Is there a place for woo in science?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Magical Realist, Aug 17, 2014.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't follow your reasoning that a photo is evidence of something it is not. That's like saying a signature is evidence of forgery, or a photo of someone is evidence of a disguised imposter. You're going to have to have more reason than just there being a photo of something for it to be evidence of fakery. A too well defined border on the image. An inconsistency in the shadows or lighting angles. The fact that the photographer works in a special effects CGI shop. Things like this that will push the prospect of fakery past the realm of mere speculated possibility into the realm of probable reality.

    Yes there is--photos examined by experts in the field of photography and videography who have confirmed that the photos are real. But alas, I am prohibited from presenting these without risking my permanent ban. You'll have to look them up yourself.
     
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  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "It is fashionable in certain circles to dismiss hauntings such as the Cardiff Poltergeist Case as either pranks or delusions. But new scientific research to be published in the respected Journal of the Society for Psychical Research suggests that at least some hauntings may be genuine.



    These startling conclusions have been drawn by Dr Barrie Colvin, a scientist who has spent the past five years analysing the knocks, raps and bangs produced by poltergeists. Dr Colvin used some of the most advanced acoustic technology available to ‘fingerprint’ the ghostly sounds. He has discovered that they are fundamentally different to the normal sounds produced by people, animals, or indeed anything in our physical world. They are, for the want of a better term, ‘ghostly’.



    “The sounds produced by ‘ghosts’ during hauntings are paranormal,” says Dr Colvin. “Their acoustic waveforms are completely different. I can’t find a conventional explanation for my results at all. Nor can any of the other scientists who’ve reviewed my work. To be honest, we’re all completely stumped. We did not expect to find these results.”


    “I do not believe in life after death. I believe that most things labeled as ‘paranormal’ are simply delusions, hoaxes or the result of drunkenness or drug-taking. Having said that, my results show that at least one part of the paranormal, which relates to the noises produced by ghosts and poltergeists, appears to be true. They are most definitely not human or natural.”



    When Dr Colvin’s results are published later this month, they are expected to re-ignite the debate over the origins of ghosts and poltergeists. Some researchers claim that ghosts are either spirits of the dead or result from the violent release of pent-up psychic energy, usually by adolescent girls.



    Many more researchers, of course, say that ghosts and poltergeists do not exist. They are either hoaxes perpetrated by attention seekers or simply spooky stories that become exaggerated with every re-telling.



    Professor Chris French, a parapsychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and editor of The Skeptic magazine, says he has yet to hear of a single convincing haunting.



    “Just because we cannot explain these phenomena does not mean that ghosts are the souls of the dead or even that something paranormal is occurring,” says Professor French.



    “It’s very difficult to investigate hauntings in a scientific manner. They often rely on eyewitness testimony, which can be unreliable. They also tend to be investigated by people with an agenda. They want to see ghosts in action - or at least something paranormal - so that’s what they tend to see. When you add all these factors together, you have to be sceptical. I certainly wouldn’t bet my house on the existence of ghosts or poltergeists. But then again, I might be wrong.”



    Professor French points to famous hoaxes such as the Amityville Horror to dispute not only the Cardiff case, but hauntings in general. So does this mean that poltergeists are pure hokum? It seems unlikely.



    To my mind, Professor French’s arguments are entirely reasonable and logical but there are simply too many recorded poltergeist cases for all of them to be dismissed out of hand. A great many have been investigated by diligent researchers and the results suggest that ghosts may indeed be a real phenomena.



    A good example is the Enfield Poltergeist, a haunting every bit as perplexing as the Cardiff case investigated by Professor Fontana in the mid-1990s. The Enfield Poltergeist turned the lives of Peggy Hodgson and her four children upside down. It first manifested as a mysterious invisible force that began by hurling toys, plates and cutlery around their home. Books and pictures would inexplicably fly across the room. Objects miraculously appeared and disappeared before the eyes of terrified onlookers. Strange knocking sounds were heard inside walls. And on several occasions, Peggy’s 12-year-old daughter Janet appeared to be ‘possessed’ by the poltergeist.



