There’s a particular field in which you have to do this all the time: Parapsychology, in which people with PhD credentials somehow manage to coax absurd results from apparently impeccable experimental procedures. Daryl Bem is a good example, as is Diane Hennesy Powell.
I can even understand why they think we are the ones being unscientific: I just showed you data! What more do you want? Well, to be honest, we want data that doesn’t contradict 200 years of past research in every other scientific field. We know there must be something wrong with your experiment, even if we can pin down what it is (often this comes to light later!); because the result that people can see the future or communicate with the dead just contradicts way too much of what we already knew for us to take it seriously. It’s a lot like publishing a proof that 2=1.
There’s a particular field in which you have to do this all the time: Parapsychology, in which people with PhD credentials somehow manage to coax absurd results from apparently impeccable experimental procedures. Daryl Bem is a good example, as is Diane Hennesy Powell.
I can even understand why they think we are the ones being unscientific: I just showed you data! What more do you want? Well, to be honest, we want data that doesn’t contradict 200 years of past research in every other scientific field. We know there must be something wrong with your experiment, even if we can pin down what it is (often this comes to light later!); because the result that people can see the future or communicate with the dead just contradicts way too much of what we already knew for us to take it seriously. It’s a lot like publishing a proof that 2=1.