Since when is pre-judging the validity or importance of a subject—in the spirit of “it’s obviously nonsense so why even bother studying it?”—considered a “scientific” stance to take? It’s dogmatic comments like these that sadly lead many non-scientists to have a less than favorable view on the seeming “objectivity” of the field and its researchers.
The big problem with parapsychology as a field is that science is all of a piece. Thus, physics is consistent with chemistry, biology and so on. So the question is not “what knowledge can we derive on the assumption that we know nothing?”—but “what knowledge can we derive given what we know already?” And we know really quite a lot about areas that directly impinge on this question.
Basic physics leaves it not looking good for parapsychology as a field in any way. Sean M. Carroll points out that both human brains and the spoons they try to bend are made, like all normal matter, of quarks and electrons; everything else they do is properties of the behaviour of quarks and electrons. And normal matter, made of quarks and electrons, interacts through the four forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Thus either it’s one of the four known forces or it’s a new force, and any new force with range over 1 millimetre must be at most a billionth the strength of gravity or it will have been captured in experiments already done. So either it’s electromagnetism, gravity or something weaker than gravity.
This leaves no force that could possibly account for telekinesis, for example. Telepathy would require a new force much weaker than gravity and a detector in the brain evolved to use it for signaling. Precognition, the receipt of information transmitted back in time, would violate quantum field theory.
What this means is that these ideas have pretty much no chance of being right even before we test them directly.
Treating parapsychology as having zero chance of working rather than “but there’s still a chance, right?” of working does have the philosophical problem that it would require dismissing out of hand any positive results, rather than properly evaluating them as merely ridiculously unlikely. However, this is unlikely to be a practical problem while well-designed tests show no positive results, and the only tests showing any positive results tend to exhibit the experimental design skills of Daryl J. Bem.
(The above is large chunks of the RationalWiki article, but I wrote those chunks too ;-) )
It’s dogmatic comments like these that sadly lead many non-scientists to have a less than favorable view on the seeming “objectivity” of the field and its researchers.
Do you actually believe that?
That is, if a majority of scientists started instead saying “Actually, we’ve looked into this, here’s a calculation of the expected frequency of non-fraudulent positive results from properly run parapsychological experiments given an assumption of no actual parapsychological phenomena, and here’s a survey of results in the field. Notice that the actual positive results are not exceeding the expected positive results given that assumption?” (with the associated responsibility for maintaining such things instead of working on something else), you’re suggesting that a majority of the folks who dismiss the objectivity of scientists to go “Oh! Well, all right, then.” and decide the scientists really are objective after all?
That would really surprise me, if it happened. I expect instead that the majority of those folks are far more likely to continue dismissing scientists, they’ll just have some other reason for doing it.
actually, this is precisely how I would like people to discuss parapsychology.
What, are you going to defend science or rationalism using unscientific or irrational tactics just because you think that is going to work better? Even if that wasn’t detrimental to your own agenda in the long run, you would need to ask yourself at that point what makes you different from any politician defending any ideology at all.
Parapsychology isn’t “wrong” because it is obvious to the bigwigs in your camp (the “rationalists”) that it is wrong. It is “wrong” (or, unsubstantiated) because and only because positive results are not exceeding the positive results expected assuming the null hypothesis.
If positive results DID exceed these, we WOULD need to recognize there is an effect. Actually, most people here would probably just see this as proof that we do indeed live in a simulation and would actually be pretty cool with that as they had half-hoped that we did all along.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about me on the basis of, as far as I can tell, no data. (Either that, or you’re using “you” to refer to someone other than me.)
For what it’s worth, I agree that this is an excellent way to discuss unsubstantiated theories, although I would also say that after a certain point the onus is on those presenting the theory to show that their methodology and results are meaningfully different (and better) than previously disproved attempts to do the same. Otherwise, each new re-presentation of the same theory becomes, not part of the process of discovery, but rather just a tedious nuisance.
What I was doubting (and still doubt) is that doing so would change the way science is thought about among those who dismiss it out of hand.
...this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
Before people did these, all we had was overwhelming anecdotal evidence in favour of parapsychology.
Every culture, nay, every family is chock-full of reliable witnesses that give accounts of how they personally experienced paranormal phenomena.
In the face of such persistent, recurring reports, you can hardly blame people for wanting to investigate.
It is only after you do studies under laboratory conditions that you can begin to show that this anecdotal evidence is a product of selection bias.
While I am personally quite convinced that selection bias is all that is needed to explain the phenomena, this doesn’t take away the immense cultural significance of the phenomena that were selected in this way. In this sense, parapsychology is not “wrong”, it’s just cultural (as opposed to supernatural).
At the end of the day, science doesn’t attach value to anything. It is just capable of describing what arises from what.
Meaning arises from subjective choice alone, and as humans we are much more interested in meaning and made-up patterns than in a full list of all hydrogen atoms in the biosphere, no matter how “objective”.
The consensus belief that parapsychology is nonsense is not a pre-judgment; it is an informed judgment based on overwhelming evidence.
….this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
No, the evidence against precognition comes from overwhelming evidence in favor of a model of physics in which the arrow of time doesn’t reverse. The evidence against telepathy comes from studies of communication channels between remote humans that don’t show anything outside sound waves and visual-frequency electromagnetic radiation.
It’s the constraints imposed by an underlying model we’re extremely certain of; not the direct experiments on the parapsychological theory in question.
