The Skeptical Perspective
There are many skeptical organizations, such as The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). The stated objective of CSICOP, from their website is:
"CSICOP encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public."
The members of such organizations are very good at portraying themselves as being rational, objective, and scientific. Anyone presenting evidence of the paranormal is implied to be biased, deluded, mistaken, incapable of conducting responsible experiments, or committing fraud. Just read the articles by the "skeptics and debunkers." Do you see an overall open scientific attitude of inquiry and a desire to understand these phenomena? Or do you see an attitude of sarcasm and condescending attacks against anyone who presents evidence? You can decide for yourself.
In any article discussing psychic perception there is also a high probability that they will mention totally unrelated phenomena such as UFOs, alien abductions, and spoon bending. They apparently see it as a way to reinforce doubt and disbelief in the mind of the reader. Of course, there are people who are deluded and who commit fraud, but the "debunkers" would have us believe that anyone who presents evidence in favor of the paranormal is in this category. They often imply that anyone presenting such evidence is biased, for example by a need or desire to find proof for a certain religious or spiritual belief. But when reading criticisms by skeptics, keep in mind that many of them have their own biased worldview that they are trying to maintain, such as atheism or materialism.
Skeptics argue against non-physical phenomena from the scientific viewpoint, but today the scientific method is used mainly to study the physical universe. We should keep in mind that some of the greatest scientific minds, including Albert Einstein, knew that our scientific study of the universe only scratched the surface "of the existence of something we cannot penetrate." Einstein, in the preface to Upton Sinclair's "Mental Radio," states that the study of phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance "deserves the most earnest consideration." He also says that it is "out of the question" to believe that someone of Sinclair's integrity was deliberately trying to deceive his readers. This type of evidence is always ignored by the skeptics.
After personally witnessing one of the phenomena often denied to exist by the skeptics (remote viewing), I had a brief email correspondence with a well known skeptic. I did not have the session descriptions posted on my website yet, but I did send one or two of the photos and sketches, and clearly described what I witnessed. I was told that our “experiment” suffered from the “multiple targets” problem (as I indicated, we were not following the formal remote viewing protocol), and was advised to read “The Psychology of the Psychic”, by David Marks, Ph.D. The multiple target problem means that since the viewer was describing other items (and did not know what the target was), then the odds of guessing would be increased because I could then “search my house” for matches. In our case the items were constrained to objects on tables, almost all in the same room as “the targets.”
I did get the book. I did not read the whole thing (several chapters were devoted to “debunking” Uri Geller), but I carefully read the introduction, chapters on remote viewing, and chapters describing the roots of coincidence. I found nothing that shed any new light on the topics, or that led me to doubt the phenomena that I had witnessed. I did notice that the sketches Craig Hogan produced were more detailed than those illustrated by the viewers used in the book.
As expected, the chapter on remote viewing begins by setting a tone of sarcasm – “Three…two…one…liftoff!”, describing remote viewer Ingo Swann taking off for Jupiter. The authors discuss the Targ and Puthoff remote viewing experiments and describe how the judging process was flawed. They then describe their own attempt at “replicating” the experiments themselves. They carried out a set of thirty five remote viewing experiments between 1976 and 1978, which they show to be unsuccessful. What I found very interesting was that they chose as viewers a few students and a housewife who “believed that they might have been psychic to some degree.” Clearly, the authors were experimenting with a phenomena that they do not believe exists, but I wonder why they did not even seem to consider that if it did exist, it just might require someone who practices it, or has a natural ability for it. If you were doing experiments to examine exceptional athletic abilities, would you select someone who played softball twice a year and “believed himself to be athletic to some degree” or would you try to get a professional athlete? Chapter 3 begins with a quote from Robert Browning: “As is your sort of mind, so is your sort of search; you’ll find what you desire.” I assume that this was meant to apply to believers in the paranormal. But based on the viewers they selected for their study, it looks to me like this equally applies to the authors. It would be interesting to repeat the experiments using selected members of the Hawaii Remote Viewers' Guild. The Skeptical Investigations site reviews Marks on their Skeptic of the Month page. They seem to have reached the same conclusion that I have.
New York Times best selling author Michael Prescott used to be a skeptic. On one internet forum, he wrote "I used to be a skeptic, myself - a card-carrying, Skeptical Inquirer-reading, James Randi-quoting rationalist. I understand the attraction and the strengths of that position. But I no longer feel that it adequately addresses the facts." It is clear from his essays (see my Recommended page) that he has given these topics much careful thought. He discusses this in his essay "Why I'm Not a Skeptic."
Some good articles on the paranormal, and keeping the skeptical viewpoint in perspective, can be found on the home page of Prof. Brian Josephson, a Nobel Prize winning physicist. A good discussion of the skeptical perspective is also given in the essay "Comments on Reductionism" by Stephen Sakellarios. Craig Hogan also has a great portrayal of the skeptics on The Greater Reality, under "Focus of this Web site."
