{"id":1806,"date":"2013-02-25T12:53:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T12:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2013-02-24T20:32:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T20:32:19","slug":"proving-parapsychology-or-not-as-the-case-may-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2013\/02\/25\/proving-parapsychology-or-not-as-the-case-may-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Proving parapsychology. Or not, as the case may be."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had several arguments online about parapsychology research, from Rupert Sheldrake<\/a> to Dean Radin<\/a>. The people who defend parapsychology as well-evidenced and real are very adamant of the validity of the research to the point of being highly emotionally charged, often. I have even seen theists argue supernaturalism from this body of research.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this article from Skeptico<\/a> is a really nice analogy of parapsychological research.<\/p>\n

\n

That was the question I was asked: how would you prove to a blind man, that photography exists?<\/p>\n

I knew what he was getting at. We had been discussing psychics. He was a firm believer in psychic powers, had had psychic experiences, and regularly visited a psychic. His point was, since I had not experienced psychic powers, I would never be able to believe in what he \u201cknew\u201d to be true. You could never prove to a blind man that photography exists, and likewise no one would ever be able to demonstrate to me that psychic powers were real.<\/p>\n

It took me about ten seconds to think of a way to show he was wrong. This is what I said. Give the blind man a camera, a tripod and a remote shutter release. (Ideally the camera is a Polaroid, or a digital with an instant picture facility.) Everyone leaves the room but the blind man. He takes a picture of himself, and holds up a number of fingers (1 to 5) at random. The sighted person comes back into the room, looks at the picture and says \u201cyou were holding up X fingers\u201d. If he gets the right number, and continues to do so every time this experiment is performed, the blind man will eventually conclude that photography is real. Technically, he will conclude the hypothesis that \u201ca camera can record a visual image\u201d, might be true.<\/p>\n

He will want to repeat the experiment with different rooms and different sighted people. He will want to tighten his controls to make sure no one can see through the window or the keyhole. He will want other blind friends of his to do the same experiment successfully. But essentially, he will be convinced by this method.<\/p>\n

The believer went quiet. (It must be annoying when your analogy is turned against you.) But I decided to push it further. I wanted to askhim<\/em>\u00a0some questions.<\/p>\n

My first question was, if you did this 1,000 times, and the sighted person got the correct number of fingers (say) 225 times out of 1,000 (where pure chance would be 200 times), would the blind man believe that this\u00a0\u201canomaly\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was proof of photography? Wouldn\u2019t he expect nearly 1,000 correct out of 1,000? What if when the\u00a0controls were tightened, the result was reduced<\/a>\u00a0to close to 200 correct \u2013 pure chance? What if the sighted person was\u00a0found to have cheated<\/a>?<\/p>\n

What if the blind man had to do a drawing and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person had to write down what he thought the drawing was of, and then\u00a0a judge got to grade the description<\/a>\u00a0based on the photograph of the drawing? Say the blind man drew a circle and the sighted person thought it was a tree, and the judge rated that 7 out of 10 because a tree is roughly circular? Would the blind man be convinced?<\/p>\n

What if the blind man had to\u00a0select one drawing from four \u201ctargets\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and hold it up in front of the camera, instead of his fingers? The sighted person is shown the four targets and asked to rate the degree to which each matches the one in the photograph. If the sighted person assigns the highest rating to the correct target, it is scored as a “hit.”\u00a0 If the sighted person gets a hit, say 35% of the time (when chance would predict 25%), would the blind man be convinced?\u00a0 What if the person running the experiment was in the room when the photo was taken,\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0prompted the sighted person during the judging process<\/a>\u00a0– would the blind man be convinced then? What if\u00a0numerous other experimental errors were noted<\/a>?<\/p>\n

What if a scientific body spent\u00a025 years researching<\/a>\u00a0whether sighted people could guess how many fingers blind people were holding up in front of a camera, but concluded that there is ultimately very little, if any data that support the hypothesis that they can?<\/p>\n

What if a conjuror offered\u00a0one million dollars<\/a>\u00a0for any sighted person who could successfully perform the five finger test, but no one was able to do it?<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t the blind man say to all this,\u00a0\u201cwhy can\u2019t you just tell me how many fingers I\u2019m holding up?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The guy didn\u2019t want to answer. He conceded his analogy was about me not having had a psychic experience. But apparently the analogy didn\u2019t apply if I turned it around to his beliefs.<\/p>\n

And they say skeptics are closed minded.<\/p>\n

Post Script<\/strong><\/p>\n

See my post\u00a0Pretty Soon<\/a>\u00a0for a lighthearted look at the history of parapsychology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have had several arguments online about parapsychology research, from Rupert Sheldrake to Dean Radin. The people who defend parapsychology as well-evidenced and real are very adamant of the validity of the research to the point of being highly emotionally charged, often. I have even seen theists argue supernaturalism from this body of research. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[468,466,467,465],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-skepticism","tag-dean-radin","tag-parapsychology","tag-rupert-sheldrake","tag-skeptico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}