Christopher C. French
As I stated in my chapter for this collection, these days I view myself as a “mod-erate skeptic” when it comes to the paranormal. I was intrigued as to whether reading the other contributions to this volume would shift my position towards the more skeptical end of the belief spectrum or move me further towards the belief end. In fact, I have found myself even less convinced regarding the reality of psi. Some might argue that this was inevitable given my starting position but I welcome this opportunity to present some of my reasons for this shift. In my view, the contributions from the advocates in this volume often simply miss the point when it comes to debating the reality of psi and fail to address the very real and important objections that have been raised by the counteradvocates.
Due to space limitations, I will limit my comments to those relating to the advo-cates’ chapters.
Dean Radin provides a brief and extremely selective historical overview of parapsychology. For example, he completely fails to mention that two of the three Fox sisters publicly confessed that their alleged communications with the spirit world were fraudulent. Similarly, the fact that Sir William Crookes was convinced that Florence Cook had genuine mediumistic powers despite the fact that she was caught red-handed engaged in acts of trickery both before and after his investigations is not referred to in Radin’s piece. He lists many eminent names from the history of science who were convinced that psi was real but this, in and of itself, can never settle the dispute over whether psi is or is not real. It would be a trivially easy (but pointless) task to assemble an equally long list of
names of eminent scientists who did not or do not believe in the paranormal—
indeed, for me, the evidence shows that eminence in science correlates with greater skepticism. But, once again, this is irrelevant to the central issue. It is notable that many of the eminent scientists who have spoken out in favor of the existence of psi, both past and present, were making pronouncements outside of their own areas of expertise. Most of them have never actually directly engaged in testing paranormal claims (in contrast to most of the counteradvo-cates featured in this collection). At least Radin is willing to present us with a falsifiable hypothesis concerning the immediate future of psi research. I will be glad (although admittedly slightly embarrassed) to publicly acknowledge the existence of psi if a single demonstrable and unambiguous application of psi to the fields of electronics, biochemistry, or biology has appeared by 2015 (or indeed if it turns out that China or Russia already have such applications).
Chris Carter’s chapter also misses the point in some major ways. As it hap-pens, I would agree with him that there is prejudice within mainstream science against parapsychology. A small minority of vocal critics of parapsychology express strong opposition to any kind of paranormal claim purely on the basis that they “know” that such claims cannot be true without any need to actually examine the evidence (although this cannot be said of the counteradvocates contributing to this volume). The fact that such prejudice exists, however, does not demonstrate that psi exists.
I disagree strongly with Carter on two of his major points. The first is his tion that counteradvocates are motivated by fear of the paranormal. Such asser-tions, as in this case, usually rest upon unfalsifiable psychoanalytic foundations and are supported by very little in the way real evidence. As this fear is uncon-scious, this claim is almost by definition untestable and therefore pseudoscientific.
In terms of conscious attitudes, the evidence tends to undermine the assertion insofar as many counteradvocates, including myself, used to be “believers.”
The second assertion with which I would disagree is Carter’s insistence that the debate is not about the evidence. Much as he might like it not to be so, the debate is, in fact, centrally focused upon the evidence—and in particular the fail-ure of parapsychology to produce a single robust and replicable psi effect to the satisfaction of the wider scientific community. He seems to be arguing that a few vocal skeptics can have such a huge effect upon this wider community that real effects supported by strong evidence are simply ignored or even actively denied. Scientists are, by nature, curious and open-minded and there is no doubt at all that the conventional scientific worldview as exemplified by modern phys-ics is one in which notions far stranger than telepathy are accepted without any qualms. Is it really conceivable that in such a context all of these curious and open-minded scientists would hesitate for even an instant to investigate psi if the evidence was really that strong? The truth is that most mainstream scientists do not view parapsychological hypotheses as likely to be fruitful topics for inves-tigation—but a single powerful and robust demonstration of a psi effect would probably change that situation very quickly. After all, physicists were not slow
in attempting to replicate cold fusion despite their skepticism about the results reported by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989.
Carter attempts to explain the high level of skepticism regarding psi among psychologists in terms of psychologists retaining an outmoded view of metaphys-ics. No systematic evidence is presented in support of this assertion and no attempt is made to explain why it should be the case that psychologists, alone amongst the sciences, should behave in this way. His assertion that physicists are more open to investigating psi than psychologists does not ring true in terms of the parapsychologists I know, most of whom of were trained initially as psy-chologists. I do accept that here I am relying purely upon my subjective impres-sions and not on a systematic objective survey and may therefore be mistaken (just as Carter may be mistaken).
There are, of course, a couple of far more obvious reasons why psychologists might be more skeptical of the paranormal than scientists generally. First, they are familiar with the cognitive biases that might lead individuals to believe that they had personally experienced a paranormal event when in fact the experience could adequately be explained in psychological terms. Secondly, they are used to dealing with messy, real-life data and are probably more aware of the biases that can creep into the evaluation of data collected in scientific investigations.
As Rupert Sheldrake’s analysis has shown, natural scientists typically do not see the need to employ double-blind methodologies. The outcomes of experiments in the natural sciences are typically far more predictable (and replicable) than those in the social sciences (including both psychology and parapsychology). It is very likely that psychologists are more aware of the psychological factors that can affect the evaluation of data than scientists generally. Classic cases of patho-logical science, such as the alleged “discovery” of canals on Mars, N-rays, poly-water, cold fusion, and so on are all testament to the fact that dozens of papers can appear in the scientific literature attesting to the reality of phenomena, which turn out to be entirely illusory. It is well worth bearing such episodes in mind when evaluating parapsychology. The reason such claims were ultimately rejected by the wider scientific community was due to the fact that the evidence put forward in support of them was simply too weak. Other propositions, such as the claim that meteorites were stones that fell from the sky and that the conti-nents were originally joined together in a single land mass, were originally rejected by the wider scientific community but ultimately accepted because the evidence in favor of them accumulated and got stronger. That is the only way forward for parapsychology. Contrary to Carter’s mantra, the skeptical position focuses on evidence. Anything else is missing the point.