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.
44. oxo “Tell the CIA, tell the US Army. Both those organisations had Operational Remote Viewing Units for over 20 years.”
That depends on how one defines “operational.” Drawing a paycheck? Yes. Productive? No. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it. Oh wait, I can read your mind: “that information is classified.” Why should we take you seriously?
And seriously, if our military could do remote viewing, would Osama bin Laden still be on the loose? “Remote Viewing” company PsiTech did a real bang-up up job on the Elizabeth Smart case, didn’t they? And how about Ingo Swann remote viewing a mountain range on the planet Jupiter?
Perhaps this has been mentioned in the above comments, but the “known laws of physics” are interpretations of a reality based on individual alterations to existing theories describing the external world, its properties, etc. As a scientist, I think it is a mistake to consider “results” anything but a particular interpretation of a specific instance/event, so to act as though the “laws of physics” are sacrosanct is somewhat ridiculous considering the only reason they exist is because people still buy into them. I agree that in comparison to physics or chemistry, which is my field of study, psychology of any kind is not technically considered actual “science,” at least with how they “design” and test their experiments most of the time (Feynman talked about this a bunch). But then again, this does not exclude such fields from being scientific, but simply limits the application of their results to given situations. Although, don’t we do this already with such things as math, the language of science? For instance, a common misconception is that 2+2=4, which is obviously not true if discussing droplets of water. This brings up the idea of approaching each case as unique or being able to generalize with concepts, which brings me back to the laws of physics. These “laws” have taken how many years to be developed, worked through, thought out, refined? Approaching new or unchartered territory will also require such refinement and patience, but to cast out such studies as ridiculous so soon is to essentially cast it out in its entirety, which is quite a mistake in my opinion.
I simply want to leave a few notes to ponder.
1. When we all speak of ‘moving objects at a distance with our minds,’ lovably called ‘telekinesis,’ aren’t we, at a distance, making a conscious decision that we wish to move an object, then, if we have made the decision to move the object, we remove that distance by collapsing all possibility that we will not approach the object and move it, by approaching the object and moving it?
2. “Heisenberg – locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain.” As I read this, the mind has a direct influence over how it is we perceive the quantum state. If the macroscopic world is believed to be constructed statistically by the accumulations of quantum states, are not our minds directly influencing our perceptions of the macroscopic world? Is the way you will interact with and observe the 9th Symphony of Beethoven the same way I/ will interact with and observe it?
3. Sean wrote: (and by the way I love this site and appreciate your all’s work. This is for all our benefits in challenging, as someone said before, our inquiring the fringes of science)
Aren’t our brains themselves the ones attempting to, in an external sense (ie. invoking instruments tailored by the brain, fashioned from elements arising in ‘the cosmos’), to measure these ‘waves’ or ‘interactions’? Perhaps it isn’t measurable in an ‘external sense,’ just as gravitational waves are yet immeasurable in an ‘external sense,’ but we know they are there from an intuitive or ‘internal sense’ based on other external measurements. Perhaps just as consciousness is yet immeasurable, but we know it is there from an ‘internal sense.’ Perhaps as the Big Bang is yet unseen, but from deduction (again, an ‘internal sense’) based on external observation, we know that is what observation seems to be pointing to. Perhaps some day our intuition will lead to external instruments to measure these things, but at that time, wont we still have plenty we cannot measure externally? I mean to say that the cycle of knowing externally or internally will always continue, you cannot explain the universe in terms of one without remainder in the other. One may then assume you must use both.
I only want to give a few unbiased points of note on the matter, as this is hot stuff right here. I just want to see scientists holding closely on to that feeling the scientist within them arose from to begin with, curiosity. Inquiry. Open minds, eh?
My major point is this, we deduce much of our laws and knowledge through inner reflection on measurements based in the external world. We use a consciousness that we cannot externally measure in the bounds of the scientific method to deduce laws which we can externally measure.
The other point is this, if you assume science is the end-all explanation, the one explanation, of course you aren’t going to believe in immeasurable phenomena, or internally experienced phenomena. However, if you openly consider both, and that certain phenomena cannot be externally measured in the realm of the scientific method (and we ourselves use those immeasurable phenomena to perceive the external world), then you may become aware of a richer, more dynamic cosmos, and find more whole answers this way.
Science should stick to measuring what science can measure, it does so very well. The two camps should stay out of each other’s lunch until such a time arises that they may translate their findings into the other’s language. I agree with Sean that Parapsychology does not belong in the AAAS. I believe using the scientific method to research phenomena that cannot be measured by any scientific instrument anyways is inefficient and unfounded. I do, however, believe there are phenomena that cannot be measured scientifically.
