Can the scientific method be applied to study supernatural phenomena?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Most paranormal phenomena appears randomly and spontaneously leaving nothing for science to investigate.

You mean like:

- earthquakes?
- tornadoes?
- neutrino strikes?
- volcanic eruptions?
- nuclear weapon tests?
- crimes?

And much is posited to not even be occurring at the physically investigable level or enters a person's awareness spontaneously.

But false thoughts also "enter a person's awareness spontaneously," too. How would someone go about confirming that one of these ideas is true if it isn't "occurring at the physically investigable level?"

 

[gnostic]

Well, if he did that without using science, this doesn´t really count as evidences, does it?

Now, it is you who is missing the points.

There are no evidence for supernatural, no evidence for psychic abilities, no evidence for magic.

What Houdini proved, without science, that psychics, mediums, telepathic are either delusional, but more often conmen and con-women, seeking to exploit naivety...and with mediums were exploiting people’s grief to cheat them out of money..

What Houdini exposed were greed and cheats, because he understand people’s motivation for deceiving people.

 

[George-ananda]

You mean like:

- earthquakes?
- tornadoes?
- neutrino strikes?
- volcanic eruptions?
- nuclear weapon tests?
- crimes?

Those are not good examples as they leave effects on the physical plane. 'Crimes' might be the best example there and what we are left with is a jury decision that considers all things from all sides. Much like forming an opinion on the most reasonable beliefs concerning supernatural phenomena.

In a criminal court case the best we can determine is 'beyond reasonable doubt' or 'hung jury'. That is analogous to the process for forming an opinion on paranormal/spiritual subjects.

But false thoughts also "enter a person's awareness spontaneously," too. How would someone go about confirming that one of these ideas is true if it isn't "occurring at the physically investigable level?"

We shouldn't blindly accept nor blindly dismiss people's experiences. Everything pertinent is entered before the deliberation of our jury of one.

 

[George-ananda]

But without verification, regardless if it is science or non-science, then you really cannot say you are being objective in this.

We need to be objective to the best of our ability. For example, how do we judge a murder case? It's by jury members considering all pertinent information objectively to the best of their ability. Is it perfect with humans? No. But is it the best method we have? Yes. Is there a way to verify the results? No.

That is my analogy to forming a position on supernatural phenomena.

 

[gnostic]

We need to be objective to the best of our ability. For example, how do we judge a murder case? It's by jury members considering all pertinent information objectively to the best of their ability. Is it perfect with humans? No. But is it the best method we have? Yes. Is there a way to verify the results? No.

That is my analogy to forming a position on supernatural phenomena.

We need to be objective to the best of our ability. For example, how do we judge a murder case? It's by jury members considering all pertinent information objectively to the best of their ability. Is it perfect with humans? No. But is it the best method we have? Yes. Is there a way to verify the results? No.

That is my analogy to forming a position on supernatural phenomena.

Using the court and jury analogy is just that, an analogy.

You are comparing one thing that is totally different to the other. It is like comparing orange to a car - they are nothing alike.

They are not alike, because a murder case, where a person killing another, isn’t supernatural. Nor are we hearing testimonies of witnesses involving supernatural.

And in court case, if there is murder, what is the likelihood that there are eyewitnesses?

Murder trial required evidence, not just testimonies of the murderer or the eyewitness. Anything (evidence) that can physically tie the murderer to the murdered victim, eg blood or hair samples, dna, fingerprints, murder weapon, etc, all of which can be tested.

Do you think such evidence are available with claims of supernatural?

No.

So your analogy is a poor one, and it is irrelevant and pointless to use such comparisons.

I understand why you want to use jury and witnesses as example to supernatural. You want to compare the witnesses in the court case, like those witnesses of the so-called supernatural events or abilities. And you want to use the jury, like those who would accept the witnesses to the supernatural.

But all too frequently with regarding to the supernatural, that people can mistakenly believe anything, people can distort and exaggerate, and people can lie, so such witnesses’ testimonies can be unreliable, or worse they can exploit others with deception and far-fetch tales.