    The strange events were exhaustively investigated by the respected paranormal researchers Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse and was documented in the book This House is Haunted. And perhaps uniquely, the extraordinary events were witnessed by police officers and a BBC journalist.



    On one occasion, a sitting room chair was seen to levitate off the carpet and move slowly across the room.



    "It came off the floor nearly half an inch,” said WPC Carolyn Heeps, one of the Metropolitan Police officers sent to investigate the haunting. “I saw it slide off to the right about four feet before it came to rest.”



    Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse spent 14 months investigating the case before coming to the conclusion that a genuine poltergeist was haunting the family home. They themselves witnessed a range of inexplicable phenomena such as boxes flying across rooms, ornaments floating in mid-air, and books mysteriously appearing and disappearing. All told, hundreds of different phenomena were witnessed by over 30 people.

    Of course, if there were only a handful of cases like the Enfield and Cardiff hauntings, sceptics could dismiss them as aberrations. But ghosts may be more common than previously thought.

    Two years ago, Alan Murdie, at the behest of the Society of Psychical Research, began an exhaustive census of hauntings reported across the UK. He discovered that around 260 new hauntings are reported in Britain each year. This is in addition to the thousands of ghosts witnessed in traditionally haunted locations such as castles and dungeons. Around half of these newly reported ghosts involved violent and persistent poltergeists. In 43 percent of cases, a ghostly apparition was seen by observers.

    It is no doubt possible to dismiss many of these cases as mere bunkum. But what of those witnessed by staunchly level-headed observers? Anwar Rashid’s experience at Clifton Hall, Nottinghamshire, is a case in point. Mr. Rashid, a millionaire businessman, bought the 52 room hall in 2006 as a family home. But they had barely moved in when they began to hear mysterious voices whispering inside the walls of their ancient house.

    “There was a knock on the wall,” he said. “We heard a voice asking, ‘Hello, is anyone there?’ We were like the family in Nicole Kidman’s film The Others.”

    “Two minutes later we heard the man's voice again. I got up to have a look but the doors were locked and the windows were closed.'



    During the eight months that the family lived at Clifton Hall, Mr. Rashid said they were haunted by mysterious figures and found unexplained blood stains on bedclothes.



    “I fell for its beauty,” said Mr. Rashid. “But behind the facade it is haunted. The ghosts didn't want us to be there and we could not fight them because we couldn't see them."



    It eventually came to light that tunnels in the grounds had been used by Satanists and, according to legend, a woman dressed in white committed suicide by jumping from an upstairs window. At that point, Mr. Rashid decided to flee the property with his family and hand they keys back to the bank.



    Nor were Mr. Rashid’s experiences at Clifton Hall unique. Darren Brookes, whose firm Sovereign Security guarded the hall for five years, said some of his staff “refused point-blank” to work there. They reported sightings such as a monk walking through the grounds and a ghostly woman stalking through the graveyard. On other occasions, security guards saw chairs moving as if they were being rocked by an invisible hand.



    “I've often put officers who know absolutely nothing about the house in there - and after a night on duty they have quit,” said Mr. Brookes.



    For me, these cases are not just anecdotes, they bear a striking resemblance to a poltergeist that haunted my mother when she was a teenager working at Belvoir Castle in Rutland. Soon after starting work at the castle, a poltergeist – who spoke only French – attached itself to her. On one occasion she was walking down one of the long corridors when all of the ornaments on a cabinet mysteriously levitated into the air and smashed themselves on the opposite wall. From then on, the poltergeist made her life a terrifying ordeal.



    Crockery would unexpectedly fly from shelves and footsteps would follow her along corridors. And on occasion, ghostly voice could be heard cursing in French from an empty room. She left the castle the following morning.



    Not all ghosts are evil and malevolent, as the Cardiff case shows. Many appear to be confused souls condemned to walk the earth as a form of purgatory. Others want to help the living. Hospitals up and down the land are testaments to this. Many have stories of resident ghosts, usually of doctors or nurses who periodically return to help the sick and dying.



