Pathological scepticism
Column: Forensic Palmistry
Posted on Thursday, 23 February, 2006 | 12:30 |

T. Stokes: I confess I am very sceptical, about sceptics. Because most have never studied the subject, to be sceptical means you have to know what you are sceptical about, instead, this often means something needs explaining to you, who should actually be open minded, as most scepticism is a mask for ignorance, or another agenda. But a new breed of British sceptics such as the disturbed Susan Blackmore and manic Richard Wiseman are entrenched in Denialism, and like the pope claim an Infallibility in what they teach. This can be a recognised mental disorder and is part of the “Pathological scepticism constellation”. Their often confused explanations of paranormal happenings are less feasible in logic than the happenings themselves. This is because to obtain research funding means you first have to reach the conclusions of the grants givers, in other words the answers are first on the test sheet and you have to provide the questions.

The children’s conjurer James Randi is a case in point, with his constant attacks on alternative medicine and the paranormal, even when proved wrong does not admit so. This idea that a person with some accreditation in one area qualifies him to speak in another field, has made fools of many psychologists who speak out of their depth on psychic subjects. James Randi’s views on Homeopathy are only eclipsed by the remarks of buffoon astronomer Patrick Moore on Astrology, and are a case in point.

There have been attacks in the press of late on several of the psychic worlds top performers, these people were tested by scientists, and assumed genuine and given the green light, yet are now attacked on a regular basis as fraudulent by sceptics and denialists.

Yet it is true that the realm of the supernatural is as genuinely ridden with fakes, quacks and the deluded, as psychology and allopathic medicine, probably more so. Scientists are in the very worst categories here, where there is more fraud than in any other arena of life.

They are more guilty of observer bias, filtered statements, using spurious facts, altering data, twisting statistics and using only positive study reports than in any other aspect of junk science, and such tricks as conducting an experiment 20 times to document the result of just one test are common place.

A favourite trick to skew statistics is to ask the question;

“ do you believe in the paranormal “?

Surveys average out at between 63% and 75% in favour, but if the question is asked:

“ do you believe in the paranormal, e g lock Ness monsters and father Christmas “?

Answers drop drastically to 7% to 10% in favour.

The full question is rarely shown in full. Another trick is “the aunt sally” this was pulled beautifully by New Labour to appease British Muslims that there was no torture at Guantanamo bay, photos were shown in a down market daily newspaper in Britain showing proof of definite torture, yet these were quickly disproved as fake- thus also condemning all future news and photos.

The Aunt Sally method is the stand by of the Skeptical Inquior group.
If a magician can create an illusion that mimics an occurrence they state that it means all of that type of occurences are hoaxes and do not even need to be looked at.

Thanks Bella-Angelique Very enlightened article, makes a lot of sense when viewed from that perspective.
Irish

A testament to the failures of closed-mindedness.

Not very well thought out.

Bella....Many religious skeptics were once believers, even ex-Pastors/Preachers. You are still kind of new here, I was a believer for OVER 20 years so I do know what I am talking about


Yes that was a prime example!

These are skeptics of the paranormal not of religion. This topic belongs over with them.

THere are also people who have never picked up a BIble in their lives, spend a year or 2 in Catholic school and think they know everything there is to know.

This was for Me and Zan man correct??? i too am very up on religon ( had it down by 7 its not rocket science pa) as is ZAnnie he was very religious at one time and its obvious he knows what he is talking about...namaste sheri

Actually Sheri, it was very general. I wasn't aiming the post at anyone. I know people who have never looked at a Bible and say it's a load of rubbish. Then when you ask "why do you believe that", they go "err, well, you see.... doesn't everyone think that?"

Regards, PA

Okay Pa in that vein it wouldn't apply to me or Zan man lol Namaste sheri

IMO, the people you see here playing the biggest part against the believers are those who have experienced fully the ideals that believers are stuck on. At least that is what I am seeing by those who are posting. Ultimately though, I have come to the conclusion that everyone has the right to believe what they will, if it makes them feel good inside and give them a reason to succeed in life. However, having understood the truth about it all, I will let my opinions be made about beliefs I feel are more harmful then good in the long run. I am not considering myself a skeptic in any way, I am considering myself as someone who is trying to help others ask questions and think without the religions dogma glasses blurring their vision.

