gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) (07/09/89)
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO MISSED THE VOTING INSTRUCTIONS LAST TIME, THEY
ARE REPRODUCED IN THEIR ENTIRETY AT THE END OF THIS POSTING....
This is what I propose the charter of this group to be:
"A group dealing with issues in Parapsychology,
UFOlogy, Creation Science, New Ageism, Astrology,
Paranormal Health Claims, Cryptozoology, and other
areas of inquiry which might tend to contradict or
dismiss generally accepted principles of Science.
Sociological and Educational issues arising from these
areas are also important to Science and will be
acceptable material. The aim is not to prove a priori
that these kinds of claims are false, but to
scrutinise them and try to tease out new threads of
inquiry, reveal faulty logic or assumptions (as should
be the case in _all_ areas of discourse), and
generally investigate the impact these claims might or
do have on _Scientific_ discourse. "
Now, what I'd like to do is give a lay 'translation' of the above.
The charter lays out what sorts of things this group might want to
deal with. That's clear: anything that a scientist might be unsure of
in the sense of the existance of the phenomenon. I don't think there
is any problem with this either. What I DO think is the problem is
'what will actually happen in the group as a matter of discourse.'
This is what I want to clear up.
I would like the group to be a kind of 'fringe watcher's arena' where
interesting tid-bits can be posted, discussion as to their veracity
might be a follow-up here granted (flame danger here), book reviews,
reports of experiments, reports of conventions, reports of tv, radio,
magazine features/interviews... The group SHOULD defintiely NOT be a
simple 'forum for discussing' these topics.
_I_ think that this is somewhat implied in the charter.
To repeat the voting instructions:
To vote, you send a message to one of two addresses.
* If you want the group to be created, send a message to
skeptic-yes@nexus.yorku.ca
* If you do not want the group to be created, send your message to
skeptic-no@nexus.yorku.ca
The contents of the message are irrelevant; they will be classifed solely by
which address they are sent to.
Votes sent to my personal account, which includes replies to this
posting, will be ignored.
The actual vote tallying is being undertaken by David Collier-Brown
(davecb@nexus.yorku.ca [Don't send things to him, either]
The voting ends on August 3, 1989.
Followups to this message should be posted in news.groups.
nrg
--
York University |"_Wanting_ to think is one thing;
Department of Philosophy | having a talent for thinking another"
Toronto, Ontario, Canada | - L. Wittgenstein (CV 44)
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