 

[George-ananda]

But all too frequently with regarding to the supernatural, that people can mistakenly believe anything, people can distort and exaggerate, and people can lie, so such witnesses’ testimonies can be unreliable, or worse they can exploit others with deception and far-fetch tales.

Certainly a reason based person considers this too.

He may also believe that the majority of just regular people try to be honest to the best of their ability too.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

They are not alike, because a murder case, where a person killing another, isn’t supernatural. Nor are we hearing testimonies of witnesses involving supernatural.

Perhaps more importantly, if a witness in court attempted to claim something supernatural happened as a means of explaining some event or as a cause of something, they would be dismissed and their testimony discounted. Courts deal with plausible explanations and (in the case of criminal trials) with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Supernatural explanations are dismissed a priori because they are not considered "reasonable" nor indeed is such testimony considered even potential evidence.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Those are not good examples as they leave effects on the physical plane.

They're all examples of phenomena that appear randomly and spontaneously. You said that things that appear randomly and spontaneously can't be investigated scientifically.

And it's not a matter of "effects on the physical plane." As long as a thing has testable effects of any sort - regardless of which "plane" those effects are on - science can investigate it.

'Crimes' might be the best example there and what we are left with is a jury decision that considers all things from all sides. Much like forming an opinion on the most reasonable beliefs concerning supernatural phenomena.

In a criminal court case the best we can determine is 'beyond reasonable doubt' or 'hung jury'. That is analogous to the process for forming an opinion on paranormal/spiritual subjects.

Have you found any cases that would convict someone on one person's gut feeling that the accused is guilty with no evidence to support it?

We shouldn't blindly accept nor blindly dismiss people's experiences. Everything pertinent is entered before the deliberation of our jury of one.

It's not a matter of rejecting experiences; it's a matter of carefully examining the attribution of those experiences.

If you say you had an idea suddenly pop into your head, I'll generally accept that this really happened. The issues arise when you argue that we should accept this idea as necessarily true even though we have no indication that it is true... or even that it could possibly be true.

 

[George-ananda]

They're all examples of phenomena that appear randomly and spontaneously. You said that things that appear randomly and spontaneously can't be investigated scientifically.

And it's not a matter of "effects on the physical plane." As long as a thing has testable effects of any sort - regardless of which "plane" those effects are on - science can investigate it.

OK with your tornado example there is radar weather report before and after and effects on the ground, etc..

A ghost appears and then disappears. You got diddly squat but eyewitness claims for science. That doesn't mean there wasn't a ghost.

Not much science can do with the latter. That was my point.

Have you found any cases that would convict someone on one person's gut feeling that the accused is guilty with no evidence to support it?

Hopefully that should never happen. In the ghost example I can take a body of cases having eyewitness evidence and form a likely judgment.

It's not a matter of rejecting experiences; it's a matter of carefully examining the attribution of those experiences.

If you say you had an idea suddenly pop into your head, I'll generally accept that this really happened. The issues arise when you argue that we should accept this idea as necessarily true even though we have no indication that it is true... or even that it could possibly be true.

Again where am I calling for an automatic acceptance of anything? I happen to be an open-minded skeptic.

A proper analysis of the various supernatural phenomena requires a body of cases considered for quantity, quality and consistency.

 

[gnostic]

Certainly a reason based person considers this too.

He may also believe that the majority of just regular people try to be honest to the best of their ability too.

Well, like I said previously, Harry Houdini had investigated claims of mediums claiming to be able to talk to ghosts of the departed, claims of haunting.

He did so with not science, but from his experiences as professional magician, illusionist and escape artist, knowing how to trick his audience.

He used those experiences, to exposed mediums who are frauds, especially mediums who tried to trick grieving love ones of deceased. And in his lifetime, Houdini never experienced ghosts or haunting, but have managed each ones he had investigated as fakes.

Regular and honest people don’t exploit other people of their money.

 

[George-ananda]

Well, like I said previously, Harry Houdini had investigated claims of mediums claiming to be able to talk to ghosts of the departed, claims of haunting.

He did so with not science, but from his experiences as professional magician, illusionist and escape artist, knowing how to trick his audience.

He used those experiences, to exposed mediums who are frauds, especially mediums who tried to trick grieving love ones of deceased. And in his lifetime, Houdini never experienced ghosts or haunting, but have managed each ones he had investigated as fakes.