    A good example is the ghost that patrolled the corridors of the now defunct Mothers Hospital in Hackney, east London. Here, drowsy nurses complained of feeling a startling tap on the shoulder. According to legend, a nurse who was bottle-feeding a newborn baby dozed off and slumped forward in her sleep, smothering the baby. In a fit of remorse, she killed herself and was condemned to walk the wards, tapping young nurses on the shoulder to keep them awake.



    These cases, and the thousands like them, are leading some researchers to conclude that ghosts really are the souls of the dead. To test this theory, Dr Colvin will soon start recording and fingerprinting the sounds ostensibly made by spirits during séances using state-of-the-art equipment.



    If these sounds also prove to be unearthly, then it will provide even stronger evidence that ghosts and spirits really do exist. And if these ‘spirits’ should then prove capable of answering questions and acting with intelligence, then his work may finally prove that they really are the souls of the dead.



    “I genuinely do not know what we’ll discover,” says Dr Colvin. “We’re in uncharted waters. That’s the beauty of science.”

    http://www.newsmonster.co.uk/paranormal ... exist.html

    Read more: http://www.disclose.tv/forum/have-scientists-found-proof-that-ghosts-exist-t39092.html#ixzz3An2B0ZrO
     
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  5. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Well I'm convinced.

    So you think that being genuinely agnostic they'd just accept the eye witness reports?
    You're not the opinion that, for example, they'd say "can you provide some solid, verifiable evidence that this happened?"

    Ah, right. Obviously.
    Not accepting an unsupported claim is evidence of existing bias.

    Wrong again.
    I find it unbelievable therefore I want corroborative evidence.

    Right. So what happens in such cases is that EVERYTHING is accepted at face value. Regardless of priors.

    You appear to have missed the part about "accumulation of evidence".

    You apparently don't know the difference between speculating/ asking and "defining".
    And, for the record, when you claimed a "low woo threshold" I didn't actually realise you meant the way I categorised it parenthetically: I thought you were actually trying to claim the opposite of that.

    Easily explained: because you persist in presenting it in a child-like way while claiming (spuriously) that you're doing so scientifically.

    Yes, I think you've missed again.
    1) I haven't done so.
    2) Whatever you have is NOT evidence of ghosts - it's evidence of some sort of anomaly: one which has yet to be categorically explained.

    So are gods, unicorns, dragons etc...

    It's a record of something.
    Further speculation when you only have a photograph is just that: speculation.

    I am not interested - at all - in seeing photos. Especially second-hand scanned ones.
    What I'm after is what makes you so sure that they MUST be ghosts and can't simply go with "Oh shit, that's weird I wonder what it actually is?".
    Claiming "Ghost" is an unjustified leap in each and every case until further evidence is available.
     
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  7. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Because based on eyewitness accounts and other photos I've examined, I KNOW it meets the criteria of being a ghost, particularly when it is seen in a haunted location, a cemetery, an old battlefield, and so on.

    ghost


    /gōst/


    noun

    noun: ghost; plural noun: ghosts

    1.an apparition of a dead person that is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.
    "the building is haunted by the ghost of a monk"


    synonyms: specter, phantom, wraith, spirit, presence; apparition; informalspook
    "his ghost haunts the crypt"
     
  8. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Just so everyone knows, he made this up.
     
  9. Balerion Banned Banned

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    Lol! Welllll....mostly, yes, but there was a bit ofa kefufle over a particular mod banning him for being a crank, even though it was relegated to the crank section. I don't suppose that would happen again, but I can understand why he's a little paranoid.
     
  10. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Thats because you misunderstand what evidence is: Evidence is anything we present to support a position. What we may think supports a position might also be used by someone else to support another position.
    As explained, if X could be caused by A or B then one person may use X as evidence for A, and another might use it as evidence of B.
    On its own, therefore, X is not very strong evidence.
    If X could only have happened because of A then X is strong evidence of A.