If we see the universe as an entity that is ‘remembering’ what has unfolded (truly, we wouldn’t be here if processes leading to atoms to molecules to proteins enzymes RNA DNA, etc, were not ‘remembered,’ or ‘solidified in time’ in some way), then we can see the universe as ‘knowing’ all parts of itself, including us. Then, perhaps we will come to understand all of the universe some day through science (our ‘external sense’) and through our ‘internal sense’ together, and on that day, if we believe the universe ‘knows’ all parts of itself, won’t we ourselves become the universe?
It is believed we are formed from the universe, the universe is not formed from us. Or is it?
I will leave you with that. I hope it wasn’t too nutty. Best wishes to your Inquiries! Please, find some answers for either side so we all can enjoy them. Or, at the very least, open up your noggin a bit to include a bit more of this intricate weave of existence we share.
Happy hunting,
Wayne
While I suspect this organization does not belong in the AAAS (I have not looked at it at all) I find it interesting that so many people in these comments insist that no one should waste their time and money studying such a dead field. I think people should always have the curiosity and be encouraged to go off and study what interests them. I see nothing wrong with believing there is something there and approaching it in a scientific manner even though I personally think they aren’t going to find anything there. That said, I would not condone spending large amounts of common (government) money on fields that are generally considered dead by the scientific community.
We (presumably) live in a universe of dark matter/dark energy about which we know less than nothing. To assume all we know is all there is to know is not scientific. It is the prescription for arrogance and ignorance.
The problem with parapsychology is that it leads to all types of hockum. Dean Radin at UNLV claimed all sorts of paranormal events by statistics. It was later learned he conveniently circular filed a lot of data, the file drawer effect, to make his case. The subject lends itself easily to fraud, as in the case of seances and other related claims.
Lawrence B. Crowell
It seems to me that the people most strongly against considering “parapsychology” a “real science” (regardless of its methods, in which they seem not remotely interested) are those concerned about the respect and dignity of the AAAS and of Science (capital S) in general. It’s “ridiculous” and a “waste of time” to study such a thing, apparently.
Forgive me for saying so, but I think that’s just pride talking, i.e. the need to feel like one’s own field of expertise happens to be more respectable than others, somehow more immune to mistakes, misdirection and embarrassing foibles. It seems to me that when scientists start worrying about their respectability, especially in the eyes of society in general, they’re speaking not as scientists, but as a group that has enjoyed a certain amount of prestige and privilege that they’re reluctant to relinquish by allowing silly people in the club. If science is a method, than any old nutjob can use it to study whatever he likes (and, god forbid, he might just learn something of value, even if it’s not what he intended to learn). But if Science is a set of pre-approved ideas and theories, then the nutjobs can be laughed aside and excluded, and so the respectability and dignity of scientists can be maintained in the eyes of the general public. (This, of course, ignores that fact that throughout history plenty of ground-breaking scientists have been silly ol’ nutjobs with harebrained ideas.)
Which leads me to the question: what does “the advancement of science” really mean?
If it means working to apply a useful and fruitful method of inquiry to a wider variety of problems and questions, including areas that might not currently be considered part of the canon of “hard science”, then parapsychology has its right to claim that goal. The hard fact is, reality does not proceed from theory; rather, theory is only relevant if it describes reality. If parapsychologists use scientific methods to find repeatable, consistent and statistically significant results (as some of them claim to have done), then it doesn’t really matter if current theories of electromagnetism, etc. say that’s impossible–theory has to be revisited and refined until it can explain observable reality, not the other way around.
If, on the other hand, the advancement of Science is about consolidating the respect (i.e. the power and influence) of a particular set of ideas about how the world works, to the exclusion of possible alternatives, then Sean and those who agree with him are right to complain that parapsychology is not generally interested in advancing those pre-approved ideas over those considered “already dead.”
I’m surprised nobody has posted this link yet:
http://xkcd.com/373/
In the end, it’s all about the data. What’s the data and to how many digits. Everything else is woo woo.
The AAAS website states:
So I think that answers my previous question.
Sean,
I remember when that cartoon first came out. Personally, I’ve never seen so many scientists so gleefully cite a satirical graph devoid of any kind of actual data as if it were “proof” of their point. It’s a shame, since xkcd is usually quite amusing and insightful, that they didn’t bother to find the actual figures for studies of “superpowers.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single study that conclusively refuted ESP, for instance (insofar as showing one person to be blind doesn’t prove everyone is).
I’m pretty surprised here: this is a blog about science, and all the comments here are from peddlers of woo-woo? What’s going on?
