Sceptic Wisemen -Plays games-again
Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 5:43 pm
The posts after the show(link at the end) are really interesting as well...Randi is shown up also.. playing tricks..
Lively debate between biologist Rupert Sheldrake and telepathy skeptic Richard
Wiseman reveals wide rift between skeptics and psi proponents
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for a spirited debate between biologist,
author, and telepathy researcher, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, and noted researcher of
anomalous psychology, and parapsychology skeptic, Dr. Richard Wiseman. During
the 90-minute episode Sheldrake and Wiseman discuss the scientific evidence for
telepathy and other psi phenomena.
The debate covers a range of topics, but according to moderator Alex Tsakiris,
the real friction began after the debate ended, "During the debate, Dr. Wiseman
appeared eager to participate in collaborative research with parapsychologists.
He went to great lengths explaining why skeptics and psi proponents should
team-up on experiments of telepathy and other psi phenomena. But during an
email exchange following the debate (published on the Skeptiko website), his
stance took a radical change."
According to Tsakiris, Wiseman stonewalled attempts to create a
skeptics/proponents research forum, "I contacted three very prominent psi
researchers and convinced them to take Wiseman up on his offer. They agree, but
Wiseman would not. He made various demands aimed at agitating the other
researchers, and even balked at a mere one-hour initial dialog. I was stunned,
especially since I offered to fund the research."
The discussion began with Professor Richard Wiseman offering a defense for
scientific skepticism regarding psi phenomena, "In terms of my own research,
some of it has looked at the notion that certain individuals possessing very
strong psychic abilities, the mediums and the psychics and so on, and I'm very,
very skeptical about that data. I don't think it shows anything particularly
remarkable in terms of psychic ability going on. And then I've done a small
amount of work, although other people have done a lot more, into the notion that
psi is a more subtle signal. There, I'm fairly skeptical about the literature. I
certainly wouldn't want to argue the case that psi definitely exists on the
basis of that literature."
But Sheldrake challenged the idea of relegating telepathy and other psi
phenomena to the fringes of science, "I just want to go back a bit to what
Richard called the Humian argument against miracles. Hume's argument against
miracles was that miracles are extremely rare and it's more likely that people
have been lying about them than that they actually happened. They so defy the
common experience of humanity. Now, I think the argument is exactly reversed
when it comes to phenomena like telepathy. They're not extremely rare. Whether
it's 30 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent of the population who have had them, the
details don't matter. The point is these things are very common. Hume's
argument was that commonsense, the kind of common experience of the bulk of
humanity, is what gives credence to something. So I think it's completely
inappropriate to apply an argument against miracles to phenomena which happen on
an everyday basis to large numbers of people."
Next, the discussion examined the institution of science itself. Wiseman was
asked to defend his statement, "I agree that by the standards of any other area
of science that [psi] is proven. That begs the question do we need higher
standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?".
In defense of this, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" argument,
Wiseman stated, "I think that parapsychologists by not far from 100 years of
research have failed to come up with that level of evidence. It's not to say
they couldn't in the future, but to me there just hasn't been the level of
progress that you would expect given the amount of work that's been put in… that
strength of evidence simply isn't there."
To which Sheldrake responded, "Again, I come back to the fact that what we're
dealing with here is an ideological issue. I mean, what Richard calls mainstream
science and there's a kind of materialistic faith that many scientists have, at
least in public. Many of them in private have telepathic experiences and have
quite different views.
