There is no clash between being open-minded and looking for a trick at the same time.
Which is precisely what I tell people that accuse me of being closed-minded about psychic phenomena.
I don't see why. Unless people are intimidated by other peoples qualifications, as I suppose some of them might be.
I don't think that there is any question whatsoever that people will be more likely to take a site seriously if the url is princeton.edu than they would if it were mysticfreeksforjesus.com. People will take a professional looking site more seriously than one with blinking icons. If someone has a good qualification from a recognized institution they will be immediately taken more seriously than the guy with the "PhD in results".
They are paraphyschology. This is science, or at least it is trying to be science.
That is what I question. I classify them with Clifford Pickover and believe I can make a very good case
They are attempting to be as objective as possible. The problem with the PEAR project is that its results are either negative or borderline.
The actual results demonstrate no statistical significance at all. But they
publish results with massive statistical significance. That is not science. That is trickery.
But the open-minded skeptic was still pursuing a policy which is more likely to yield results in the future.
Not when it comes to parapsychology it won't. When it comes to parapsychological claims the open-minded skeptic will always arrive back where the closed-minded skeptic went straight away. That has just been demonstrated over and over and over again.
What you are talking about applies just as much to science as anything else. There are many examples throughout the history of science of several people stumbling across some sort of new effect and just "not noticing" it because it was so contrary to what they were expecting. Either that or they dismiss the result as a mistake instead of trying to find out what was actually happening. Finally, somebody comes along who is open-minded enough to think "that's interesting, and totally unexpected" and pursue it instead of rejecting it.
On the other hand, some scientists, such as Blondlot, convinced themselves they saw something which wasn't actually there and ended up pursuing something which didn't exist.
Poor old Blondlot paid dearly. He is not remembered for his genuinely important contributions to physics, but to a testable hypothesis he published that was tested and found wanting.
On the other hand the PEAR guys have made no significant contribution for science, spent a quarter of a century performing nonsense experiments under the aegis of one of the most respected academic institutions in the world and instead of suffering the ignominy that they are due, are retiring respected scientists seeking commercial partners to further exploit their pseudo science.
And they did it by carefully avoiding a testable hypothesis and even casting doubt upon the necessity of a testable hypothesis.
That is the difference.
Sometimes assuming the Bible is true saves time.
Except that in all the cases I quoted, assuming materialism always led to the same answer as saying "that's interesting and totally unexpected" and pursuing it.
