From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 15:05:17 MDT
VALID AND INVALID CRITICISMS
It is commonly thought that all criticisms in science are equal.
This is not so. In fact, criticisms must have two properties to be
valid. First, it must be controlled, meaning that the criticism
cannot also apply to well-accepted scientific disciplines. In other
words, we cannot use a double standard and apply one set of
criticisms to fledgling topics and an entirely different set for
established disciplines. If we did, nothing new could ever be
accepted as legitimate. Second, a criticism must be testable,
meaning that a critic has to specify the conditions under which the
research could avoid the criticism, otherwise the objection is just
a philosophical argument that falls outside the realm of science.
A thorough examination of the usual skeptical allegations about
laboratory psi research reveals that only one is both controlled and
testable: Have independent, successful replications been achieved?
We now know that the answer is yes, so the criticisms should stop
here. However, skepticism dies hard, and surprisingly few scientists
realize that all criticisms are not created equal. So let's
briefly review why some other common criticisms are invalid.
One popular assertion is that "Many phenomena that were once thought
to be paranormal have been shown to have normal explanations." This
is invalid because it's uncontrolled – the same criticism can
be applied to many discoveries in other well-accepted scientific
disciplines. If we were forced to reject psi just because we
originally thought it was one thing but later we discovered that it
was something else, this does not invalidate the existence of the
effect, it merely redefines how we think about it.
Another criticism is that "Some paranormal effects have been shown
to be the outcome of fraud or error," so we can safely ignore any
successful results. This is invalid because if we were forced to
dismiss scientific claims because there have been a few cases of
experimenter fraud, then we would have to throw out virtually every
other realm of science as well because fraud exists in all human
endeavors.
Another favorite complaint is, "There are no theories of psi." This
is invalid because for the term "psi" we could substitute the
words "consciousness," "gravity," "anesthesia," or dozens of other
well-accepted concepts or phenomena. The fact that scientists do not
understand some phenomena very well has not reduced scientific
interest in them. Another charge is that "Psi cannot be switched on
and off, and the variables that effect it cannot be controlled."
This is invalid because there are all kinds of effects we have no
direct control over, yet this does not disqualify them as legitimate
objects of study, including most of the really interesting aspects
of human behavior. In any case, psi is somewhat controllable in the
sense that we can cause predictable effects to appear by asking
people to do something in their mind. If they do not pay attention
to the task, which is how control periods are conducted in some psi
experiments, then no unusual effects appear.
Some skeptics have protested that "It's impossible to distinguish
between psi and chance effects even in a successful experiment
without the use of statistics." This criticism is invalid because
the same can be said for almost all experiments in biology,
psychology, sociology and biomedicine. Obviously, if there were some
way of cleanly separating a signal from random noise before the
experiment was conducted, then statistics would not have been used
in the first place.
This litany of common criticisms can go on for many pages, but the
point is clear. The vast majority of complaints about psi research
are invalid because they equally pertain to conventional, well-
accepted disciplines, or the complaints are untestable. Another
reason that psi has been ignored by mainstream science, and why
decades of scientifically sound experiments have been considered
controversial, is because the portrayal of these studies in the
media and in college textbooks has been heavily distorted.
DISTORTIONS
Popular media
In the July 8, 1996 issue of Newsweek, an article appeared
entitled, "Science on the fringe. Is there anything to it? Evidence,
please." Written by reporter Sharon Begley, this article is a good
example of how widely disseminated information about psi experiments
is sometimes seriously misleading. Begley's story began with the
following,
Say this about assertions that aliens have been, are or will soon be
landing on Earth: at least a scenario like that of [the
movie] "Independence Day" would not violate any laws of nature. In
contrast, claims in other fringe realms, such as telepathy and
psychokinesis, are credible only if you ignore a couple or three
centuries of established science.
This is a commonplace assertion, but it is worth noting that critics
never specify which "laws of nature" would be violated by psi,
because the assertion is groundless – the laws of nature are not
fixed absolutes. They are basically fairly stable ideas that are
always subject to expansion and refinement based on evidence from
new observations. For example, after the advent of relativity and
quantum mechanics, some of our new physical "laws" forced the
classical concepts developed in the 17th century to radically
expand. Have we magically reached the end of the trail at the turn
of the 21st century, and the present "laws" of science can now be
permanently chiseled into stone? I don't think so.
Begley apparently believes that aliens landing on Earth is more
credible than psi. Does this make sense? In the case of aliens, the
evidence is based exclusively on eyewitness stories and ambiguous
photographs. Some of the stories and photos are engaging, but taking
the leap of faith from this form of evidence to the actual presence
of extraterrestrial aliens is unwarranted. There are dozens of
alternative possibilities, none of which involve either
extraterrestrial or Earth-bound aliens. By comparison, the evidence
for psi is based upon a century of repeated scientific evidence. The
seduction of the status quo is so strong, however, that a skeptical
journalist would rather believe stories about little green men over
controlled observations in the laboratory.
Later in the Newsweek article, the ganzfeld telepathy experiments
were described. After a good explanation of the basic procedure, and
mentioning that the observed hit rate for Honorton's autoganzfeld
studies was about 35% instead of the chance expected 25%, Begley
asked,
Was it telepathy? Some experiments failed to take into account that
people hearing white noise think about water more often than sex (or
so they say); if beaches appear more often as a target than a couple
in bed, a high hit rate would reflect this tendency, not telepathy.
Also, receivers tend to choose the first or last image shown them;
unless the experimenter makes sure that the target does not appear
in the first or last place more often as decoys do, the hit rate
would be misleadingly high.
While these criticisms are valid because they are testable, a
skeptical reader might legitimately wonder, did targets with water
content actually appear more often than targets with sexual content?
(No.) Did targets actually appear more often in the first or last
place? (No.) Were researchers so naïve as to not think of these
possibilities? (No.) The implication was that the criticisms had
been overlooked, but they weren't.
Begley continued,
Skeptic Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon found that, in the
Edinburgh runs, video targets that were used just once or twice had
hit rates of about chance, while those appearing three or more times
yielded a "telepathic" 36 percent. How come? A video clip run
through a player several times may look different from one never
played for the sender; a canny receiver would choose a tape that
looked "used" over one that didn't.
In fact, as we saw in Chapter 6, the ganzfeld system at the
University of Edinburgh used two separate video players to address
this criticism, and successful effects virtually identical to what
Honorton had reported earlier were still observed. Again, the
implication of the criticism is that the ganzfeld results are
explainable by this potential flaw, and it is not true. Next, Begley
repeated another common criticism:
Of the 28 studies Honorton analyzed in 1985, nine came from a lab
where one time believer Susan Blackmore of the University of the
West of England had scrutinized the experiments. The results
are "clearly marred," she says, by "accidental errors" in which the
experimenter might have known the target and prompted the receiver
to choose it.
What Begley fails to report is that after Blackmore's
allegedly "marred" studies were eliminated from the meta-analysis,
the overall hit rate in the remaining studies remained exactly the
same as before. In other words, Blackmore's criticism was tested
and it did not explain away the ganzfeld results. It is also
important to note that Blackmore never actually demonstrated that
the flaw existed.
Begley continued by describing the mind-matter interaction
experiments using random number generators conducted Robert
Jahn's PEAR Lab. Then she added,
As for Jahn's results, there are a couple of puzzles. First, one
of the subjects, rumored to be on Jahn's staff, is responsible for
half of the successes even though he was in just 15 percent of the
trials. Second, some peculiarities in how the machine behaved
suggest that the experimenters might have ignored negative data.
Jahn says this is virtually impossible. But other labs, using
Jahn's machine, have not obtained his results.
As discussed in Chapter 9, analysis of the PEAR Laboratory data
clearly showed that no one person's results were wildly different
from anyone else's. Nor was any one person responsible for the
overall results of the experiment. Again, the criticism was tested
and found to be groundless. The comment about "peculiarities" is
pure rhetoric, because without mentioning the nature of the alleged
problems, it is an untestable criticism. The assertions that other
labs have not obtained Jahn's results is a commonly repeated
skeptical mantra, but it is also false, as we've seen. Jahn's
results are entirely consistent with a larger body of more than 70
other investigators, and overall there is no question that
replication has been achieved. If anything, Jahn's results are
somewhat smaller in magnitude than those reported by others.
