Parapsychology: Encyclopedia II - Parapsychology - How science views the field

Parapsychology - How science views the field

In the scientific disciplines there is a belief that all claims should be treated with scientific skepticism. Mainstream science believes that after examining psi claims for over a century, there has been significant difficulty in merging the results of parapsychology studies with other fields of science. A growing network of scientists — in association with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which was founded by American Astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell — is seeking to bridge this gap, and has published significant peer-reviewed research.

As a result of difficulties, however, many in the scientific community believe that parapsychology is not a real science, that psi phenomena do not exist, and that parapsychology is a pseudoscience. Many scientists and skeptical observers of the field believe that some parapsychologists knowingly commit fraud; that some are incompetent or misled by their own hopes or desires; and that some are naïve and therefore easily deceived by fraudulent participants; or perhaps some combination of the above. One of the most famous cases in psychology that illustrates being misled by one's hopes is that of Clever Hans. Mr. Wilhelm von Osten [1] did not mean to defraud anyone, but he fooled himself and large audiences nevertheless.

Parapsychologists disagree with this assessment. Many have been formally trained in science, and are familiar with the scientific method. Statistician Jessica Utts has shown in a number of papers that:

The precise percentage of scientists holding negative views about parapsychology is unclear, since surveys targeting this group are far less common than those targeting the general population. In his article Save Our Science: Paranormal Phenomena and Zetetics, skeptic Henri Broch complains:

Some skeptics believe that there is a tendency for parapsychology researchers to select "good days" and discard "bad days" for the people in the test samples. But the "Theory of Runs" shows that the chance of a long run of successes (or failures) increases drastically when the periods of success or failure are selected as part of a larger sample. See: Feller, William (1968), An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, vol. I, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, p. 86. For a more recent discussion of the theory and the "arcsine law" see [3] or [4]

Wagner and Monnet conducted a survey of 1100 college professors in 1979 and found that 34% of psychologists, 55% of natural scientists, 66% of other social scientists, and 77% of professors in the humanities believe that ESP is either an established fact or likely possibility. (Zetetic Scholar 5, 1979) Andrew Greeley, a sociologist from the University of Arizona, studied surveys on belief in ESP from from 1978 through 1987, and studied the mental health of believers in ESP. The surveys he studied showed that from 1978 through 1987, the number of American adults who reported psychic experiences rose from 58% to 67%. He also tested the psychological well-being of people reporting mystical experiences with the "Affect Balance Scale" and found that people reporting mystical experiences received top scores. Greeley summarized his findings by writing,

A few parapsychologists are skeptics, for example Chris French and his colleagues at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College in London, and Richard Wiseman and his colleagues at the Perrott-Warrick Research Unit in the Psychology Department of the University of Hertfordshire, both of which units include individuals who are members of the Parapsychological Association. These researchers do not approach the field with a belief in the paranormal, but are rather interested in the purely psychological aspects of those who report paranormal experiences, along with the study of the psychology of deception, hallucination, etc. These researchers also have provided their own guidelines and input to other parapsychologists for the design of experiments and how to properly test those who claim psychic abilities. While some of these guidelines have been useful, many have suffered from a naive understanding of scientific practice in general and in parapsychology in particular, from a distorted view of the methodology actually in use in the field, and the unfortunate habit of some skeptics to make sweeping statements about the applicability of counter-hypotheses to lines of research without actually investigating the appropriateness of those counter-hypotheses to the details at hand. (See, for example a mostly-positive review of one of these guidelines written by skeptics[5].)

The most important point that both proponents and skeptics raise is the need to be critical of the theory, methods, and conclusions of any one who investigates or comments on parapsychology as a science, no matter what point of view they represent. In order to be an objective professional, one must have a first-hand knowledge of the vast past and present published scientific literature in the field, primary and scholarly sources of its age whenever possible, and -- even more important -- have first-hand experience as an experimenter or investigator and a respect for the art of conjuring and its masters. The hands-on approach is essential to scientific progress in the field, whether one approaches it from a "paranormalist" or a "conventional theorist" point of view. Selective and historically uninformed armchair cheerleading and armchair skepticism are equally useless in all fields of inquiry and science.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "How science views the field", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki