next »

[yamitenshi]

I checked Google Scholar for psychokinesis, psionics in general and ESP, and found absolutely nothing that struck me as reliable. Everything that wasn't a book was an article by the American Psychological Association's PsycNET, and judging by the abstracts produced by these people, which are both poorly written and impossible to understand in terms of used methods and actual results, I would conclude that no reliable evidence has been gathered for or against psionics in general.

This leads me to a few questions:

• Why has no reliable, reproducible, and most importantly properly documented research been done on the field of psionics?
• Why, with no reliable evidence either way, are so-called "scientists" so ready to rebuke the idea of psionic phenomena?

Now, these questions could answer themselves, of course. Scientists are so ready to rebuke the idea because there's no evidence either way, and there's no evidence either way because no research is being done in a reliable manner because every scientist thinks it's just plain crazy.

Which leads me to the most important question:

How can scientists, who are supposed to be society's primary assets in terms of intelligence, reason and logic, be so caught up in a circular reasoning that so resembles the reasoning that has been used to rebuke, for instance, general relativity, the heliocentric model and Galileo's statement that the Earth isn't flat, that they refuse to research a topic that has never been properly researched but can fit in perfectly with our current understanding of the universe and how it works, and how, considering the previously stated facts, can they look another person in the eye, and without flinching or even twitching say that they are truly scientists?

If anybody has a satisfactory explanation for this, I'm willing to listen, but this frustrates me to no end...

[flamedancer]

I have compiled a large collection of resources on my site. If you click on my signature, you can see it.

This link also answers your questions:

Video: SSE Talks - Paradigm Argument against ESP - Paul Smith

[yamitenshi]

The SSE talk explains that I might be right in assuming it's wrong of scientists to refute evidence for psionics, but it doesn't answer my most important question: why are they so ready to refute something that has empirical evidence, while still claiming to really be scinetists?

It seems to me that there's a taboo on psionics, just like there was on the Earth being round. Scientists today laugh about the stupidity of the people who refuted the geocentric model, Einstein's theory of general relativity and the heliocentric model, but they're doing the exact same thing. Why?

And, more importantly, how can we change it? Surely they're not expecting us to come up with a new paradigm (which isn't even necessary).

[flamedancer]

Surely they're not expecting us to come up with a new paradigm (which isn't even necessary).

Actually, it is, because psi cannot be reconciled with physical theories, period. The basic issue is one of first-order causal enclosure. A physical thing is defined in terms of causation, or having a temporal instance. If we say that all physical objects are caused by physical events, in terms of first-order logic, where we have A as the initial physical event and B is the effect, or consequence of A, then that means that B cannot precede A, exists without A, or leave A since that would mean it exists outside of its physical cause. We have this with psi which cannot be reconciled if we say that all that exists is physical where all physical objects have a spatialtemporal instance, period. Psi is an empirical case for consciousness not being an epiphenomena, where it is causally inert, where, instead, it shows that consciousness can cause physical effects. That is the issue. I am currently at work. I'll clean up the post when I get home.

[yamitenshi]

Actually, it is, because psi cannot be reconciled with physical theories, period. The basic issue is one of first-order causal enclosure. A physical thing is defined in terms of causation, or having a temporal instance. If we say that all physical objects are caused by physical events, in terms of first-order logic, where we have A as the initial physical event and B is the effect, or consequence of A, then that means that B cannot precede A, exists without A, or leave A since that would mean it exists outside of its physical cause. We have this with psi which cannot be reconciled if we say that all that exists is physical where all physical objects have a spatialtemporal instance, period. Psi is an empirical case for consciousness not being an epiphenomena, where it is causally inert, where, instead, it shows that consciousness can cause physical effects. That is the issue. I am currently at work. I'll clean up the post when I get home.

