What’s wrong with this list?
- Paleontological Society
- Parapsychological Association
- Pattern Recognition Society
- Phi Beta Kappa Society
- Phi Sigma Biological Sciences Honor Society
- Phycological Society of America
Seems at first glance like a list of scientific professional organizations, or at least the subset of such a list beginning with the letter “P.” And indeed it is — it’s an excerpt from the list of Affiliates of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
But take a look at that second entry — the Parapsychological Association? Is that what it sounds like? Indeed it is — “the international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of ‘psi’’ (or ‘psychic’) experiences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and precognition (“parapsychology”).”
The only problem is, parapsychology is not science. It’s pseudoscience. From a completely blank-slate perspective, one can certainly pose scientific questions about whether the human mind can tell the future or read minds or move objects around without touching them. The thing is, we know the answer: no. The possibilities have been investigated and found wanting; more straightforwardly, they would violate the known laws of physics. Alchemy was science once, but it’s not any more. Not all hypotheses are equally worthy of our respect and attention; sometimes we learn that a particular idea doesn’t work, and move on with our lives.
So what in the world is the Parapsychological Association doing as part of the AAAS? Benefiting from the implication of respectability, is the obvious answer. Note that “Affiliate of the AAAS” is displayed prominently on the PA homepage — an endorsement that, say, the Paleontological Society or the Phycological Society of America (not misspelled, I swear) didn’t deem worth of such prominent display.
Apparently the PA was founded by J.B. Rhine in 1957, and became affiliated with the AAAS in 1969 thanks to the advocacy of then-AAAS-president Margaret Mead. In 1979 John Wheeler campaigned to have it kicked out, but his effort failed.
The AAAS is a useful organization, and it’s a shame to see them associate their good name with pseudoscience. Their annual meeting begins to day in Boston, and it’s always a fun event, a great way to catch up with some of the major themes in all areas of science. None of those themes should involve reading people’s thoughts or bending spoons with one’s mind. I hope the AAAS can gently extract itself from this relationship.
I’m willing to go out on a limb here and brand myself a lunatic on my very, very favorite science blog. Which is hard for me to do. But come on! Show a little human curiosity here, or at least some willingness to be wrong. I’d bet the vast majority of people have had some experience that they have no way to understand apart from some framework you would label “para”. I’ll even go ahead and tell you mine: I have, on at least 5 different occasions that I know of, shared dreams with family members – identical dreams, identical nights, sometimes with people I hadn’t spoken to in months. I even inherited a recurring nightmare (porcupine climbing in my crib) from my mother.
My point is this: to dismiss even the possibility out of hand of human esp abilities, to dismiss all those experiences of all those people, based solely on a handful of weak attempts at clinical trials in a field that has always been underfunded and mocked, never given serious attention or serious research dollars, is, in my opinion, arrogant and dogmatic. And try to separate this from the god issue. Allowing for the possibility of mild telepathy in humans doesn’t weaken your stance there at all.
Wait a sec…. isn’t “science” defined more as a method of inquiry, and not solely according to the subject being investigated?
Why couldn’t there be an organization studying “parapsychology” using legitimate scientific procedure? You may believe that such an organization would see their hypotheses disproved time and again (and you may be right on that, or then again, you may not be…) but that doesn’t qualify the study as “psuedoscience” just because they’re looking for something that might not be there.
To my understanding, that’s what science is all about: hypothesis, experimentation, data collection, data analysis, reevaluation of hypothesis. Nowhere in there is “get it right the first time” or “only study things we already know are true.”
Damn.
I wish I’d said what Ali said. Then I wouldn’t have had to look like on a lunatic on my very very favorite science blog. 🙂
Matt:
Still, you, your mother and everyone else has a brain that computes these dreams. No one will ever postulate a paranormal explanation if their computer behaves strangely. The human brain is billions of times more complex, so there is much more room for freak effects caused by ordinary down to earth physics.
The problem is that such esp abilities would violate the known well established laws of physics. So, such effects are not at all dismissed out of hand. They are merely dismissed because it is very reasonable to assume that the human brain is a physical system subject to the known laws of physics.
> I even inherited a recurring nightmare (porcupine climbing in my crib)
what’s so bad about porcupine climbing in your crib ? oh i get it …
Matt and Ali — I tried to address this issue in the post. If we knew nothing about how the world works, the question of whether parapsychological phenomena were real would be a perfectly scientific one. But we do know something! Including, for example, a complete inventory of long-range forces strong enough to have detectable influences on macroscopic objects. (Gravity and electromagnetism.) There is no room there for telekinesis etc. So, in the real world, it’s not science.
“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
Thank you Lord Kelvin
“I have, on at least 5 different occasions that I know of, shared dreams with family members – identical dreams, identical nights, sometimes with people I hadn’t spoken to in months.”
This can be explained as a simple matter of statistics and confirmation bias- imagine all of the people you know – most of the times their dreams don’t coincide with yours, and we never ever count those times, because obviously they shouldn’t coincide (even in some weak sense of “coinciding”).
But over the years, over the quite large number of acquaintances people usually have, with the common themes present in human psychology and with the afore mentioned weak sense of coincidence, you are bound, or someone you know is bound (more times or less depending on the times one remembers and shares dreams), to have these coincidences.
