From: gisle@ifi.uio.no (Gisle Hannemyr)
Subject: Re: Validity of Scn
Organization: gisle@ifi.uio.no
	<1e7tbvINN934@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>
	<1992Nov19.040649.16011@lds-az.loral.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 08:51:28 GMT
Originator: gisle@gyda.ifi.uio.no

In article <1992Nov19.040649.16011@lds-az.loral.com> jerry@lds-az.loral.com (J Barbera) writes:

>> I _believe_ that people have been audited, I beleive that 10,000
>> people have been audited.  Hell, I'd beleive that 1,000,000 people were
>> audited if that's what you said.  What I want to know is this:
>>
>> Why should I beleive that these x number of people are any better
>> for the auditing?  Why should I beleive that these people regularly
>> perform "miracles", such as the ones that Holifield claims.

> There are *a lot* of personal success stories published and made available to
> the public.  These are attests to the workability and positive results of
> Scientology courses and services.  Your local Scn church will have some these
> posted on a bulletin board.  Others have been published in various materials
> such as the new edition of What is Scientology?

>> _Selected_ case studies are not proof!

> What do you need as proof then?  Did you want to browse through someone's
> confidential PC folders?  Or if selection is the only problem, why not
> find some people who have received a lot of auditing and ask them what
> they thought of it all.  Or do some research thing: train as an auditor and
> audit people.

Jonathon, a number of different people as answered this question a number
of times.  I'll make another attempt.

1) I believe a number of personal success stories can be obtained from
   the CoS.  A number to personal horror stories are frequently printed
   in ordinary newspapers -- and we've had personal testimonals from
   ex-scientologists participating in this group that can also be
   classified as horror stories relating to the CoS.  As someone
   said (you`d deleted the attribution) "_Selected_ case studies are
   not proof" -- so both the "success stories" and the "horror stories"
   must be discounted as invalid.

2) I believe audititing "works" -- because I belive that all therapy
   techniques involving a lot of personal attention "works".  The point
   of contention is whether it "works" better than therapy techniques
   based upon different ideas than those of LRH.

3) So what do we (or at least I) want to see as proof:
   I would need to see some experiment carried out according to the
   standard rules of scientific research (i.e. control groups,
   elimination of error sources, investigation of alternative
   explanations, etc.).  It would be OK if the CoS itself did this,
   as long as the report was published in an independent peer
   reviewed journal where we -- through review of the methods used
   in the experiment by scientists with knowledge about scientific
   method -- could have some guarantee that scientific method was
   used.   This review process is usually what is meant by "independent
   verification".

4) The suggestion that I should train as an auditor is ludicrous.
   I can't see any reason to invest time and money in such a project
   until the CoS are capable of producing something resembling a
   scientific paper documenting the benefits of auditing.  There
   are too much bogus science in the world and too little time.
--
Meta-disclaimer: A society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
 
- gisle hannemyr  (Norsk Regnesentral)
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