tim (02/23/83)
There is a fairly discredited school of research known as parapsychology. It is discredited because its main pro- ponent and researcher admitted falsifying most of his data. Every week, the National Enquirer and its ilk publish vast numbers of alleged "prophecies" and "clairvoyant dis- coveries" that are obvious nonsense to any even slightly intelligent reader. Every month, books like "The Bermuda Triangle", "Chariots of the Gods", etc., are published, and every day most newspapers print an either vague or blatantly false "horoscope". Uri Geller is still making money with his stage magic show; so are faith healers, card readers, and the like. The obvious charlatanry of virtually all purveyors of "psychic phenomena", "the occult", and such is taken as evidence for the nonexistence of such phenomena. In fact, this is only evidence for a skeptical attitude. It can in no rational way be considered evidence for the nonexistence of a class of phenomena. Consider these things in the abstract. If psychic phenomena (for want of a better name) did exist, what laws would govern their behavior? It is neccessary to formulate a hypothesis of this sort before experimentation in any field. One law usually laid down is scientific provability. This means that the phenomena can be observed in a controlled fashion. In order to impose controls on an experiment, one must know what factors in the environment of the experiment will cause changes in the subject (whether the subject is a person or a cluster of subatomic particles), and one must be able to control these factors. (I'm sorry, because this is already well known to virtually all of you, but I want to make sure we agree on definitions.) What would be the relevant factors affecting observations of psychic phenomena? The answer is simple: no one knows. This is a whole new ball park. The weather could possibly be vital: it certainly alters people's moods, which might or might not be related to observability of psychic phenomena. There might be some obscure but critical factor in the chemical composition of the central nervous system. Also, if psychic phenomena exist they imply a whole new medium of information transfer. We have no way of knowing how to control the environment imposed by this medium. This is most emphatically not a defense of psychic research in its current form. It is overly mechanistic and not at all psychological, in an attempt to not seem like witchcraft. It's hard to see how such an approach could ever hope to isolate the variables involved. I am also not saying that scientific psi research is currently possible. If your sole criterion for worthiness of a topic is that it is scientifically testable using current methods, then you should certainly discard this topic, as well as most topics of every day life, and particularly any belief in the existence of emotion. I should also add that I myself am not convinced that such phenomena exist, nor that they do not. Tim Maroney
mmt (02/27/83)
Scientific method is often misunderstood to mean that the phenomenon is reproducible. Unfortunately, the entire circumstances of a single event can never be reproduced, so we have to make do with less than complete reproducability. If we understand a phenomenon well enough, we can set up circumstances in which key components of the phenomenon will PROBABLY occur, but there are always an infinity (I mean that) of variables that could interfere, and about which we did not know. Usually, the study of a field begins with an observation, and the discoverer may not know what happened and how to reproduce it. Today, we can make X-rays to order, but Dr Roentgen took a while to discover what had magically exposed his film in a dark drawer. It was not reproducible until he found out what had been causing the effect. There are lots of phenomena that we suspect we should be able to predict or control (how about sunspot cycles on climate over a 200-year time scale?), but for which we don't know all the circumstantial variables. It may be that ESP is one such area. It isn't "unscientific" just because it is at present not reproducible. There may indeed be psychological or situational variables that affect it. One of those could be the testing situation itself. Who knows? It is a little arrogant to think that 20th century science has all the methods and/or knowledge. 19th century physicists thought there was no need to train more physicists because it was all known except for details. Since then, we have discovered 2 new fundamental forces of nature. Science is exciting! And it is probably never going to be finished. Martin Taylor