brain, in order for the recipient to receive it.

But we don't detect anything like that interaction. Unlike dark matter, which we detect by its interaction with gravity, we never detect the predicted interaction between psychic bosons and the more mundane particles that must necessarily mediate their detectable effects.

Every single controlled test of predicted psychic boson interactions has been either inconclusive or resoundingly null. Every attempt to make a more rigorous test that converts inconclusive to success instead converts it to null.

If someone could demonstrate that telepathy actually works, in a controlled test, then the world would rush to find the signal of the psychic boson.

And it wouldn't even have to be a "works every time, all the time" kind of demonstration (even though that's what psychics claim). Neutrinos are fantastically elusive. The chances of actually detecting one are depressingly low. But even a tiny handful of more or less lucky detection events are more than enough for us to be confident they exist, and go about observing their properties.

Psychic fields don't even have that much support. This isn't a problem of devising new tests. This is a problem of the claims predicting that our current tests should detect things that are not detected when the test is made.

I don't know what else Warp12 imagines can be done, or who is supposed to do it, if not him.

 

[Warp12]

This thread has roared off to a fast start, pretty much without me. I knew there would be people just chomping at the bit.

Already, all of the context of my prior statements has been lost, sometimes misrepresented, and the focus is shifting towards "believers". I'm going to assert that there is a spot between being a "non-believer" and a "believer". And that spot is a bit more open-minded than either extreme.

Probably if I go to the "believers" forum they will try to run me out of town with magic wands, because I am too skeptical. Here, some simply chase me with torches and pitchforks.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

1. Scepticism is by far the best position to take on anything because it is inherently open minded. Are you claiming that we, or sceptics in general are not fully open minded? You would very much be wrong to claim so.

2. You either believe proposition X or you don't. There is no in between position possible.

 

[Warp12]

1. Scepticism is by far the best position to take on anything because it is inherently open minded. Are you claiming that we, or sceptics in general are not fully open minded? You would very much be wrong to claim so.

2. You either believe proposition X or you don't. There is no in between position possible.

I am claiming precisely what I wrote.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I'm going to assert that there is a spot between being a "non-believer" and a "believer". And that spot is a bit more open-minded than either extreme.

That spot is called 'skeptic'.

I don't 'believe in' quantum mechanics. I use it in my job, because evidence and experience tell me that it's an outstandingly useful model for predicting the behaviour of the real systems I need to utilise, and that predictive ability allows me to control their properties to achieve useful results. Many years of hard work have got us to that point.

I don't 'believe in' paranormal phenomena. I don't try to use them for anything, because evidence and experience tell me that they are of no use for anything; as a model they lack any kind of predictive power and offer no such control. Many years of hard work have failed to get us past the starting point.

If you think you know a better way to investigate the paranormal, please feel free to explain it. If you just think a better way should exist but have no idea what it is, consider the possibility that the reason you haven't is that it doesn't.

Dave

 

[Pixel42]

I'm going to assert that there is a spot between being a "non-believer" and a "believer".

Undecided, yes. Sometimes there simply isn't enough evidence to decide, and it's the sensible place to be. And sometimes there is enough to reach a provisional conclusion - always, of course, subject to revision should new evidence be forthcoming - and it's a not the sensible place to be.

And that spot is a bit more open-minded than either extreme.

Not always. Having an open mind just means being willing to consider the evidence on both sides. Someone who can only remain undecided by wilfully ignoring evidence (on either side) is obviously less open-minded that someone who has seriously considered all the evidence, and can justifiably form a provisional conclusion.

It's not, for example, more open minded to be undecided on whether or not the earth is flat than to be pretty sure it isn't.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I am claiming precisely what I wrote.

That you are more open minded than us. That is how it reads.

Non belief is the default and should be the default. Belief in or acceptance of an idea should only come with evidence.

 

[JayUtah]

I am claiming precisely what I wrote.

But what you wrote is not precise. If you rule out all attempts to get you to elaborate, and give mixed signals about what is or isn't included in the scope of your proposal, then you have no business trying to tell people they've misrepresented your claims.

 

[Warp12]

It's not, for example, more open minded to be undecided on whether or not the earth is flat than to be pretty sure it isn't.

I'd say we have much more conclusively determined that the earth is not flat, than we have determined whether something outside of our normal senses might exist.

Of course, I know that statement will be disputed by some.

There was probably a time when, based on the currently understood science, most were pretty sure the earth WAS flat.

"Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (323 BC), the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period (31 BC), India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century."

At some point, we will be an "ancient culture" as well. Hopefully.

 

[theprestige]

Elsewhere, Warp12 has complained that psychics who fail at controlled tests are called frauds, and those who succeed are called lucky. I wanted to address this complaint.

Luck first. Any good experimental setup includes the stipulation that the result must be better than chance. Anyone, psychic or not, can correctly guess an average number of Zener cards, just by random chance. That needs to be controlled for. The psychic says they can see - not guess, see - the correct cards consistently, predictably.

A true psychic must necessarily perform better than chance. This is easy to control for with our current testing philosophies. No new testing methodology is needed to challenge this prediction and see if it holds up. It never holds up. None of these predictions ever hold up to a properly controlled test.

I think if Warp12 were to examine his instances of "those who succeed are called lucky", he'll find that none of them actually succeeded. I think he'll find that in every case he examines, the psychic performed no better than chance. Their hits were literally indistinguishable from lucky guesses. That's not success.

As for fraud: Anyone passing off lucky guesses as psychic ability is either delusional or a fraud. We see many examples of delusion. People who sincerely believe they have psychic powers, even though they don't actually perform better than chance. Most frauds are smarter than that, though. They want to perform better than mere chance, and employ all sorts of well-understood (but often ignored) and entirely normal techniques to manufacture "hits". Frauds generally avoid controlled experiments, since the controls are purposefully designed to rule out such fraudulent techniques.

---

I have some moods that are both more cynical and more tolerant. In such moods, I am willing to provisionally accept the premise that all these paranormal claims are real. Ghosts are real. Telepathy is real. Clairvoyance is real. All these things are real, and ineffectual. Psychic abilities that only work when they cannot be tested, under conditions where they are indistinguishable from luck or charlatanism. Ghosts that only manifest when they cannot be verified, when they are indistinguishable from pareidolia, tricks of memory, or tall tales. Okay, fine. All this stuff is out there. It's out there, and it might as well not be.

Warp12 wants science to dig deeper, to see if there really is anything out there. But everything we've observed here in the shallows indicates there's nothing deeper. There are no shallow observations, such as those that led to the deeper discovery of dark matter. There's nothing about a dowser's claims that urges a significant scientific investment in deeper investigation.

 

[Scorpion]

There was probably a time when, based on the currently understood science, most were pretty sure the earth WAS flat.

I remember when I was in infants school a teacher said, people use to think the world was flat. Everybody laughed but me. I thought how would people in past times know the earth was round. Nobody had been round it.