People do not have to study the intricate and complex details of what can be easily dismissed as nonsense.

I certainly do not have to provide complex theories and explanations to explain why Elvis is really dead.

People will not invest in exposing what has been concluded as nonsense so many times before on such a fundamental level.

It is considered an insult by some even to engage in debate with such easily dismissible ramblings

It is best to approach the situation from the mind set of “if 99.9% of past cases have been proven hoaxes it is unwise to invest in exposing at length the workings behind a similar claim”.


Scientists in general have establish that the majority of paranormal claims have been proven falsehoods and so are reluctant to listen to similar people (in terms of credibility) making similar claims.

This can be categorised as “closed mindedness” but in truth everyone (no exception) draws limits on what they do and do not accept as feasible or likely in as far as affecting your real world life.

Any conclusion that is drawn on anything (even something as fundamental as gravity or the world being round) is a form of reducing your “openmindedness”.

For if one was truly open to all the possibilities of everything, no action (from getting out of bed to creating nuclear fusion) could be embarked upon.

What irritates me about pseudoscience and so called “spirituality” is that people who believe this tripe claim scientist as ignorant or blame them for “not understanding” when in actual fact the process of science and logical applied reasoning is a difficult mindset to acquire, and is far from naturally occurring, however the mindset of self delusion is very much a part of the human mind and is something almost all of us have experienced at some point in our lives.

I find your initial statement fairly pithy. Namely, because genuine scientists who research the paranormal (commissioned by an organization, or making their own) almost invariably state that it is the unexplainable ~1% of instances that lends credence to some paranormal claims.

One of these researchers once likened investigating the paranormal to offering a desciption of a wanted criminal. You receive thousands of calls reporting sightings of that criminal, but only ten or so will be proven legitimate once the criminal has been captured. Do you ignore all the calls? No, because it is likely that someone has actually seen the criminal--and the other 99% of sightings to not invalidate the legitimate 1%.

one must ask himself why on earth someone would investigate the paranormal, if they were a genuine scientist.

science investigations are made by their finacial investments, who in their right mind would invest a significant amount of money to prove disprove a paranormal claim.

good scientists are generally working in fields supported by industry and it is reflected in teh scale of their experiments (take cern for example) and the nature of their findings.


seriously who would provide multi million pound funding on what could (and currently appears to be) a wild goose chase. especially as any results collected have no real world value in terms of financially or physically

Who? The US military, The Russian military, and quite a few other groups, actually. The military often looks into "paranormal" phenomenae. Your assumption that any results collected would have no real world value is patently false, simple because we don't know what we might get out of a paranormal investigation.

Also: ANY research/experimentation is potentially a "wild goose chase." That's why you're doing research--you don't know what's possible and you are trying to find out.

edit: In fact, how would we know something to be false if scientists never investigated it? Who gets to say what's paranormal and what's not? You're coming across as closed-minded.

Like crop circles. They think that since a few was proven to be made by humans that all of them were. Wich makes no sense and is not scientific. You don't ignore one crop circle and call it fake because the crop circle before it was man made. They're just taking the easy way out.




From my point of view [a person who's experienced ghosts] this is laughable. There are even theories to explain WHAT peope are seeing. Obviously they acknowledge people are seeing something, therefore it's worth investigating. Let me ask you, and be 100% honest [I wish I could read minds ] have you ever experienced a spirit?

I think that is a very relevant question Zero.
I think most skeptics of spirituality have never been actually involved in on site investigations of any spirits and go only upon what they have read.
That is why I called that type the other fundementalist. They have placed their faith in paper writings just as religious fundementalist have.

well if one decides to research and experiment in partcle physics one can justify teh cost to the funders as it will enable the physical world to be manipulated in a way that can produce products that may have a commercial viability.

the credability of paranormal claims isnt event established so the risk to reward probability is ridiculous.

one the scale of what one should channel funds to for research and experimentation. the paranormal is pretty low down and has certainly gained a reputation (rightly so in my opinion) of an embaressingt field in which participants are rarely seen as admirable scientists.

the american and russian governments funding paranormal experimentation does absolutely nothing to add to its credibility (actually quite the reverse), remember that this is the same esablishment that tried to train cats to follow suspects!

military research (internal) is renowed for being poor in the field of science. and its funny that the two examples you give are government funded, none would actually risk their own money, i can tell you why!

