From: phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart)
Subject: Re: Repost of Truzzi Lecture:  How to Handle Scientific "Unorthodoxy"
Keywords: skeptics CSICOP debunkers orthodoxy anomalies
Nntp-Posting-User: @cornell.edu
Organization: CUMC
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:30:51 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.234816.4806@Princeton.EDU>, rdnelson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger D. Nelson) writes:
|> In article <1993Jan4.150229.9424@mail.cornell.edu> phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu (Dave Weingart) writes:
|> [stuff deleted, because only the throwaway in Dave's last line interests me]
|> 
|> >Now, does this mean that everything with a "new" explanation is a major breakthrough?
|> >Obviously not.  In fact, if the past is any guide, it's more often spurious science
|> >or just plain wrong.
|> >
|> >And why doesn't telepathy follow the inverse square law?
|> 
|> What data are available _suggest_ that some anomalous correlations of
|> human intention do not follow the inverse square law, although many
|> feel, even believe deeply, that the evidence for anything like telepathy
|> is weak.  I may be over-interpreting your question, but it represents
|> one or the reasons for skepticism, that is, because the effects in
|> anomalies experiments don't conform to this accepted law of physics, the
|> skeptic may conclude that the effects are spurious.  In the case of data
|> produced in well controlled experiments, such an approach is
|> unwarranted, not least because it assumes the data are defective rather
|> than the (implicit) theory.  A more rational approach requires a search for
|> accomodation, which may ultimately require a new (or more likely a
|> broadened) theoretical model. 

Not necessarily.  Remembering the point in the stuff you deleted (just to reiterate
for those who had the good taste not to read my original followup), science is
conservative _because_ new results should be interpreted of what is known first, and
then only when _that_ fails should should new theories be proposed.  What becomes a
problem is when you can't even have a basis for controlled experimentation (i.e.
psi "experiments" when data are discarded because "the subject was having a bad day"),
you have nothing to theorize about.  Skeptics will assume (and rightly so)
that something that has no relation to what is known is most likely error or outright
fraud.  (Frankly, from having people claim psychic abilities to me, only to have
them refuse to demonstrate them (or fail when they try), I suspect that if psi
power is out there, it's bloody damned rare....maybe 1 in a million at tops -- given
the overwhelming amount of fraud out there, why bother spending research time?)

The best scientist is skeptical about almost everything.

 
|> In any case, at this point, there is nothing much in the way
|> of an explanation for the findings of relevant experimental research.
|> It is worth noting that professional students of anomalies do not, in
|> general, consider the transfer of information documented in the
|> experiments to be energetic in principle, in part because of this
|> apparent mismatch with the well-established inverse square law. 

In other words, "We'll invent something out of thin air because if we try and used
theoretical models that have been tested and verified, we come up with nothing more
than the end of the bell curve."

-- 
73 de David Weingart  KB2CWF    In the event I am captured or killed, the
phydeaux@cumc.cornell.edu       Cornell University Medical College and the
phydeaux@guru.med.cornell.edu   Department of Academic Computing will disavow
phydeaux@src4src.linet.org      any knowledge of my opinions.
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