    You seem to be confusing evidence with proof, or with something that can only possibly support one version of events. This simply is not what evidence is, although the strongest evidence certainly is because of that.
    A photo is not strong evidence, and can be used to support numerous version of events, many of which might be more rational to accept than "ghosts".
    You present it as evidence of a ghost, others might present it as evidence of a smudge on the lens, or of a double exposure, or overexposure etc. Or perhaps of it being photoshopped.
    Again, that they are using it as evidence for their claim is not to suggest that their evidence is any more or less strong than it is in support of your claim.
    But this is the nature of evidence.

    If you want the evidence to be considered as proof of what it appears to be, you will have to explain how more rational explanations do not fit the same evidence.
    But you seem too willing to take evidence as proof of what it might appear to be at face value.
    Indeed, but one does not need to push the prospect into "probable reality" in order for it to be evidence of one and not the other. It might remain evidence for both, and it is just a matter of strength of evidence.
    But evidence, except in the strongest cases, is not proof.
    And any extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence... and a photo, given that it is second-hand at best, whether doctored or not, is not what most would consider extraordinary evidence. Just evidence that might support any number of claims.
    They have confirmed that the photo may be undoctored, but if they are experts in the field of photography and videography does that mean that they would necessarily be able to tell whether the photo is of a nebula cluster or a spiral galaxy or a dust-cloud without being proficient in the subject matter of that photo? They can say whether the photo is genuine, not necessarily what the photo is of, or what gave rise to the image on the photo.

    Also I did say "scientific evidence", which would require evidence captured under scientific rigour.
    I am not aware of any such evidence for ghosts.
    A photo, no matter how "genuine" the photo might be (irrespective of subject matter) is not scientific evidence unless taken under scientific rigour.

    As for not being able to post such things... of course you can... Just don't present them as fact without satisfactory evidence in support of your claim. Perhaps post the image and ask what rational explanations might give rise to the image seen. And then try to show how each seemingly rational claim is insufficient.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    From Wikipaedia, on the subject of the Society for Psychical Research:

    " The psychologist David Marks has written that paranormal researchers such as those in the SPR have failed to produce a single repeatable demonstration of the paranormal in over 100 years and described psychical research as a pseudoscience an "incoherent collection of belief systems steeped in fantasy, illusion and error."[123] In 2003, James Alcock highlighted various problems with psychical research including failure to produce a single paranormal phenomenon that can be independently replicated by neutral researchers and lack of progress in over a century of formal research.[124]

    Psychological study[edit]
    A psychological study involving 174 members of the Society for Psychical Research completed a delusional ideation questionnaire and a deductive reasoning task. As predicted, the study showed that "individuals who reported a strong belief in the paranormal made more errors and displayed more delusional ideation than skeptical individuals". There was also a reasoning bias which was limited to people who reported a belief in, rather than experience of, paranormal phenomena. The results suggested that reasoning abnormalities may have a causal role in the formation of paranormal belief.[125]"

    Dr Barrie Colvin appears to be a polyurethane technologist who has made a hobby of psychical research. I can only find one reference to his work, outside the pages of the paranormal websites and that is one piece in The Scotsman. According to this all he has found is that sound recordings he sent for analysis seem to have something in common which is different from one or two easy ways to make a noise.
     
  12. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    He was neither banned for being a crank nor for posting ghost images. He's just making stuff up so he can get off easy here.
     
  13. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, the lunatic fringe does in fact respect the SPR, but that ain't really that impressive.
     
  14. Balerion Banned Banned

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    Not for posting ghost images, but he was, in fact, banned for being a crank. You can't deny that, it's available for anyone who is interested to go back and see for themselves.
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Back to woo
    I wooed the young woman who was wooing me, and we had great fun.-----Ah, but i was so much younger then.

    Oh:
    Woo in science
    It seems that much of what was taught in the sciences of anthropology 35-50 years ago was indeed woo.(see Vere Gordon Childe on monumental architecture and the neolithic revolution)
     
  16. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    …not to mention a fair bit of Freudian Psychology………...
     
  17. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    I'm gobsmacked!
    Are you saying that known persistent crank would deliberately invent "information" just so he could play the Victim Card?
    Unbelievable...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  18. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    That remark looks kind of trollish to me.