There have been many sucessful studies on the paranormal. There's tons of references in Victor Zammit's book.


Yeah, yeah, I've been talking about the book alot latley, but I've been reading it and it's very interesting. Oh, and he also has a $1,000,000 challenge. So if you're so confident, go and win the money. You only have to refute the evidence and explain why it's not valid.

this is crazy!!!!!!!!!!!

if you dont take into account past events when assessing a new claim you are quite literally beyond any reason.

if one million crop circles have been seen as being man made, and one exists that nobody claims to have created, you do not treat this one crop circle as if no crop circles had been created before. this is lunacy.


regarding "feeling spirits", im glad you can be so accurate and thourough through the highly precise instrument of "feeling"!

Well, the thing is, you asked who. And if you don't think military bodies employ competent scientists who do some amazing research...well, history proves you wrong there.

(C&P)Paracelsus had a theory that the heavenly bodies exerted an influence upon disease and healing, working through an all pervading universal magnetic fluid.

In 1765, Franz Anton Mesmer, stated that man could influence this magnetic fluid to bring about healing. He established salons where patients applied magnets to afflicted parts of their body. Later he moved to Paris where he further developed his theory.

In 1784, Louis XV1 set up a commission of investigation, which included Benjamin Franklin, M. La Guillotin, and La Voisier. They concluded that magnetism with imagination had some effect, but Mesmer's magnetism theories were discredited, although his Society of Harmonies continued.

Le Marquis de Puysegur, a member of the Society, believed that the magnetic power was produced in his own mind and was transferred to the patient via his fingertips. He found that he could produce a sleep in which the patient would follow his commands - very authoritarian - and introduced the terms, “perfect crisis” and “profound sleep”.

In 1837, Dr. John Elliotson, Professor of Medicine at UCH London, conducted public clinical demonstrations of hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena, demonstrating its effects on voluntary and involuntary muscle, somnambulism, analgesia, hallucinations etc., which he attributed to the magnetism theory. He was forced to resign, and began to edit the journal, The Zoist. There, he reported on James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon working in India, who had performed several hundred operations painlessly using only hypnosis (mesmerism) as an anesthetic. Esdaile would produce something like suspended animation, now known as the Esdaile State, by stroking the patient’s body for several hours. Esdaile's logs indicated that fatal surgical shock or post operative infection occurred in only 5% of cases compared with the then norm of 50%. The medical establishment rejected these claims.

In 1841, the British doctor James Braid saw a demonstration of mesmerism by a French man named La Fontaine. He was impressed, and started using the mesmerism techniques in his practice. He used his shiny bright lancet case to induce his patients to enter a deep "hypnotic sleep". In that state, his patients would accept his "healing suggestions". He thought the reason this worked, was that staring at a bright object exhausted the nervous system, rather than it involving magnetism. He coined the word Neurypnology (literally ‘nervous sleep’), from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. This was the first use of the word hypnosis.

In 1884, Dr. Ambroise-August Liebeault, of France, proclaimed that he could cure people in a hypnotic state, by "suggestion". In 1886, he was joined by Professor Bernheim, from Paris, and together they published ‘De La Suggestion’, which further rejected the concept of magnetism.

About the same time, at the Salpetriere Hospital, Jean Martin Charcot was pushing his views that hypnosis was a pathological state akin to hysteria, and that the two were interchangeable. After a falling out, Bernheim’s theories won out over Charcot, and Charcot was discredited. BUT...

In 1890, two of Charcot’s pupils, Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, changed the approach of hypnosis from "suggesting" away the symptoms, to eliminating the apparent causes. Breuer noticed that hypnosis patients would often recall past events and talking about them would bring about emotional outpouring. Then they would losing their symptoms. He called this his "talking cure", (such an emotional state would now be referred to as an abreaction). Freud was also experimenting with it, and looking for other reasons behind illness, but eventually stopped working with Breuer, and began developing what would later become psychoanalysis.