I agree with Sean that some things just don’t belong in the box. But I think science has to accept that it is never going to close the box and start looking at the big picture. If anyone here has been thinking through the possible consequences of this thirty year debt bubble imploding, they will realize that quite a few tenure track positions are going the way of quite a few corporate livelihoods, so safety isn’t going to be guaranteed by defending your little piece of turf. Rational minds are going to have to come together around some form of Gaia hypothesis and work toward developing and promoting it. Otherwise the fundamentalists and the politicians are going to be the ones providing the answers that give meaning to this mess. Does anyone here want that? Does anyone think I’m wrong? Think Yugoslavia. Those ivory towers are just so many dominos.
This type of blog entry is always a hit.:)
All it takes is one experience “out of the normal,” that is outside our everyday lives, for one to realize that there is something we are not quite getting.
You can say all you like about science’s requirements and it will not change that experience. You know what is required. Will you lie to yourself, all the while knowing that one experience is not enough?
Intuitive leaps, are they “jumps of faith” or is there some organizing principal that we had failed to understand after giving the situation it’s all, knowing, that these aha moments actually arise from things that have been reduce to what is self evident.
But that is not the experience I am talking about.
Good Nobel winning scientists gone bad? You had to have a portfolio that is consistent with atheism? Humanistic principals, in order to put this one last topic up to round it off?:) Is there such a study?:)
Sean said:
> The possibilities have been investigated and found wanting…
Presumably, as a scientist, you are basing this statement on published results of experiments in parapsychology. Since you argue that parapsychologists are pseodoscientists, may I ask why you believe these results of theirs so firmly that you base the remainder of your arguments on them? Do you not see inconsistency in arguing for using the results of studies in support of dismissing the very field that supposedly gave rise to those studies?
Alchemy was science once, but it’s not any more.
Alchemy was also about the “internal psychological structure” to perfect oneself. Whether you weight the value of that approach in this context is irrelevant, since one may have not understood it? 🙂
The Errors & Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton by Sheldon Lee Glashow
This is supporting evidence to add finality to that aspect?
Okay you think this is where is started? I don’t think so.
Newton’s Translation of the Emerald Tablet
Hmmm……..:)
I think some of the commenters near the beginning had good points, that it isn’t fair to judge a subject matter “pseudoscience” because you don’t think the phenomena are likely – it’s approach that makes it science more than anything. One claim that isn’t really true – that all psi would have to violate laws of physics. In some gross cases like levitation, probably (if there was no weight left of the object, and if the equivalence principle is true – then the levitating body could equivalently be accelerated with ever increasing kinetic energy without expending the “cost” in work (as force dot v.) But other presumptions are wrong. For example, correlative effects (that can “hide” under quantum uncertainty and therefore not violate any deterministic rules) that would allow brain processes to indicate distant or even future events wouldn’t violate laws unless information was sent faster than c.
One other presumption that is popular and taken for granted about causal interference is probably false, unless I am mistaken here: the idea that some outside influence can’t interfere in causality without breaking laws in those cases where randomness is not the issue. Sometimes the argument is used against concepts of psychophysical dualism, as e.g. by Daniel Dennett in the presumptuously titled Consciousness Explained. The argument is, to interfere in causality factor X would have to make particles deviate from the paths determined by conservation of energy and momentum. That idea is naively appealing, but it is not true. There are at least two ways to meddle in what happens without AFAIK breaking any basic physical rules:
(1.) To effect a delay in particle interactions, e.g. for colliding particles to be held up for a tiny interval before taking the same paths they would normally take.
(2.) In the center-of-momentum frame, the paths particles take can be rotated together without any violation: e.g., rotate the activity by say 30 degrees etc. The energy and linear and angular momentum stay the same in that frame (and therefore should in all frames.)
Sure, minor other principles would be tweaked by such maneuvers, but the idea that fiddling with causality entails breaking conservation laws is a myth, FWIW.
About 25 years ago I attended a lecture on parapsychology by J.B. Hastead, professor of experimental physics at Birkbeck College University of London (my alma mater). He related as an example of teleportation that he had personally experienced that one day he went into his office, which had been locked overnight, and fount a small pre-columbian statue on his desk.
I of course attribute it to a graduate student with a sense of humour and some of Dick Feynman’s skill in opening locks. Hasted had been fooled by Uri Geller and his gullibility was well known.
I had been a graduate student in the crystallography department (the head of our department was a professor of biophysics) and had little connection with the physics department. At that time David Bohm was professor of theoretical physics there and I occasionally wondered if his concept of the “implicate order” allowed for parapsychological phenomena. As a convert to the relative state interpretation of QM I don’t really worry about that now. Decoherence would scramble everything anyway.
Sean, aren’t there some invisible and completely hypothetical strings somewhere that need your attention? Perhaps some math that you should be doing?
