Is there a place for woo in science?

The operative term is competent evidence. There are objective criteria to separate the wheat from the chaff. Ask yourself if the data in question would be accepted into a court record as competent evidence. Science acts very much like a court of law in this regard.

Science demands objectivity. Objectivity is a protection against bias. Science begins where bias leaves off. Never the twain shall meet. Therein lies the rub.

We call that noise. Science is concerned with tuning in the signal. The quality of a scientific process is analogous to a radio receiver. The quality of a radio receiver is determined by something we called the signal to noise ratio. What you are discussing is addressed under the heading of quality control. When we speak of quality we're talking about the same thing the courts mean when they use the term "competent evidence". exchem stated a universally used objective measure for quality: unless it is repeatable, there is no signal. And as a corollary to that I'm saying that our receiver rejects the rest as noise. Even though we know there are many signals buried below the threshold of noise, we don't bypass our quality control systems and begin picking out the ones we wish to be signals. We just build better receivers and live with the fact that nothing is perfect.

Not to cast stones but your buddies are perfectly free to build better receivers too.

Actually there is something inherently wrong with this discussion that derails itself. I have searched for but I have not been able to find the link to the story which brings home what I wish to say here. So I will have to give this to you anecdotally. It involves an NPR reporter who, as part of her investigation of a story concerning the science of why people believe in the paranormal, agreed to participate in an experiment. This involved exciting her brain with large amplitude magnetic fields. As I recall she was not aware of when they threw the switch but was asked to describe any changes of mood etc. if they should happen to occur. At the point they threw the switch she began describing that she felt "a presence" equivalent to what people sometimes describe as a religious experience. What I'm trying to say here is that this discussion probably needs to take another tack if you wish to separate the signal from the noise. The stimulation of a certain area of the brain apparently is the cause for all of the belief in the paranormal. Now if I could just find the study . . .

 

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Repeatability is certainly attainable in the field of paranormal investigation. If a lady in a red dress is typically seen in a haunted location, and a photo captures precisely that, then a result has been repeated. Beyond confirming typical phenomena at a specific location, there is no way to make the phenomena happen repeatedly at will much as is the case in a lab setting. But that doesn't discount the phenomenon. Lot's of phenomena cannot be repeated in a lab. Take meteorology for instance. Science in these cases is pretty much confined to making observations and inferences based on whatever happens.

 

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Only if your belief is based on contact with the spirits of Dolphin overlords on the watery planet of Iknis.

 

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What's a woo? Someone with absurd beliefes, or someone with none? How about both.

I have a vivid imagination, and believe in the greatest things possible. I tested my faith and have taisted the fruit of it. For example, I believe whenever I know (you know when you know) or find logic or reason, etc the world around me lights up from the inside, more specifically the plants and trees. I see faces in plants, and sidewalks written in little stones drawn as my emotions. Like I'm seeing a reflection of how I am feeling where ever I look.

 

But inferring paranormal activity doesn't seem to be so much about ascribing motives and such. It's just positing the existence of a kind of force or agent. The video of the chair moving in the theater showed this. Nothing else appeared to be moving it. And yet there it is moving, captured at night by a CCTV. The reason this can be evidence for the paranormal is because we have evidence of things moving in haunted locations. And this theater was reputed to be haunted and had strange events going on there. The video thus IS evidence for paranormal activity imo. It's not like we know the name of the entity or why he was moving the chair. Who knows why the ghost moved the chair. Maybe he was sitting in it and got up.

 

1. There is literally an infinite number of plausible naturalistic explanations for things moving, starting with deliberate fraud, and ending with gravity.
2. No, there is no place for pseudoscience in science. A study of the so-called paranormal does have a place in science, but the experiments need to be rigorous, not performed in a sloppy and haphazard manner by biased amateurs.

 

Yes, they might "repeat" randomly at the same location, but anomalies by definition would indeed not conform to a general principle and would accordingly defy predictability. Thus science could not deal with or assert much about genuine anomalies one way or another (at least weather patterns can be computationally simulated).

As an alternative, is there an actual "paranormal philosophy" available that could be submitted to GP? I'm referring to a general framework rather than oodles of news events which as individual cases lack any overarching scheme of thought supposedly connecting and explaining them. A system formulated by individuals with at least one foot in academia rather than having origins in the New Age marketplace or whatever. It's difficult to fathom how a philosophy could deal with them either (due to such lawless character), apart from just elaborating on the conception of anomalies, miracles, etc or means to apprehend / categorize them.