As I understand from the SSE talk, what psi doesn't coincide with is physicalism, which in itself means nothing more than "everything is physical". The laws of nature still stand with psionics, as the idea that there may be things that are not physical does nothing to the physical world. We do not know that everything is physical, and the idea is by no means necessary for physics, chemistry, biology or any other science that I know of to function - psionics simply requires some things not to be physical, while all that is physical remains physical. The problem is not that psionics doesn't work with current ideas, the problem is that scientists are unwilling to move away from physicalism, which has somehow established itself as the current idea, but is in no way required. In fact, physicalism is not a paradigm because it offers no explanation. It's just a statement. Also, the only reason why physicalism is still in place in the minds of scientists is because apparently all evidence against it is being disregarded, which is, in terms of scientific thinking, wrong no matter how you look at it. If evidence is presented, you scrutinize it. You repeat the experiment. You try to find different explanations within reason and check your results for significance. If the evidence still holds up after all this, which apparently it does, you're not allowed to just say "well, this doesn't coincide with what I believe to be true, and therefore I'll just ignore it". This very idea is the same thing scientists criticize in religious fundamentalists, because it is, quite frankly, an error in logical thinking, and an extremely short-sighted way of seeing things.

[MonkeyFace]

To be honest, a lot of work has been done on the "power of thought" if you want to call it that - you know, advances on the placebo effect and even going further. I remember reading in the New Scientist something about how scientists are encouraging people to think in a certain way when they're ill so as to help heal themselves. If you compare that to 60 years ago, I suspect you'll see a substantial difference in the amount of research that's going on in that kind of area. It could be that simply a little more time is needed before scientists begin to really delve into the psionic world.

Being an amateur physicist myself, I'm naturally skeptical But thinking the way a scientist does... I could see it being reasoned that actually psionic activity is just a very imaginative consequence of the placebo effect (not that I actually believe that and not that I can safely speak for all scientists around). But hey, I'm signing up for the research opportunity on SP, and I'm hoping to be a physicist, so give it 5 or 6 years and you might have your first openly psionic scientist around and about

[yamitenshi]

There is plenty of research, yes, but humor me. Go to scholar.google.com and type in either psionics, psychokinesis or ESP, and see how poorly these reports are written, or at least the abstracts. These are abstracts that would, in school, net me 2 or 3 out of 10 points, and therefore I find it hard to believe that this research is reliable, reproducible and peer-reviewed.

[The Adfeng]

If you are unable to find research online about psionics, or in books, do your own research.  That's part of the reason why I started SPPRA, so that people will have reliable research to read about psionics.  It also helps our community grow and become more active.

[yamitenshi]

True, I agree that we need to do our own research, and I'm happy to help out as a member of the SPPRA, but the question remains: why do scientists rebuke an idea that apparently has evidence for it, but has no real research done on it? Whatever the SPPRA will be, the experiments will be far from ideal from a scientific point of view.

[The Adfeng]

True, I agree that we need to do our own research, and I'm happy to help out as a member of the SPPRA, but the question remains: why do scientists rebuke an idea that apparently has evidence for it, but has no real research done on it? Whatever the SPPRA will be, the experiments will be far from ideal from a scientific point of view.

Some things you just can't really test or measure.  You can't measure how much energy someone feels, or measure the color of a construct/psi ball.

[yamitenshi]

That much I can agree with, but some things you can. The degree of movement in an object can be measures in various terms, the amount of energy passing through an electrical multimeter can be measured, and you have a measurable, reproducible, verifiable and falsifiable result described in your signature. I think the real reason this isn't done is as follows:
1. There's no real evidence, according to scientists.
2. Therefore scientists regard psionics as nonsense.
3. Therefore they refuse to do any real research.
4. The community has to do the research.
5. The community cannot perform research in ideal circumstances, possibly not even in a scientifically valid way, through lack of means and/or education.
6. Therefore any evidence generated by three community gets disregarded, and we arrive back at point 1.

It's clear that we need to be the ones to break this cycle, by generating some evidence they can't ignore, even if that means that means we eventually just prove that we're all crazy.

I'm currently finishing up on my article on scientific research for non-scientists, which might help in doing so. Also, I hope the SPPRA can play a role in delivering some evidence. All we need now is a few willing people to perform the research.

[Notagh]

2. Therefore scientists regard psionics as nonsense.

Scientists are people, too.  While the scientific model is intended to minimize/eliminate bias or other human flaws from scientific research, it does not work perfectly. Mistakes happen, and scientists often have biases of their own.

Some things scientists don't want to accept because it's hard pill to swallow, such as the regulation of ethics and medical research that occurred not too long ago, or when the extent of HeLa contamination in everything was discovered.

Some things are from way too far out in left field for scientists to consider.  This is not unique to scientists, who are, after all, not immune to a little bit of tunnel vision.