Since when is pre-judging the validity or importance of a subject—in the spirit of “it’s obviously nonsense so why even bother studying it?”—considered a “scientific” stance to take? It’s dogmatic comments like these that sadly lead many non-scientists to have a less than favorable view on the seeming “objectivity” of the field and its researchers.
The big problem with parapsychology as a field is that science is all of a piece. Thus, physics is consistent with chemistry, biology and so on. So the question is not “what knowledge can we derive on the assumption that we know nothing?”—but “what knowledge can we derive given what we know already?” And we know really quite a lot about areas that directly impinge on this question.
Basic physics leaves it not looking good for parapsychology as a field in any way. Sean M. Carroll points out that both human brains and the spoons they try to bend are made, like all normal matter, of quarks and electrons; everything else they do is properties of the behaviour of quarks and electrons. And normal matter, made of quarks and electrons, interacts through the four forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Thus either it’s one of the four known forces or it’s a new force, and any new force with range over 1 millimetre must be at most a billionth the strength of gravity or it will have been captured in experiments already done. So either it’s electromagnetism, gravity or something weaker than gravity.
This leaves no force that could possibly account for telekinesis, for example. Telepathy would require a new force much weaker than gravity and a detector in the brain evolved to use it for signaling. Precognition, the receipt of information transmitted back in time, would violate quantum field theory.
What this means is that these ideas have pretty much no chance of being right even before we test them directly.
Treating parapsychology as having zero chance of working rather than “but there’s still a chance, right?” of working does have the philosophical problem that it would require dismissing out of hand any positive results, rather than properly evaluating them as merely ridiculously unlikely. However, this is unlikely to be a practical problem while well-designed tests show no positive results, and the only tests showing any positive results tend to exhibit the experimental design skills of Daryl J. Bem.
(The above is large chunks of the RationalWiki article, but I wrote those chunks too ;-) )
Do you actually believe that?
That is, if a majority of scientists started instead saying “Actually, we’ve looked into this, here’s a calculation of the expected frequency of non-fraudulent positive results from properly run parapsychological experiments given an assumption of no actual parapsychological phenomena, and here’s a survey of results in the field. Notice that the actual positive results are not exceeding the expected positive results given that assumption?” (with the associated responsibility for maintaining such things instead of working on something else), you’re suggesting that a majority of the folks who dismiss the objectivity of scientists to go “Oh! Well, all right, then.” and decide the scientists really are objective after all?
That would really surprise me, if it happened. I expect instead that the majority of those folks are far more likely to continue dismissing scientists, they’ll just have some other reason for doing it.
actually, this is precisely how I would like people to discuss parapsychology.
What, are you going to defend science or rationalism using unscientific or irrational tactics just because you think that is going to work better? Even if that wasn’t detrimental to your own agenda in the long run, you would need to ask yourself at that point what makes you different from any politician defending any ideology at all. Parapsychology isn’t “wrong” because it is obvious to the bigwigs in your camp (the “rationalists”) that it is wrong. It is “wrong” (or, unsubstantiated) because and only because positive results are not exceeding the positive results expected assuming the null hypothesis. If positive results DID exceed these, we WOULD need to recognize there is an effect. Actually, most people here would probably just see this as proof that we do indeed live in a simulation and would actually be pretty cool with that as they had half-hoped that we did all along.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about me on the basis of, as far as I can tell, no data. (Either that, or you’re using “you” to refer to someone other than me.)
For what it’s worth, I agree that this is an excellent way to discuss unsubstantiated theories, although I would also say that after a certain point the onus is on those presenting the theory to show that their methodology and results are meaningfully different (and better) than previously disproved attempts to do the same. Otherwise, each new re-presentation of the same theory becomes, not part of the process of discovery, but rather just a tedious nuisance.
What I was doubting (and still doubt) is that doing so would change the way science is thought about among those who dismiss it out of hand.
The consensus belief that parapsychology is nonsense is not a pre-judgment; it is an informed judgment based on overwhelming evidence.
...this overwhelming evidence coming from paraphsychology studies, and parapsychology studies only.
Before people did these, all we had was overwhelming anecdotal evidence in favour of parapsychology. Every culture, nay, every family is chock-full of reliable witnesses that give accounts of how they personally experienced paranormal phenomena. In the face of such persistent, recurring reports, you can hardly blame people for wanting to investigate. It is only after you do studies under laboratory conditions that you can begin to show that this anecdotal evidence is a product of selection bias.
While I am personally quite convinced that selection bias is all that is needed to explain the phenomena, this doesn’t take away the immense cultural significance of the phenomena that were selected in this way. In this sense, parapsychology is not “wrong”, it’s just cultural (as opposed to supernatural). At the end of the day, science doesn’t attach value to anything. It is just capable of describing what arises from what. Meaning arises from subjective choice alone, and as humans we are much more interested in meaning and made-up patterns than in a full list of all hydrogen atoms in the biosphere, no matter how “objective”.
No, the evidence against precognition comes from overwhelming evidence in favor of a model of physics in which the arrow of time doesn’t reverse. The evidence against telepathy comes from studies of communication channels between remote humans that don’t show anything outside sound waves and visual-frequency electromagnetic radiation.
It’s the constraints imposed by an underlying model we’re extremely certain of; not the direct experiments on the parapsychological theory in question.