It is rather easy to pick apart Begley's article, because it is
difficult to fairly portray controversial topics in the few
paragraphs available in weekly news magazines. Some distortions are
to be expected. But one would hope that book-length discussions by
academic psychologists would be more thorough and neutral.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
BOOKS BY ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGISTS
In 1985, psychologist Irvin Child, Chairman of the Psychology
Department at Yale University, reviewed the Maimonides dream
telepathy experiments for American Psychologist, a prominent journal
published by the American Psychological Association. Child was
especially interested in comparing what actually took place in those
experiments with how they were later described by skeptical
psychologists.
The first book he considered was a 1980 edition of British
psychologist Mark Hansel's critical book on psi research. One
page in Hansel's book was devoted to description of the method
and results of the dream telepathy experiments. Hansel's strategy
was to suggest possible flaws that might have accounted for the
experimental results, without demonstrating that the flaws actually
existed, and then assume that such flaws must have occurred because
they were more believable than genuine psi. Child found that
Hansel's descriptions of the methods used in the Maimonides
studies were crafted in such a way as to lead unwitting readers to
assume that fraud was a likely explanation, whereas in fact it was
extremely unlikely given the controls employed by the researchers.
Even other skeptics, such as Ray Hyman, agreed with Child. In a 1984
broadcast of the popular science program, Nova, Hyman said,
Hansel has a tendency to believe that if any experiment can be shown
to be susceptible to fraud, then that immediately means it no longer
can be used for evidence for psi. I do sympathize with the
parapsychologists who rebut this by saying, well, that can be true
of any experiment in the world, because there's always some way
you can think of how fraud could have gotten into the experiment.
You cannot make a perfectly 100 percent fraud-proof experiment. This
would apply to all science.
Child next reviewed a 1981 book by York University psychologist
James Alcock. Alcock's basic theme in this and later publications
is his belief that parapsychologists are driven by religious urges,
a secular "search for the soul." With this theme driving much of his
writings, Alcock considered any psi experiments with positive
outcomes to be flawed due to religious motivations. One of
Alcock's main criticisms of the Maimonides experiments was the
assertion that they did not include a control group. For example,
Alcock wrote that "a control group, for which no sender or no target
was used, would appear essential." Child responded, Alcock … did
not seem to recognize that the design of the Maimonides experiments
was based on controls exactly parallel to those used by innumerable
psychologists in other research with similar logical structure ….
The next book was by psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren H.
Jones. Zusne and Jones wrote that the Maimonides researchers
discovered that dreamers were not influenced telepathically unless
they knew in advance that an attempt would be made to influence
them. This led, they wrote, to the receiver's being "primed prior
to going to sleep" by the experimenters "… preparing the receiver
through experiences that were related to the content of the picture
to be telepathically transmitted during the night." Child pointed
out that it would be immediately obvious to anyone that such an
experiment, if it were actually performed, would be catastrophically
flawed. Obviously if you prime someone before they dream with target-
relevant information, the entire experiment is worthless. But given
that the description is so described, readers of Zusne and Jones'
book unfamiliar with the actual descriptions of the dream telepathy
experiments could reach no other conclusion than the researchers
were completely incompetent. Child responded,
The simple fact, which anyone can easily verify, is that the account
Zusne and Jones gave of the experiment is grossly inaccurate. What
Zusne and Jones have done is to describe … some of the stimuli
provided to the dreamer the next morning, after his dreams had been
recorded and his night's sleep was over.
As he discovered one flawed description after another, Child finally
concluded that the books he reviewed contained "nearly incredible
falsification of the facts about the experiments." But this was just
the tip of an iceberg. It turns out that many introductory
psychology textbooks have presented similarly flawed descriptions of
psi experiments. These books are used in college courses, and for
most students all they will ever know about any topic in detail is
contained in these texts. If basic textbooks state or imply that psi
researchers are stupid or naïve, is it any wonder that future
scientists and professors mistakenly assume that the evidence for
psi is worthless?
INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY TEXTBOOKS
There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism. –
Friedrich Nietzsche In 1991, psychologist Miguel Roig and his
colleagues published a detailed analysis of the treatment of
parapsychology in introductory psychology textbooks. They surveyed
64 textbooks published between 1980 and 1989, then looked for words
like "ESP" and "psychic" in the index and scanned through the
chapters on research methods, sensation and perception, and states
of consciousness. Of the 64 texts surveyed, 43 included some mention
of parapsychology. This is interesting in its own right, because it
means that fully one third of introductory psychology textbooks did
not even mention a topic that all college students find fascinating.
A mere 8 of the 43 texts mentioned that since the 1970s
parapsychologists have used the term psi as a neutral label for
psychic phenomena. Twenty-one books mentioned the ESP card tests
conducted by J. B. Rhine and his colleagues in the 1930s to 1960s. A
few books incorrectly claimed that ESP card tests are still
representative of contemporary research, whereas anyone even
casually familiar with recent journal articles and books knows that
such tests have hardly been used for decades. The remaining topics
covered included discussions of spontaneous psychic experiences,
which were uniformly explained away in terms of misunderstood
sensory processes, coincidence, and self-deception. Other topics
included brief reviews of a few selected experiments and alleged
problems of methodology.
Most of the texts ended with a wait-and-see stance towards psychic
phenomena, with 35 of the 43 books mentioning lack of replication as
the most serious problem. The second and third most serious problems
were described as poor experimental designs and fraud. Surprisingly,
only a few texts mentioned the development of experiments since the
1970s. Nine books mentioned RNG experiments, three mentioned the
Maimonides dream telepathy studies, and only one mentioned the
ganzfeld telepathy studies. Roig and his colleagues concluded their
survey as follows:
Much of the coverage reflects a lack of familiarity with the field
of parapsychology, … there is an unacceptable reliance on
secondary sources, most of which were written by
nonparapsychologists who are critical of the field and who, at least
in some cases, have been found to distort and sometimes fail to
present promising lines of research. We conclude that most textbooks
that cover the topic present an outdated and often grossly
misleading view of parapsychology.4
This is unfortunate but not surprising. College textbooks reflect
the status quo, and the status quo has not yet caught up with the
latest developments in psi research. but what sustains the status
quo? What has driven some academic psychologists to see psi research
in such distorted ways?
MOTIVATIONS
Skeptics are fond of claiming that believers in psi are afflicted
with some sort of abnormal mental condition that prohibits them from
seeing the truth. Skeptical psychologist James Alcock has suggested
that one motivation for this "affliction" is that psi researchers
are really motivated by hidden desires to justify some form of
spiritual belief. This belief, according to Alcock, has biased psi
research to such an extent that he believes there must be something
wrong with it.
But Alcock's belief about hidden spiritual motivations have
produced an equally strong counter-bias. This is clear in a lengthy
background report that Alcock prepared for the NRC Committee
mentioned earlier. For 40 pages, Alcock's report rips apart the
mind-matter interaction studies reported by physicist Helmut Schmidt
and Princeton University engineer Robert Jahn, then it concludes
that,
There is certainly a mystery here, but based on the weaknesses in
procedure mentioned above, there seems to be no good reason at this
time to conclude that the mystery is paranormal in nature.
In dismissing the mystery, Alcock missed the forest for the trees.
It is true that any one or two experiments can be explained away as
being due to chance or poor design, but the entire body of evidence,
as discussed in Chapter 9, cannot be dismissed so easily. And in
contrast to Alcock's belief about what motivates psi researchers,
parapsychology was formally recognized by the mainstream as a
legitimate scientific discipline in 1969 when the Parapsychological
Association, an international scientific society, was elected an
affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). Religious sects, New Age societies, and skeptical advocacy
groups are not affiliates of the AAAS.
We may now turn the tables on Alcock and ask what motivates skeptics
to spend so much time trying to dismiss the results of another
scientific discipline. For Alcock, it seems that his feelings
towards organized religion and his fears about genuine psi are
motivations. For example, Alcock has written,
In the name of religion human beings have committed genocide,
toppled thrones, built gargantuan shrines, practiced ritual murder,
forced others to conform to their way of life, eschewed the
pleasures of the flesh, flagellated themselves, or given away all
their possessions and become martyrs.