 

I agree Sarkus. And given it is evidence for ghosts, isn't the burden on those claiming it is hoaxed or an artifact to at least show that is hoaxed? There's a TV show that used to be air on Sci Fy called Fact or Faked. Interestingly a lot of their cases involved trying to debunk paranormal/ufo videos. If they could not duplicate the results artificially, then they concluded it was most likely genuine. They then went further and held their own overnight investigations, often getting striking results. This method is not unlike how many paranormal investigators operate. They rule out the mundane possibilities before concluding paranormal agency. Oft times the video IS debunked, like the flash of a passing car or voices from a busy sidewalk outside. But there ARE genuine ones, and we need to at least recognize these as legit in order to maintain our scientific integrity.

 

I have a very low woo threshold. The slightest fact of science for me can contain deep philosophy ramifications. For example, I find dark energy profoundly wooish. That the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, and doing so due to some mysterious force or energy. What does this say about the nature of being, of space/time, and of consciousness itself? Or consciousness. What is it? Where does it come from? What will it evolve into? Lot's of ju ju out there in reality without have to conjure alternate realities.

 

You missed the point.
Seeing a random guy in a car is evidence (of the definitive sort) that there's a car with a guy in it. (Barring hallucinations of course).
Likewise seeing "something" in a photo is evidence (in "my" sense again) that there's something unusual in that photo.
Any further inferences are unjustified until more checking is done.

Two errors here:
1) You yourself stated "Nothing else appeared to be moving it". Yet you then decided that nothing else at all IS moving it.
2) No, what you actually have are unexplained phenomena (in the strictest meaning of those those words: something happening that you can't identify) in locations with an anecdotal reputation of something that has zero actual evidence.

In other words this establishment also has an anecdotal reputation of something that can't be explained (or has been vastly exaggerated) by whoever experienced (or imagined) something.
I mean, it's not like it could ever happen that someone makes an off the cuff remark that gets repeated and exaggerated until it becomes some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy is it? People who go into a building that has a "reputation" wouldn't ever be tempted to ascribe (Wooooo!) ghosts to some half-noticed-but-actually-perfectly-normal occurrence out of either having a good story to tell or falling for/ into a pre-established mind set, would they?

Then you quite clearly don't understand what the word "evidence" means in a scientific context.

Its not like you even know there was an entity. (How do you know "entities" have names?)

Nor do you know that this "entity" moved the chair.

Probably he read some of your "logic".

 

A generalization of all anomaly claims being either hoaxes or having ordinary explanations is a philosophical stance. Each must be debunked individually to avoid that. ["No genuine anomalies have ever occurred anywhere in the universe" or "Genuine anomalies are ubiquitously excluded in all spatial locations at all times" is not testable by mortal humans. It's a component of this or that version of philosophical naturalism, a doctrine.]

 

No, it's not our responsibility to debunk something that hasn't even been shown to exist.

 

Repeating "in a lab" has nothing to do with it. Plenty of science is not conducted in "labs". Consider geology, palaeontology, astronomy (or indeed meteorology) for instance. It is independently repeating the observation that counts, not whether or not it is done "in a lab". If, say, a palaeontologist claims to have found a fossil of a new species in a Cretaceous formation, other palaeontologists can visit the location, examine the fossil and verify or dispute the interpretation. That's repeating the observation and that's science.

If people say they have seen the ghost of a lady in a red dress at a location, but have no evidence of it for others to examine, that is unverifiable anecdote. If several people independently produce a photograph or film of it, that is better - though still not conclusive, as forgery of films and photos is easy and commonplace and the motive for forgery of something so sensational is substantial. Photographic evidence from a known sceptic, with scientific training, would be best of all. To the best of my knowledge, every time this has been attempted with "paranormal" phenomena, the results have been disappointing, to say the least. Given this and the fact that there is, in addition, is no theory behind such phenomena, it is reasonable to be extremely sceptical.

 

A court of law would accept photo evidence and eyewitness testimony would it not? What else would you call competent evidence?

 

There IS a body of commonly accepted knowledge among paranormal researchers about ghosts and what they might be. Here's an overview of what may be called "ghost theory":

http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostsandhauntings/a/Ghosts-What-Are-They.htm

 

Disregarding the fact that science has a completely different standard of evidence from that of law just ask yourself: would a court of accept "photo evidence" of someone walking on water as real?
Would a court of law accept eye witness testimony of that?
Or would the judge say "Bugger off, come back when you can tell me what really happened"?
Claiming "photo evidence" or "eye witness testimony" is "evidence" - even in the legal definition - is completely (and perhaps deliberately) ignoring the accepted standards of credibility for purported "evidence".
"I saw that man shoot the deceased your honour" versus "I watched him pick up the elephant and throw it on to the top floor of the skyscraper, where it killed all fifteen people on landing".