During WW1, between 1914 to 1918, the Germans realized that hypnosis could help treat shell-shock quickly. It allowed soldiers to be return to the trenches almost immediately. A formularized version of hypnosis, autogenic training, was devised by Dr. Schultz.
(military <___Paracelsus had a theory that the heavenly bodies exerted an influence upon disease and healing, working through an all pervading universal magnetic fluid.

In 1765, Franz Anton Mesmer, stated that man could influence this magnetic fluid to bring about healing. He established salons where patients applied magnets to afflicted parts of their body. Later he moved to Paris where he further developed his theory.

In 1784, Louis XV1 set up a commission of investigation, which included Benjamin Franklin, M. La Guillotin, and La Voisier. They concluded that magnetism with imagination had some effect, but Mesmer's magnetism theories were discredited, although his Society of Harmonies continued.

Le Marquis de Puysegur, a member of the Society, believed that the magnetic power was produced in his own mind and was transferred to the patient via his fingertips. He found that he could produce a sleep in which the patient would follow his commands - very authoritarian - and introduced the terms, “perfect crisis” and “profound sleep”.

In 1837, Dr. John Elliotson, Professor of Medicine at UCH London, conducted public clinical demonstrations of hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena, demonstrating its effects on voluntary and involuntary muscle, somnambulism, analgesia, hallucinations etc., which he attributed to the magnetism theory. He was forced to resign, and began to edit the journal, The Zoist. There, he reported on James Esdaile, a Scottish surgeon working in India, who had performed several hundred operations painlessly using only hypnosis (mesmerism) as an anesthetic. Esdaile would produce something like suspended animation, now known as the Esdaile State, by stroking the patient’s body for several hours. Esdaile's logs indicated that fatal surgical shock or post operative infection occurred in only 5% of cases compared with the then norm of 50%. The medical establishment rejected these claims.

In 1841, the British doctor James Braid saw a demonstration of mesmerism by a French man named La Fontaine. He was impressed, and started using the mesmerism techniques in his practice. He used his shiny bright lancet case to induce his patients to enter a deep "hypnotic sleep". In that state, his patients would accept his "healing suggestions". He thought the reason this worked, was that staring at a bright object exhausted the nervous system, rather than it involving magnetism. He coined the word Neurypnology (literally ‘nervous sleep’), from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. This was the first use of the word hypnosis.

In 1884, Dr. Ambroise-August Liebeault, of France, proclaimed that he could cure people in a hypnotic state, by "suggestion". In 1886, he was joined by Professor Bernheim, from Paris, and together they published ‘De La Suggestion’, which further rejected the concept of magnetism.

About the same time, at the Salpetriere Hospital, Jean Martin Charcot was pushing his views that hypnosis was a pathological state akin to hysteria, and that the two were interchangeable. After a falling out, Bernheim’s theories won out over Charcot, and Charcot was discredited. BUT...

In 1890, two of Charcot’s pupils, Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, changed the approach of hypnosis from "suggesting" away the symptoms, to eliminating the apparent causes. Breuer noticed that hypnosis patients would often recall past events and talking about them would bring about emotional outpouring. Then they would losing their symptoms. He called this his "talking cure", (such an emotional state would now be referred to as an abreaction). Freud was also experimenting with it, and looking for other reasons behind illness, but eventually stopped working with Breuer, and began developing what would later become psychoanalysis.

During WW1, between 1914 to 1918, the Germans realized that hypnosis could help treat shell-shock quickly (Stupid military program?). It allowed soldiers to be return to the trenches almost immediately. A formularized version of hypnosis, autogenic training, was devised by Dr. Schultz.

After the second world war, Milton Erickson of the US, had a major impact on the practice and understanding of hypnosis and the mind. He theorized that hypnosis is a state of mind that all of us are normally entering spontaneously and frequently.

On the heels of Erickson's work, hypnosis evolved into a well respected practice, used by doctors, psychologists, business and law enforcement. It's also used for self help, and self improvement. With the development of self-hypnosis, one doesn't even need to rely on a therapist any longer.