    Saying that somebody 'made this up' is tantamount to calling that person a liar.

    MR may or may not have correctly understood what he was told by whatever moderator communicated with him, but I think what he wrote is probably what he believes the message was.
     
  19. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The woo within science is connected to stepping outside the box. The walls of the box, is person dependent and is connected to the limitations of one's knowledge. The box of the child is smaller, so he does not have to go very far until awe might kick in; wonders of the unknown. The scientist will have a larger box that encompasses the smaller box of the child, and therefore may not woo at the obvious, since he is not outside own box; no big deal.

    The problem is, being outside the box is often different for the child and the adult. Outside the box not only contains woo, but it also contain fear of scary things, which for many, requires nobody go outside, since outside is scary. There may be an effort to limit anyone from leaving the box but this can limit awe. If one is not afraid to go outside and feel the awe outside their box, but there is also a social fear attached with looking outside, this can create mixed feelings. The fear can take away the bright eyes of the child, or the child will need to become rebellious, to fight the fear, to regain his sense of awe.

    When I was younger, I found my awe in science. I look into the unknown, outside the box of my knowledge and wanted to learn more. This was done by coordinating with teachers and professors, whose knowledge gives them larger boxes beyond my own. I got them to lead me to their walls and then I just kept going outside, to where the boogie man of fear is supposed to be. The hard part is there is no longer person with a larger box to encompass you, to help lead you, so you need to become self reliant in new ways.
     
  20. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    No it isn't.
    The "woo in science" is stepping outside of science.

    Nonsense.
    Science doesn't depend on the knowledge of one person - either generally or in the case of that one person.
     
  21. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    That moderator was me. I don't think I need to say more.
     
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    My own opinion is essentially the same as Dr. French's.

    I think that hauntings are obviously an interesting phenomenon.

    But my inclination is to see them more as a psychological phenomenon, as a fascinating intersection of popular folklore, individual and group psychology, than as objective evidence of disembodied spirits, life-after-death or something. (I think of UFO folklore in pretty much the same way.)

    I haven't read the entire thread so maybe somebody has already commented on this, but it's striking to me how the abundant but always slippery and elusive evidence for ghosts and hauntings (or extraterrestrial spaceships) resembles the similarly elusive evidence for religious miracles.

    My belief is that it's probably very similar psychological processes at work in all three kinds of cases: parapsychological, ufology and religious miracles.

    Having said that, the possibility exists (however small we think it is) that there really are objective ('Fortean') anomalies in what is believed to be the natural-order happening in some of these cases and that perhaps witnesses are variously interpreting their nature and significance in light of their own pre-existing beliefs and desires.
     
  23. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think that a field cannot be reduced to hard science mitigates the integrity of that field. There are many fields of exploration which aren't exactly hard science. Fishing, hunting, forecasting the weather, diagnosing illness, being successful in business, winning a gold medal in the Olympics, etc. Take this quote for example and modify it thusly for the field of crime detection:

    "It’s very difficult to investigate crimes in a scientific manner. They often rely on eyewitness testimony, which can be unreliable. They also tend to be investigated by people with an agenda. They want to see criminals in action - or at least something criminal - so that’s what they tend to see. When you add all these factors together, you have to be sceptical. I certainly wouldn’t bet my house on the existence of criminals. But then again, I might be wrong."

    There is certainly a natural aspect to ghostly happenings that appears to have to do with the various elements like nearby water and limestone. So little is known in this field that only speculations can be made, but it seems paranormal activity is influence by the electrical conductivity of the land itself if not the weather. There most certainly IS a psychological element in ghost hunting, but no more than that of hunter seeing every bush and tree limb as a potential elk. This hyperawareness regrettably may lead to some errors, but it is necessary to increase sensitivity to even the slightest anomalies in vision, sound, touch, temperature, and emotional impressions. I always cringe when I hear a ghost hunter say they "felt a presence". But what do I know? Maybe humans have a sixth sense about such things. It certainly wouldn't be any more implausible than the existence of ghosts.
     

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