A stunning example of double think here from someone who claims he has "a very low woo threshold" (unless, of course, you mean it in the sense of "it takes very little to tip you over into woo").
I don't know if it's an example of duplicity, ignorance or an extremely selective comprehension.

You think it's up to someone who says it's a hoax to show that it is so.
While ignoring that not only is "hoax" a known, understood and established practice AND phenomenon, those who so claim are doing it in response to YOUR initial claim that it's a "ghost".

Whereas you apparently (given what you've posted so far) feel there is zero burden on you to to show that this is actually so.
"Ghosts", of course, being neither known, established nor understood as actual or genuine.

Your entire evidence thus far has been "Weird stuff, therefore ghost".
It's not, I have to tell you, convincing in the slightest.

 

No. While it is evidence, it is also evidence for a host of other possible explanations: image artefact, photoshopping etc. Given that the latter two do not require anything unevidenced by science, most would consider the latter two to be more rational explanations.
It is thus on the person who is making the claim (that the evidence supports their theory more than it supports others, for example, or that their explanation of the evidence is more rational) to jusitfy that claim satisfactorily.
It's the basic "burden of proof" principle.

There is no scientific evidence of genuine ones... nothing performed with the rigour required of science. It is this rigour that weeds out the "woo", and in many cases is what identifies something as "woo": the lack of rigour in any claimed support.

Those television programs can at best conclude that the subject of investigation has defied their attempts to recreate what they initially consider it to be. But that is not the same as being able to rationally conclude that it is something specific. I.e. at best they can can say it is of "unknown" explanation.

Unfortunately I think your bar for accepting evidence as rationally supporting something is somewhat lower than the majority on this site.
That's not to say you are definitely wrong, only that you seem more easily convinced of an explanation, especially where that explanation appeals to your sense of "oooh... mysterious!".

 

This is nowhere near a theory in the scientific sense. What testable predictions does this "theory" make? None. It is at best a vague metaphysical hypothesis, complete with unscientific use of the term "dimension". It would be nice if it were true but it is just an invented story with no evidence for it and no tests it can be subjected to.

Woo, in fact.

 

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Actually? I think they would. You have to remember that the existence of the paranormal would only be equivalent to a miracle like walking on water to someone who already assumed it was totally impossible. Suppose the judge and jurors otoh were genuinely agnostic regardling the phenomenon. Neither convinced that it can occur nor convinced that it could not occur. Now let them review the evidence and the testimony. What is to prevent them from ruling the phenomena real.

Only if he was already swayed by some naturalist physicalist worldview in which the paranormal could never exist.

Fallacy of credibility. I find it unbelievable that such and such is the case, therefore your claim is false. Imagine otoh a person who could totally lay aside their presuppositions about what CAN occur and consider the evidence on its own merits. Imagine THAT sort of objectivity. Isn't that what science is about: purely empiricle and unbiased analysis of the evidence? NOT begging the question of the existence of the paranormal in dismissing all evidence of such as faked.

I doesn't help your argument to try to define what kind of defective person I am. I DO have a low woo threshold in that anything can basically set it off. I see lights flashing in my dark bedroom at night. Some seem brain generated. Others seem really there. Pending the results of my recent cat scan I remain fascinated by them in any case. Why is my childlike openness to the anomalous, the weird, or the extraordinary to be downplayed or disparaged?

I check the background of every photo I take to be real. I examine it carefully, and compare it with others in the field. If after all that someone says after their 3 seconds of looking at that it must be faked, I simple ask how they know this? Honestly I'd like to know the secret of being able to see a photo and instantly determine it to be faked. Clue me in. You're making a claim, so back it up. How is the photo, which to all appearances looks exactly like a photo of something, NOT a real photo?

Ghosts are an embedded part of our culture and all cultures around the world. Everyone knows what their supposed to look like, their properties, and their tendency to manifest in haunted locations. It's not like the field of paranormal research just started yesterday. Now knowing what we know, and based on the thousands of pics of such entities taken over the years even before there was such a thing as photoshop, it isn't a stretch to take it as a real thing. That afterall IS what a photo is, a light recorded image of a real thing. If there is a claim that the photo is anything other than that--that it is not a photo of anything present--then support that claim with evidence. Is that really so much to ask?

If I should start posting pics of ghosts again I would probably be banned permanently by Emnos for presenting unsubstantiated claims. As if a photo of a ghost, no less that a photo of ball lightning, is an unsubstantiated claim. So I CAN'T show you the evidence, but I assure you it is out there and very abundant. Type in real ghost photos in google image search and do your own research.