I didn't say I felt anything. Don't put words in my mouth. I've SEEN things.


There are tons of crop circles, and not 1,000,000 were proven to be made by man. Using your reasoning I can say that all trees were planted by men. Because I know many trees that were planted by man! [but we all know that's not true]

i could pose an equal challenge on the flip side.

i love it when a book states "recent studies" and "according to new research"

allow me to give you a simple fact of life here.

if something revolutionary is supported by science and survives the scrutiny of fellow peers then teh first place you will hear it is in the news not in a book. as the world will want to know

You obviously didn't read the book. None of the studies are recent or new. They've been around for a long time and ignored by many skeptics. Read it before you knoc it.


I see you're the type that follows the news and "higher athorities" blindly, eh? It's better to look into things than sit around waiting for a scientists to tell you, or to see it on the news.

no you misunderstand.

seeing is not believing, anyone who has seen david blane will know that.


the 1million crop circles where to prove the important inclusion of tehy principles of statistics is 99.999% of a large enough sample behave one way it is logically and statistically reasoned to claim that the remaing % will also obey the same

Oh ok, so the transparent body was only pretending to be a ghost to fool me. I gotcha. I guess stars don't exist either. We can't touch any. We can only see and observe them.

Nothing revolutionary ever "survives the scrutiny of fellow peers" upon conception. People fight with tooth and nail when their long-held understanding of things is questioned.

i suggest you study how science works before you quote this study is proof of claim X.

studies that are accepted by REAL scientists, are published and if they carry certain content are made public as there is public interest. and then further experimentation is repeated and the text books are adjusted accordingly

with reasoning powers such as that im not surprised you believe in nonsense.

you are aware that david copperfield cant fly right?

im not prepared to waste my time educating you on how you are not a perfect observer, and the true depth of the corruptablility of teh human senses.

i would advise you to explore the concept of science and why it is so superior to "bob down the pub" when making observations and recording data

like quantum physics? or newtonian mechanics?, or DNA to name but 3

Those are the lamest reasons and excuses that skeptics use to refute things. "You didn't really see it, your senses arent good". Read the damn book or quit trying to refute it. Trying to refute a book you havn't even read just because you never heard about the studies that are talked about in the book just shows your intelligence and time you put into investigating the topic.

I guess I don't really see my computer now. My senses aren't good. I know for a fact that my dog just walked down the hall, are you going to tell me I didn't just see that?

EXACTLY. Do you know history?

see previous comment(s).

i am not gonna waste my time walking you through how to apply reason and logic to things. i believe i have heard all i need to know to see where a conversation with you is going, and i dont wish to spend ages cutting things up for you.

my conversation with you is over sir



yes thanks

Oh, look, Newton would never have studied paranormal things.


(wikipedia)

What type of history may I ask?

WTF????


that wasnt the issue it was "is the principle of newtonian mechanics refuted?" answer is NO.

jesus christ no wonder people dont generally debate about this as it seems teh other party dont understand how to put points across

i tire of having to continually point out and further explain things as people just go off on rants and dont read/respond to fair points/questions


this may come as a shock to you but guess what i know more about the world than newton ever did!

and the best part is im not alone infact most well educated people know more about world that newton ever did such a privilage to live in these times.

TY for asking that.
My post that showed hypnosis was practiced publically for almost two hundred years (with the only real learning tools for it being privately published books) before the experts of the scientific community accepted it seems to have been totally ignored.

I guess my posts are not flashy enough or something.

The principles of Newtonian mechanics were initially well-met, although of course they've undergone siginificant revision since then. Many revolutionary ideas (farther back and much closer to now) were met with a far greater level of disbelief.

The point I was making was relative to your statement that scientists do not (or should not) study "paranormal" things...which IS what you said in the last page. But Newton himself devoted more time to studing alchemy than to what we'd call strictly science.

Your last two statements prove my point even further--we now know that Newton was off researching in the wrong direction. Why? Not because somebody looked at alchemy and said "wow, what a crock that is", but because serious scientists investigated it and found that the principles involved were unworkable.