Houdini or Randi or whoever have their mission and show to perform.

I believe many mediums are genuine and have been tested so by controlled experiments and in the 21st Century. But that's another never ending debate in itself.

Regular and honest people don’t exploit other people of their money.

I agree with that sentence but I'm also skeptical of the skeptics that call them all scammers.

Anyway you may be missing the gist of the type of things I'm talking about. Professional mediums/psychics are just a tiny bit of all this. The meat of what I am talking about are things like your quiet next door neighbor claiming to have experienced her grandmother's appearance after her passing. Houdini and Randi can't investigate 99% of the stuff like that.

 

[joelr]

I believe many mediums are genuine and have been tested so by controlled experiments and in the 21st Century. But that's another never ending debate in itself.


I agree with that sentence but I'm also skeptical of the skeptics that call them all scammers.

.

I've been looking for some type of controlled experiment that demonstrated any type of ESP. I haven't found any. Lynn McTaggart wrote a book called The Field that's all about that stuff and she sourced all these experiments that used random number generators and so on. But all of her sources were debunked on skeptic sites that walked me through the results.
Derren Brown also does a lot of debunking psychics and mediums. He also does those things but explains it's just a trick.

Same with that Johnathan Edwards guy from Crossing Over. It turned out that the show was edited to contain more hits, the audience was miked and sat around chatting with each other for 45 minutes and he could listen in. His live performances were analyzed and contained far less hits.
But Derren explains how it's done.

All that stuff with the Army studying remote viewing from the 70's really didn't pan out.
I just can't find any positive confirmation of any ESP and I looked for a long time.
I just had to balance it out with what debunkers had to say and once it's deconstructed there isn't much there.
It's a lot like Roswell which I assumed was true because when I was a kid Larry King did a show about that and area 51 was taken very serious. Upon investigation it all falls apart.

Skeptics have an agenda as well. They have to produce content and I've seen ufo cases where I felt they were definitely disregarding interesting evidence to lean on non-ufo theories. But I have not found that to be the case with ESP.

 

[George-ananda]

I've been looking for some type of controlled experiment that demonstrated any type of ESP. I haven't found any. Lynn McTaggart wrote a book called The Field that's all about that stuff and she sourced all these experiments that used random number generators and so on. But all of her sources were debunked on skeptic sites that walked me through the results.
Derren Brown also does a lot of debunking psychics and mediums. He also does those things but explains it's just a trick.

Same with that Johnathan Edwards guy from Crossing Over. It turned out that the show was edited to contain more hits, the audience was miked and sat around chatting with each other for 45 minutes and he could listen in. His live performances were analyzed and contained far less hits.
But Derren explains how it's done.

All that stuff with the Army studying remote viewing from the 70's really didn't pan out.
I just can't find any positive confirmation of any ESP and I looked for a long time.
I just had to balance it out with what debunkers had to say and once it's deconstructed there isn't much there.
It's a lot like Roswell which I assumed was true because when I was a kid Larry King did a show about that and area 51 was taken very serious. Upon investigation it all falls apart.

Skeptics have an agenda as well. They have to produce content and I've seen ufo cases where I felt they were definitely disregarding interesting evidence to lean on non-ufo theories. But I have not found that to be the case with ESP.

I can tell by the names you are using and the comments you are making that you are taking your information from the never-say-die skeptic club that I believe only gives selective information conducive to their claims.

As for controlled testing there is now convincing evidence that even regular people have fairly weak but real psi abilities, To see weak abilities you need to do a large number of runs to calculate an odds against chance factor. Below is a quote from a very respected parapsychologist Dr. Dean Radin:

“After a century of increasingly sophisticated investigations and more than a thousand controlled studies with combined odds against chance of 10 to the 104th power to 1, there is now strong evidence that psi phenomena exist. While this is an impressive statistic, all it means is that the outcomes of these experiments are definitely not due to coincidence. We’ve considered other common explanations like selective reporting and variations in experimental quality, and while those factors do moderate the overall results, there can be no little doubt that overall something interesting is going on. It seems increasingly likely that as physics continues to redefine our understanding of the fabric of reality, a theoretical outlook for a rational explanation for psi will eventually be established



Just to make the concept simple in a guessing game of four choices if no ESP effect exists then the user should score 25% hits by chance. However if a group of subjects get say 32% correct over a large enough number of runs the odds against chance can be calculated. Radin is saying the results are by now 10 to the 104th power to 1 against chance.