And,
There would, of course, be no privacy, since by extrasensory
perception one could see even into people's minds. Dictators
would no longer have to trust the words of their followers; they
could "know" their feelings…. What would happen when two
adversaries tried to harm the other via PK? Given Alcock's
feelings about religion and psi, he should be suspicious about the
motivations of the prominent physicist, Stephen Hawking. In Hawkings
widely-acclaimed book, A Brief History of Time, the final paragraph
reads,
… if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be
understandable in broad principle by everyone.... Then we shall all,
philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take
part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the
universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the
ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the mind of
God.
In other writings, Hawkings has declared his skepticism about psi,
so apparently his religious feelings do not interfere with his
skepticism. On the other end of the spectrum, what would Alcock say
about the motivations of his fellow super-skeptic, Martin Gardner,
who wrote:
As for empirical tests of the power of God to answer prayer, I am
among those theists who, in the spirit of Jesus' remark that only
the faithless look for signs, consider such tests both futile and
blasphemous. …. Let us not tempt God.
In other words, religious faith can motivate scientists both towards
or against psi research. Ultimately, there are as many reasons for
why people may be for or against something as there are people.
Then, from the skeptical perspective, what else might account for
the widespread belief in psi? Is society going crazy?
Is society crazy?
If there is no scientific evidence that psi exists, then strong
public belief in such topics must be a sign of mass delusion. This
is a common but rather peculiar skeptical position, as we could draw
a parallel with, say, belief in God. There is no scientific evidence
that God exists, yet there is strong public belief in God. For some
reason, skeptics do not openly point to mental delusion as a reason
for the widespread, "unscientific" belief in God.
But is there any evidence that society is delusional? Can paranormal
experiences be attributed only to known psychological processes?
This question was examined by Catholic priest Andrew Greeley, a
sociologist at the University of Arizona. Greeley was interested in
the results of surveys consistently indicating that the majority of
the population believed in ESP. In a 1978 survey asking American
adults whether they had ever experienced psychic phenomena such as
ESP, 58% said yes; a 1979 survey of college and university
professors showed that about two-thirds accepted ESP; a 1982 survey
of elite scientists showed that more than 25% believed in ESP; and a
1987 survey showed that 67% of American adults reported psychic
experiences. The same surveys showed, according to Greeley, that
People who've tasted the paranormal, whether they accept it
intellectually or not, are anything but religious nuts or
psychiatric cases. They are, for the most part, ordinary Americans,
somewhat above the norm in education and intelligence and somewhat
less than average in religious involvement.
Because Greeley was surprised about this outcome, he explored it
more closely by testing people who had reported profound mystical
experiences such as being "bathed in light." He used the "Affect
Balance Scale" of psychological well-being, a standard psychological
test used to measure healthy personality. People reporting mystical
experiences achieved top scores. Greeley reported that "The
University of Chicago psychologist who developed the scale said no
other factor has ever been found to correlate so highly" as reports
of mystical experience.
Greeley then investigated whether prior beliefs in the paranormal or
the mystical caused the experiences, or whether the experiences
themselves caused the belief. He found that many widows who reported
contact by their dead husbands had not previously believed in life
after death. This suggests that they were not unconsciously creating
hallucinations to confirm their prior beliefs. He also studied
whether people who had lost a child or parent reported contact with
the dead more often than people whose siblings had died. The
assumption was that people who had lost family members closer to
them might have had a stronger need to communicate, and hence a
greater frequency of reported contacts.
According to Greeley, "We were surprised: People who'd lost a
child or parent were less likely to report contact with the dead
than those who'd lost siblings." Such findings are incompatible
with the skeptics' hypothesis that reports of paranormal
experiences are due solely to hallucination, self-delusion, wish-
fulfillment, or other forms of mental aberrations.
SUMMARY
Most of the commonly repeated skeptical reactions to psi research
are extreme views, driven by the belief that psi is impossible. The
effect of repeatedly seeing skeptical dismissals of the research, in
college textbooks and in prominent scientific journals, has
diminished mainstream academic interest in this topic. However,
informed opinions, even among skeptics, shows that virtually all of
the past skeptical arguments against psi have dissolved in the face
of overwhelming positive evidence, or they are based on incredibly
distorted versions of the actual research.
-- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]
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