CSICOP (was re:CO2)

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

Hey phys-L, this stuff really belongs on SCI.SKEPTIC or other groups.  If
you don't want this to go on, just send me a note.



On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Hugh Haskell wrote:

> At 0:57 -0700 8/8/01, William Beaty quoted:
>
> >   "It's [belief in the paranormal] a very dangerous phenomenon, dangerous
> >   to science, dangerous to the basic fabric of our society... We feel it
> >   is the duty of the scientific community to show that these beliefs are
> >   utterly screwball."      - Lee Nisbet, CSCICOP Executive Director, 1977
>
> Is the bracketed phrase yours or someone else's?

It was from that anti-CSICOP article I mentioned in the previous message,
and yes, "paranormal" has its usual meaning: telepathy, remote viewing,
PK, etc. :

   CSICOP and the skeptics: an overview,  by G. Hansen
   http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/csicop-and-skeptic.html

I agree that many "weird beliefs" and instances of genuine pseudoscience
can directly hurt people, and "bunk" really exists which needs to be
debunked.  Ah, here's a way to put it which cuts to the central problem:
GENUINELY DANGEROUS BUNK NEEDS TO BE STOPPED.  Quack doctors who damage
their patients need to be stopped.  Scam artists who talk gullible people
into investing their life savings in nonexistant scientific discoveries
need to be stopped.  But the business of stopping others can easily get
out of hand.  Debunkers can cross the line, and rather than trying to stop
dishonest individuals who intentionally cause direct harm, skeptical
groups can start trying to stop people whose main crime is to be convinced
that the world is very different than the debunkers believe.  We SHOULD
stop true quacks, but should we also stop medical hypnosis, or
acupuncture?  We should stop greedy cynical televangelists, but should we
also stop those who firmly believe in blatantly paranormal events such as
biblical miracles or life after death?

I see one place to draw the line:  we need to stop certain individuals
from hurting people, but we shouldn't stop individuals in an effort to
"protect science."  Sure, fight the scam artists, but don't try to silence
people whose beliefs are a "danger to science."  Science is in no immense
danger, and the common claim that pseudoscience and weird beliefs are
massively expanding is of little merit.  Also, it is *very* easy to start
seeing threats to one's personal worldview as being a "danger to science."
If psi ever proved to be real, it might wreck many dry skeptics lives, but
science would trundle along as it always does after a revolution.

<snip>
> Things which have been investigated for decades with absolutely no
> positive evidence to show for it.

This is wrong.  Plenty of positive evidence from professional researchers
exists.  It's misleading to state otherwise.  On the other hand, this
evidence has not convinced any "dry skeptics."  I note that there's a very
large gap between "all your evidence hasn't convinced us," versus
"absolutely no positive evidence exists."  As psi-accepting scientists
(and even their opponents) have said, if it was any other field of
research, the evidence would be convincing.  We have plenty of evidence,
but we obviously lack "extraordinary" evidence which would cause people to
abandon their firmly-held positions and admit that their opponents are
right.

Utt's article (below) also mentions that psi phenomena haven't really been
SERIOUSLY investigated in the lab, since the funding to do so is almost
nonexistant.  If the total funding ever expended on psi research is equal
to less than two months of the funding spent on contemporary psychology
research, then it's a distortion to speak of 150 years of scientific psi
investigation as if that meant any *large* amounts of investigation.


Just one small but famous example of positive evidence: the recent
analysis of "remote viewing" or "ganzfeld" experiments performed in
numerous laboratories.  The result:  skeptics agree that something
unexplained is going on which far exceeded chance results.  All
conventional explanations so far offered by skeptics were investigated and
refuted to everyone's satisfaction.  But this didn't convince the dry
skeptics.  As Hyman argues, even if we eliminate all conventional
explanations, that doesn't force us to accept that ESP exists.  Given
time, someone might detect an unnoticed error that explains the strange
results.  See:

  Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena, by Ray Hyman
  http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewing/refs/science/air/hyman.html

  Utts' response
  http://anson.ucdavis.edu/~utts/response.html

Does this mean that evidence cannot decide such an issue?  I think so, and
the problem is one of disbelief versus "doing science."  If we firmly hold
a prior belief that psi is impossible, then the amount of evidence needed
to force a change in that belief is immense, it is "extraordinary"
evidence.  On the other hand, if we go into these kinds of studies wanting
to know the truth, while refusing to adopt strong prior beliefs one way or
the other, then normal amounts of evidence will suffice.


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William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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