Parapsychologists like Radin and others are saying there is really no need to do more tests to determine if the phenomena exists and they are now more concerned with testing that tells us more about the phenomena.

 

[joelr]

I can tell by the names you are using and the comments you are making that you are taking your information from the never-say-die skeptic club that I believe only gives selective information conducive to their claims.

As for controlled testing there is now convincing evidence that even regular people have fairly weak but real psi abilities, To see weak abilities you need to do a large number of runs to calculate an odds against chance factor. Below is a quote from a very respected parapsychologist Dr. Dean Radin:

“After a century of increasingly sophisticated investigations and more than a thousand controlled studies with combined odds against chance of 10 to the 104th power to 1, there is now strong evidence that psi phenomena exist. While this is an impressive statistic, all it means is that the outcomes of these experiments are definitely not due to coincidence. We’ve considered other common explanations like selective reporting and variations in experimental quality, and while those factors do moderate the overall results, there can be no little doubt that overall something interesting is going on. It seems increasingly likely that as physics continues to redefine our understanding of the fabric of reality, a theoretical outlook for a rational explanation for psi will eventually be established



Just to make the concept simple in a guessing game of four choices if no ESP effect exists then the user should score 25% hits by chance. However if a group of subjects get say 32% correct over a large enough number of runs the odds against chance can be calculated. Radin is saying the results are by now 10 to the 104th power to 1 against chance.

Parapsychologists like Radin and others are saying there is really no need to do more tests to determine if the phenomena exists and they are now more concerned with testing that tells us more about the phenomena.

No that wouldn't make sense to only view one skeptic site?
I am familiar with Dean Radin. His latest work now includes entanglement which is where those numbers came from:
"
Readers of The Conscious Universe will be pleased to know that Radin has outdone himself on the meta-analysis front. In his second book, he provides a meta-meta-analysis of over 1,000 studies on dream psi, ganzfeld psi, staring, distant intention, dice PK, and RNG PK. He concludes that the odds against chance of getting these results are 10104 against 1 (p. 276). As Radin says, "there can be little doubt that something interesting is going on" (p. 275). Yes, but I'm afraid it may be going on only in some entangled minds."
http://skepdic.com/essays/radin.html

So now it has to include entanglement and it's getting nebulous. I have not read the book or any reviews or analysis.

His rational Wiki page:
Dean Radin - RationalWiki
is short but illustrates some other scholars who are disputing much of the meta-analysis he's claiming.

The trick is, and this is all science, you have to do something then it has to be repeated by a separate team and that goes on for a while.
I was turned off of Radin when he supported mediums as legit and like it says in the Wiki the mediums he mentions ended up admitting they were fraud.
Maybe you don't agree but it sounds a bit sketchy?

It's going to be important for several teams to reproduce any experiment that demonstrates ESP. Teams that are not making a living at selling books about how ESP is real. What do you make of the rational Wiki page?

 

[George-ananda]

What do you make of the rational Wiki page?

What I believe after decades of observation is that Rational Wiki and Skepdic are materialist-atheist and anti-paranormal organizations masquerading under the good name of skepticism.

Show me one favorable seeming article about any figure in the paranormal world in either of those two groups let alone Dean Radin. They are dedicated to promoting the view that the paranormal doesn't exist.

I would only use them to find possible issues to look into further.

 

[joelr]

What I believe after decades of observation is that Rational Wiki and Skepdic are materialist-atheist and anti-paranormal organizations masquerading under the good name of skepticism.

Show me one favorable seeming article about any figure in the paranormal world in either of those two groups let alone Dean Radin. They are dedicated to promoting the view that the paranormal doesn't exist.

I would only use them to find possible issues to look into further.

