Claims Commensurate with Evidence
In science, claims made are verifiable in principle and then, when it comes to experiments, in fact. In pseudoscience, there are extraordinary claims made for which incredibly insufficient evidence is provided. What?s important to understand here is that scientists are supposed to avoid making dramatic claims when only meager evidence is available.
Carl Sagan coined the phrase the ?extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.? What this means in practice is that when a claim is not very strange or extraordinary when compared to what we reliably know about the world, then not a lot of evidence is needed in order to accept it as likely to be accurate.
We don?t need much proof when someone tells us that the drove to work the previous day or that it was raining last week.
On the other hand, when a claim contradicts things which we already know about the world, then we need a lot of evidence in order to accept it. Why? Because if this claim is accurate, then a lot of other claims which we take for granted cannot be accurate. If those claims are well-supported by experiment and observation, then the new and contradictory claim qualifies as ?extraordinary,? and should only be accepted when the evidence for it outweighs the evidence we currently possess against it.
Parapsychology definitely makes some very extraordinary claims. If any of these claims were even a little bit true, then our understanding of the very foundations of nature would have to change. Everything we know so far about physics, chemistry, and biology dictate that the power to move objects just with one?s mind or communicate over vast distances with only one?s mind are impossible.
If parapsychology is correct, then much of the physical sciences today is incorrect.
Parapsychology is not, however, a field which has produced reliable evidence in favor of these claims ? quite the contrary, in fact. It is true that there are experiments which have produced interesting results, but taken in the context of the large numbers of experiments which have produced nothing, this isn?t remarkable. In addition, those few interesting results are not very reliable. As Susan Blackmore describes her own experiments in ESP:
Parapsychology is a perfect example of a field characterized by extraordinary claims. If things like telepathy and telekinesis are true, then quite a few of the basic principles of physics, biology and chemistry which we already take for granted cannot be accurate. This would be extraordinary. Therefore, a lot of very high-quality evidence is required before the claims of parapsychology could possibly be accepted. The lack of such evidence, even after 130 years of research, indicates that the field is not a science but rather a pseudoscience.
Carl Sagan coined the phrase the ?extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.? What this means in practice is that when a claim is not very strange or extraordinary when compared to what we reliably know about the world, then not a lot of evidence is needed in order to accept it as likely to be accurate.
We don?t need much proof when someone tells us that the drove to work the previous day or that it was raining last week.
On the other hand, when a claim contradicts things which we already know about the world, then we need a lot of evidence in order to accept it. Why? Because if this claim is accurate, then a lot of other claims which we take for granted cannot be accurate. If those claims are well-supported by experiment and observation, then the new and contradictory claim qualifies as ?extraordinary,? and should only be accepted when the evidence for it outweighs the evidence we currently possess against it.
Parapsychology definitely makes some very extraordinary claims. If any of these claims were even a little bit true, then our understanding of the very foundations of nature would have to change. Everything we know so far about physics, chemistry, and biology dictate that the power to move objects just with one?s mind or communicate over vast distances with only one?s mind are impossible.
If parapsychology is correct, then much of the physical sciences today is incorrect.
Parapsychology is not, however, a field which has produced reliable evidence in favor of these claims ? quite the contrary, in fact. It is true that there are experiments which have produced interesting results, but taken in the context of the large numbers of experiments which have produced nothing, this isn?t remarkable. In addition, those few interesting results are not very reliable. As Susan Blackmore describes her own experiments in ESP:
- ?In ?normal? psychology, when some measure is taken, like scores on a test, it is usual to check for reliability. For example, you can split the data in half and check that the two halves are correlated, or you can test the same people again some time later and correlate the scores. If there is a close correlation, then the score is reliable. It is a general rule of thumb that the validity of any measure cannot be higher than its reliability. In other words, if your measure is unreliable, you cannot be said to measure anything.?
- ?...ESP scores are notoriously unreliable. Indeed, my own ESP-memory experiments gave correlations close to zero. So if ESP scores were not reliable, could they be valid? Were they measuring anything??
Parapsychology is a perfect example of a field characterized by extraordinary claims. If things like telepathy and telekinesis are true, then quite a few of the basic principles of physics, biology and chemistry which we already take for granted cannot be accurate. This would be extraordinary. Therefore, a lot of very high-quality evidence is required before the claims of parapsychology could possibly be accepted. The lack of such evidence, even after 130 years of research, indicates that the field is not a science but rather a pseudoscience.