Simply because it is currently held that something is paranormal and therefore has no place in science, many want to discount it as false. But making assumptions is not the way of science at all. Scientific research into the paranormal is equally as important as scientific research in any other field, and HAS yielded results before (as in the example Bella-Angelique posted.)

That was my point in its entirety.

Can you not see that judging Paranormal claims today is differnt to judging them then!

our knowledge is greater and our methods are more refined. hence my condeming paranormal claims now cannot be compared with condemning it then

if something is testable and proveable (i.e isnt in the realm of an error rich enviroment) then it is simply science.

the avenues in which paranormal claims ( such as mediums ghosts etc) exist i.e teh gaps in science have been closed.

besides your argument for newton researching alchemy as being paranormal is open to debate as considering the period and the theory being based entirely in chemistry one could argue it wasnt paranormal for the time.

So, then, who gets to say what's paranormal and what's not? You don't think we could test paranormal claims and gather solid information (either way) about them? Because according to you, that would make them regular science. If someone is making the claim of prescience, it's pretty easy to test. If someone is claiming to make contact with the afterlife, it's a little harder to test absolutely but I've heard some pretty compelling ways it could be effectively done without much investment.

If we just close our eyes to what we regard as supernatural or paranormal, we might be missing out on a very useful venue of research. Not even necessarily about what we set out to research in the first place--but then, we all know just how many scientific discoveries have been made by accident, even in just the last century.

Where did hypnosis come in at and why?

Not to mention, hypnosis is not paranormal, but it is a highly discredited field. People under hypnosis are notoriously led by the hypnotist and generally seek to please the hypnotist. Double blind tests have shown people will create memories they never had when under hypnosis and led by the hypnotist. These studies are the main reason hypnotic regression can't be used in a court of law. It's not paranormal and it's not science either. It's best use is getting people to do funny things on stage at clubs.

i agree sir

in addition one cannot be hypnotised without ones willingness to participate.

there is no voodoo to hypnosis.

however one would label such a phenomenon as paranormal upon its discovery as the understanding of its mechanics where unknown.

but you can say the same thing about the moon if you go back long enough

Very true.

One might venture to say (falsely) that the prominent hypotheses in quantum physics today could be labeled as "paranormal" due to postulations of multiple realities, string theory, field theory and observer participation. These theories are often bandied about by folks in paranormal circles as validation of their theories but always without a comprehensive understanding of the implications of these fields (i.e. snippets out of context used as validation). What makes such extraordinary ideas fall within the realm of science is the drive for validation of these theories though testable repeatability and fulfillment of prediction. Without such peer-reviewable testability they are of no more use than saying it is so because I believe its so. Science is not so presumptuous.

It's ok guys. I can see that desk light's knowledge on the paranormal is.... non-existant. Though he pretends it's invalid because he hasn't heard a scientists say it yet.


Sad. He seems brain washed.



What I call paranormal, is things such as ghosts and spirits wich DO have a scientific explaination [that hasn't been discovered yet, or can't be discovered at the level our science is now]. Not something that can't ever be explained.


Here, download this book and read it. It's free.


Linky Dinky.

I wasnt really going to comment on anything, but this caught my attention:



There are also christians who have never dropped a bible in their lives and think they know everything there is to know. There are christians who have never picked up a Quran in their lives and think they know everything there is to know. There are muslims that have never picked up the bible and think they know everything there is to know. What's your point?

Zero Although its fun to dabble in the paranormal and age appropriate, Ghosts and spirits are not real, sorry to be the one to have to say this... Be careful of what you wish for I saw something in the corner of your avatar J/K I'm all for investigating everything though Zero, I'm being a skeptic now weeding out the 'False beliefs ".Namaste sheri

I've looked into ghosts as well. And, as far as I'm concerned, they are 100% real. Skeptics are in denial.


After what I've experienced, there's nothing you can say to change my mind that ghosts are 100% real. The only thing you can do is to prove that what I saw is not a spirit, and is something else that is currently unknown to science, because I KNOW what I saw, just like if I'd go outside right now, look into the sky and see a bird flying overhead. I KNOW I saw that bird just fly by.


You're TRYING to weed out the false beliefs, but doing a horrible job so far.

alrighty then Zero, we won't get into this then