The regular Wiki is reasonable. They miss things sometimes. But his Wiki page shows a lot of controversy and all that stuff is a piece of the puzzle.
His lecture on youtube is good:

He's doing similar work as William Tiller. He's trying stuff with the double slit and number generators. As of that lecture he does not have anything definitive. But he's trying. If he finds a way to demonstrate something interesting the test will have to be reproduced by many teams. Then there will be something.

Tiller had god results with his 2010 experiments but then 2 teams in Europe could not get the same results.
Even if Skepdic have a massive bias you just use it as a guide. I mean he did endorse mediums who came out as a hoax and there is debate about the meta-data. Dean isn't going to talk about that?
Real results that are repeatable will speak for themselves.

I bought Lynn McTaggart's book, with money. Come to find her data was not nearly as impressive as she reported. One problem is people do write books about supernatural stuff with the main goal of selling to only one group. Either full skeptic or full wu wu. I've read many once good UFO writers go complete nutty - the moon is an alien computer monitoring humans, ufo colonies on the moon, humans are flying around in space with alien tech, alien races - nordics, reptiles, abductions...Dulce base and so on.. I suspect to earn a living you have to go full on or it's not going to sell enough.
Dean is different because he's also doing research but he must be funded and he needs results and all that stuff plays a role as well. But is his institute funded by his books? I don't know.

 

[George-ananda]

The regular Wiki is reasonable. They miss things sometimes. But his Wiki page shows a lot of controversy and all that stuff is a piece of the puzzle.
His lecture on youtube is good:

Unfortunately Wikipedia has received a lot of criticism for their bias since they were overly influenced by an anti-paranormal group actually self-named Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia. It's a shame really.

I've been familiar with this clique of anti-paranormal types for decades now and believe people like Radin at least intend to shoot straight. I've seen other of his videos.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

This is ultimately the reason I consider the term 'supernatural' to be incoherent.

Either there is a repeatable phenomenon that can be measured, in which case it will (eventually) be considered to be natural. Or, there is no repeatable phenomenon, in which case there is no way to even be sure there *is* a phenomenon.

At best, you can say that there are events we don't understand. But that is true in every subject in science already.

Any label implies that we already know something about that which is labeled. The problem I see with using "supernatural" is that it is or can be "catch all" label that includes all that we do not understand regardless of its actual nature. But, for lack of a better term, I had to go with something.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

One thing I have gotten from this thread is that there are issues with the terminology that is available.

Supernatural may not be the best term to use, but it does capture the aspects of religious belief that are being addressed in a fashion. But apparently it is too plastic and captures too much that might not be supernatural, but just unknown.

Could it be thought of as a "gap" term in the sense that it covers the unknown and leaves open a gap for belief to exist in?

 

[joelr]

Unfortunately Wikipedia has received a lot of criticism for their bias since they were overly influenced by an anti-paranormal group actually self-named Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia. It's a shame really.

I've been familiar with this clique of anti-paranormal types for decades now and believe people like Radin at least intend to shoot straight. I've seen other of his videos.

That group isn't anti-paranormal, they are anti bad sources, no sources/citations.
I like some of Radins work but there is evidence that he's being too bias with data. Backing mediums is also sketchy. Like I said the problem is people on average are not interested in research. They want to support beliefs so they buy New Age books to support those ideas. Why is this a problem? Because it would be hard to sell a book that debunks new age concepts, even a modest amount.
So you have to go all in.
But in the long run it isn't about Radin. When an actual experiment confirms ESP then it will be repeated by many teams all over the world for confirmation.
From there it will gain more funding and start a whole thing.

Tiller reported his 2010 experiments to be a confirmation of subtle energies.
But they could not be repeated by several teams in Europe so he's still trying.

But that skeptic group are not going after Radin. Do you realize how many scams artists there are looking to make money in ufo, Big Foot, religion and New Age circles?
There is a big study on Kundalini energy that reported all these incredible results and was re-printed on so many websites. Turned out the Yale doctors mentioned did not exist and the institute didn't either.
A ufo journalist/writer recently broke a new story about the moon being a alien monitoring device. Her source a "credible anonymous source". So yeah some policing is needed. Have you seen the law of attraction movie The Secret?
Do you know the sh#*storm this caused in thousands of peoples lives?