Leave the real frontiers of science to the professionals. We promise not to bother you with any results that might make you uncomfortable. 😉
If you want to kick the Parapsychological Association out of the AAAS, I think it sets a better precedent to kick them out for publishing research that doesn’t follow good scientific methodology — not for studying a phenomenon that seems incredibly unlikely to exist given what we believe about the world.
Has anyone here checked out the abstracts from the Parapsychological Association’s last annual conference? Or better, some of the actual papers? If all these papers follow good scientific procedure, I see no reason for the AAAS to kick out the Parapsychological Association. But if most of them follow crappy methodology… kick ’em out!
Thank you John, finally someone makes sense!
Ditto what John Baez said.
I was at the AAAS meeting in Boston today. While overall the booths were nice it seemed Templeton Fund had a huge stall. It seemed about 20% of the floor space was outright given to organizations promoting religion rather than having anything to do with science.
I should clarify the ‘given’ part above. Maybe they just paid for it and it wasn’t given. There was a fair bit of space given to Subaru as well.
57> Ali: “It’s “ridiculous” and a “waste of time” to study such a thing, apparently.”
59. “Ali: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single study that conclusively refuted ESP, for instance (insofar as showing one person to be blind doesn’t prove everyone is).”
It’s been studied. No replicable results. Ever. How long can the search for fairies be considered legitimate, respectable inquiry, worthy of public support and funding? Fairies and leprechauns. I’ve never seen a single study conclusively refuting leprechauns either. Is it unfair to keep the Association of Leprechaunology out of the AAAS?
I agree with Baez on “methods,” but there is a tendency for bad science to lean on bad methods. It is like creationism, where the idea “must be true,” and its exponents then employ bad methods to “make it so.”
Lawrence B. Crowell
Reginald, you state that, “It’s been studied. No replicable results. Ever. How long can the search for fairies be considered legitimate, respectable inquiry, worthy of public support funding?” I find it very amusing to hear somebody claim this, especially when you have so many areas of physics that have been investigated (for how long?) that never actually lead to anything but dead end theories about explaining the world using “string theory” or “ether.” Yet, people all over the place repeatedly get funding for silly studies that, at least at the time, are considered “respectable” (whatever that word really means). Also, along the lines of Feynman, how exactly have these phenomena been studied? Most of the studies performed “debunking” them are specifically designed to find fault or description using physically “understood” phenomena to “explain” them, yet as science often does, certain questions of how/why that go beyond our simple powers of observation are left behind. An experiment/test is a delicate thing and must be treated as such, otherwise you end up inserting extra variables that are not included in someone else’s study, therefore affecting the results/data obtained from the experiment. So, until the day strolls on by where we have investigated such occurrences thoroughly enough using proper experimentation, which is much more difficult when people are complaining about the fields “right” to being included in the scientific community, I think shouting from the rooftops about the lack of data the field suffers from is similar to what would happen if I challenged a small child to run from one end of a field to another, all along beating the child with a stick to keep him/her from finishing the race. It’s an unreasonable request because I have made it so. Not to mention, what are you actually afraid of with these studies? As Neil Postman puts it, I think you suffer from Columbusity because you are so overwhelmed by hubris/fear/whatever, that you are neglecting/overlooking the wonderful situation you have before you. “Good science has nothing to fear from bad science, and by putting one next to the other, the education of our youth is served exceedingly well” (Postman). So, as in this case, we have a situation where a field of study is “in question” about whether it should be considered science. What better way to help students apply the scientific method and teach them to be analytical about things could there possibly be? If you are a teacher, pose a question to your students asking them consider a case of ESP and then ask them how they could design experiments to test such claims. What variables should be tested and how? What are the condition of the experiment and can they be reproduced so that others may also investigate a separate case or cases? Once you open the doors for these types of investigations, though, which seems to be what people performing such studies want, you allow the thoroughly studied fields like physics, chemistry, and biology to take a crack at things and see what comes out. Even if the result is that the case can be described with a combination of previously developed theories, or by newly created ones that neatly fit into science, think of the gains that are enjoyed! Perhaps there is some unique physical process associated with such events that may not be evident in other studies or situations. Or perhaps, there is some chemical input or change in the brain that can be studied further experienced by individuals claiming to have ESP. So, I urge people, particularly scientists, to stop looking at the world through the eyes of Columbus, never have too much confidence in your own view of the world/actions that it causes you to overlook the great finds/chances before you. Not to mention, for those dedicated to the idea that parapsychology is a false idol, keep in mind Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte who warned his troops never to interrupt an enemy in the process of committing suicide. This would certainly be the case here considering a field is asking for science to help investigate claims that they feel deserves its own name.