Nevertheless, he's right. There is a kind of materialistic ethos in science. I
think that itself is something we need to question and look at because it leads
to an extraordinary blindness. He said that if you said there's a car outside,
you wouldn't need to look. If you said there's a spaceship, you would, because
that's an incredible claim. So it's okay for cosmologists to claim there are
entire universes out there, a whole lot of universes, not just one, but
trillions. No one bothers to look. The reason that gets past the filters is it
doesn't overturn a particular ideology. What's at stake is not science itself
but ideology."
http://www.skeptiko.com/rupert-sheldrak ... man-clash/
Lively debate between biologist Rupert Sheldrake and telepathy skeptic Richard
Wiseman reveals wide rift between skeptics and psi proponents
Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for a spirited debate between biologist,
author, and telepathy researcher, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, and noted researcher of
anomalous psychology, and parapsychology skeptic, Dr. Richard Wiseman. During
the 90-minute episode Sheldrake and Wiseman discuss the scientific evidence for
telepathy and other psi phenomena.
The debate covers a range of topics, but according to moderator Alex Tsakiris,
the real friction began after the debate ended, "During the debate, Dr. Wiseman
appeared eager to participate in collaborative research with parapsychologists.
He went to great lengths explaining why skeptics and psi proponents should
team-up on experiments of telepathy and other psi phenomena. But during an
email exchange following the debate (published on the Skeptiko website), his
stance took a radical change."
According to Tsakiris, Wiseman stonewalled attempts to create a
skeptics/proponents research forum, "I contacted three very prominent psi
researchers and convinced them to take Wiseman up on his offer. They agree, but
Wiseman would not. He made various demands aimed at agitating the other
researchers, and even balked at a mere one-hour initial dialog. I was stunned,
especially since I offered to fund the research."
The discussion began with Professor Richard Wiseman offering a defense for
scientific skepticism regarding psi phenomena, "In terms of my own research,
some of it has looked at the notion that certain individuals possessing very
strong psychic abilities, the mediums and the psychics and so on, and I'm very,
very skeptical about that data. I don't think it shows anything particularly
remarkable in terms of psychic ability going on. And then I've done a small
amount of work, although other people have done a lot more, into the notion that
psi is a more subtle signal. There, I'm fairly skeptical about the literature. I
certainly wouldn't want to argue the case that psi definitely exists on the
basis of that literature."
But Sheldrake challenged the idea of relegating telepathy and other psi
phenomena to the fringes of science, "I just want to go back a bit to what
Richard called the Humian argument against miracles. Hume's argument against
miracles was that miracles are extremely rare and it's more likely that people
have been lying about them than that they actually happened. They so defy the
common experience of humanity. Now, I think the argument is exactly reversed
when it comes to phenomena like telepathy. They're not extremely rare. Whether
it's 30 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent of the population who have had them, the
details don't matter. The point is these things are very common. Hume's
argument was that commonsense, the kind of common experience of the bulk of
humanity, is what gives credence to something. So I think it's completely
inappropriate to apply an argument against miracles to phenomena which happen on
an everyday basis to large numbers of people."
Next, the discussion examined the institution of science itself. Wiseman was
asked to defend his statement, "I agree that by the standards of any other area
of science that [psi] is proven. That begs the question do we need higher
standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?".
In defense of this, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" argument,
Wiseman stated, "I think that parapsychologists by not far from 100 years of
research have failed to come up with that level of evidence. It's not to say
they couldn't in the future, but to me there just hasn't been the level of
progress that you would expect given the amount of work that's been put in… that
strength of evidence simply isn't there."
To which Sheldrake responded, "Again, I come back to the fact that what we're
dealing with here is an ideological issue. I mean, what Richard calls mainstream
science and there's a kind of materialistic faith that many scientists have, at
least in public. Many of them in private have telepathic experiences and have
quite different views.
Nevertheless, he's right. There is a kind of materialistic ethos in science. I
think that itself is something we need to question and look at because it leads
to an extraordinary blindness. He said that if you said there's a car outside,
you wouldn't need to look. If you said there's a spaceship, you would, because
that's an incredible claim. So it's okay for cosmologists to claim there are
entire universes out there, a whole lot of universes, not just one, but
trillions. No one bothers to look. The reason that gets past the filters is it
doesn't overturn a particular ideology. What's at stake is not science itself
but ideology."
http://www.skeptiko.com/rupert-sheldrak ... man-clash/