Regarding funding you are quite mistaken. Many, many, esoteric, profitable institutions (even though probably the more lucrative ones aren’t that naive) provide funding for such experiments. Look up Ryman Roth, he has seriously analysed many a claim for psy activity. Or Susan Blackmore. Unfortunately, there is nothing there so far. And like Sean said, we looked, found nothing, there are many, many more promising lines of research in need of attention, so why spend time and money on this?? It is not like we can spare the resources to look for Atlantis or something similarly implausible.
The real problem with Sean’s position is that he is calling for the suppression the discipline. And don’t go on about the fakes and frauds in this field. If that were the only measure of a disciplines value, what would be left? But what about results you say? I am sure you kind find your own examples of pursuits that have not yet produced anything of ‘real’ value.
The FAQ on the parapsycology page is great. Apparently, they don’t believe in ghosts! According to the FAQ, that would be “clearly nonsense.” Clearly!
They don’t believe in ghosts? What, do they think science already knows everything? Are they trying to suppress investigation into unconventional ideas?
Fascists.
My reaction to the question about the list:
What the phi upsilon kappa is phi beta kappa doing in there?
What’s wrong with this list? Oh, I thought it was a list of pseudoscience organisations (whether or not the subjects they study may be studied scientifically) and the correct answer is that Physics is notably missing.
Parapsychology is not a science so long as their journals report findings other than null results. I fully agree that they need to be ejected from the AAAS, tactfully (as Sean suggested) or not.
Extra dimensions? Alternate universes? Inflation? Time as a physical dimension? There are many models that cannot be conclusively proven.
We can build twenty dollar radios that can interpret electromagnetic waves. Why can’t our brains learn to do the same, since they function as electric fields? I find when I zen out around other people, I pick up far more emotional feedback and the verbalizations that pop through the consciousness seem to merge with them. In fact, as a small child, I had to make a conscious effort to tune out my siblings when they were not even around. Our brains function as a process of connection between neurons and society functions as a process of connections between people. Is this is as far as we go in our perceptive abilities? Or is there a whole range we have spent the last few millenia shutting out in order to develop a stronger sense of autonomy and are evolved enough to open the connections back up. We think we are so advanced because our technologies have been going through major advances, yet they are still very primitive in relation to the biological functions that developed millions of years ago. This might just be one small step to developing the larger organism and we are simply the current generation of cellular structure manifesting it. Generation is a constant process of shedding those layer of cells which have grown old and hard, so a fresh generation can expand a little further. It’s clear that certain elements of even the scientific community have become set in their assumptions, just as they presume other elements of society to be. As the old saying goes; “Progress happens one funeral at a time.”
Matt,
They let you get away with being a lunatic here, if you’re reasonably polite about it. That I haven’t been blocked is proof of that.
There has been a lot of money thrown at this garbage. Lots of experiments. No results ever replicated by independent scientists.
Susan Blackmore started out a believer but ended up a skeptic because of the inability to obtain results (she ran good experiments unlike many other “scientists” in this “field”).
Psychic woo woo powers do not exist, and James Randi still has his million dollars.
This is the only cosmic variance post I’ve ever read where I enjoyed the comments more than the post itself! (Sorry Sean). It is always fascinating to think about fringe science because it forces us to think about the definition of science.
Ali is completely correct in saying science is a method of inquiry. However, Sean is also correct in noting that such a hypothesis has been falsified (with a very high probability). Thus, we must follow the method of inquiry by throwing out the “para” hypothesis.
Joseph,
We haven’t exactly explained consciousness either, or even a clear description of it. Does that mean it really doesn’t exist? Too woo woo?
Yes there are a lot of charlatans out there and many of them are quite convincing. You haven’t studied the field of economics lately have you? They do much better then Randi.
I agree with Sean.
Why not have a Phlogiston Association? It (like ESP) is a concept that’s been discredited by every scientific test ever put to it. It’s never been observed, and the idea of its existence doesn’t make sense in any scientific framework.
Now, you could study its potential existence in a scientific way, thereby technically making your field a science in the sense of falsifiability. However, if you’re running an organization that needs respect, including on your roster a phlogiston society (or Phrenology Society or Poltergeist Society or Phoenix Phinding Society) is not a good way to earn it. Why not have a creationism society on the list? Why not have a geocentrist society? Why not a flat earth society?
Descartes wrote about the possibility that math might all be wrong. It may be the case that 2+2 actually equals 5, but that every time anyone ever worked the problem, a demon messed him up. Since this is a possibility, should we all make sure to keep an open mind that 2+2=5?
Come on, guys. Pointing out the fact that almost anything could be done in a scientific way is a cheap trick that should be reserved for people like Kent Hovind and Kirk Cameron.
Maybe I’m in left field but I think the Pychological Society is potentially the most interesting link in the post. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more about algae as it pertains to cost effective ways of migrating away from fossil fuels. I’ll leave it at that for now.
Elliot
see I misspelled it that’s phychological…
sorry.
The scientific method is inherently reductionistic, but reality isn’t.
I just read the article linked to over at Preposterous Universe. Near the end he writes:
Is it not true that we have never detected gravitational waves, either? Not exactly a bulletproof argument.
It is sad testament that such narrowmindedness is considered scientific. I can see science has become a dessicated rotting corpse for you. Isn’t it long past time to do something else?