The Right Way to Debunk

Actually, no, I've never said there are things that cannot be studied by science, not things that are part of reality, anyway. Since I've already defined reality several times in this thread, I'm not sure why you ask me how I define it. It would make more sense for you to instead comment upon the definition I already provided so I can respond. If scientific study of someone's experience doesn't confirm it, what would you have science do? Fudge the data so the person doesn't feel bad?Science is the best method we have for finding out what is most likely true about reality, which is the world of our senses. If science with all its technology cannot detect something that someone thinks is nonetheless detectable, at least by them, then most likely the experience does not correspond to reality.--Percy

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I ask because I think many people honestly do want to look for answers in science but science does not always acknowledge the legitimacy of their experiences. So they have to look elsewhere.

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Those are the "true believers" I was talking about before.They are only interested in science if it can confirm their experiences or beliefs. If it does, then they accept scientific findings as valid and good.If science does not confirm their experiences or beliefs, true believers reject the findings as invalid and bad.In other words, true believers are not interested in actually learning the truth if it means they might have to change their beliefs.I wonder why you think it would be good for anybody for science to pretend as though someone's beliefs or experiences match up to what we can determine is likely true about nature when they do not?Should science, in other words, be in the habit of coddling crackpots, or reassuring the utterly mistaken when those people just won't or can't accept that they are deluded or wrong?Again, I ask you:How do you know you've arrived at the truth regarding what your inner self and hunches tell you?Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Yes there are procedures in the scientific method to filter out mistakes but not all of them are always going to be picked up.

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So what procedures are in place within the alternative health and herbal supplement industries to filter out mistakes?Are they equal to or superior to those used in science? Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Psssssst.(whisper) Hey! Lindalou! (/whisper)(whisper) The above quote is a just another version of ... (/whisper) Hint.Hint.

You haven't defined what you see as reality as such. Maybe the closest you have come is this: Is the implication that there actually is nothing in existence that can't be studied scientifically, because there is nothing that cannot be detected by the five senses? Or are you saying that there could be more to reality than this, but that it cannot be measured by science? If your answer is a), then I refer you to what I said about scientism, which I will re-define here. If b), then I was wondering what you think those unmeasurable things are. I've seen scientism compared to religious fundamentalism in a few places actually. Interesting. The claim that everything is measurable by science and that anything which isn't, i.e. religion and philosophy, is a delusion, is a common one here. I've seen estimates that 50% of Americans claim to have had a supernatural or paranormal experience. It is not true that all research ever done on the subject has reached negative conclusions. Maybe part of the problem lies in the methodology of the studies. There still aren't many of them done by well-financed, open-minded scientists as anything other than a quiet hobby, because of the automatic label of woo-woo the whole subject attracts. You can say to half of Americans that science does not confirm the validity of their experiences. Do you think they will all back down and say OK, it was just a mistake, or I must be delusional? There is an inherent denial here that such experiences can have any reality whatsoever.If you would like to start a separate thread about this yourself, then be my guest. What is testable by science, and what do we do about the rest that isn't? Is science really the only way of making sense of the world and of the human condition?

The problem is that people are saying that the whole idea of the paranormal is crackpot. Telepathy, psychokinesis, precognitive visions, ghostly encounters -- the whole lot is collectively dismissed as mistake or delusion. I'm not saying people don't make mistakes or have delusions, sometimes in whole groups. But there's this prejudice in most of modern science today that completely rules out any possible validity of any of these claims, from anybody.I've mentioned Rupert Sheldrake a number of times. He is probably best-known for his idea of morphic fields. He has also conducted experiments into dogs who know when their owners are coming home, telephone telepathy, and the sense of being stared at. His scientific credentials are excellent, but he felt so strongly about these areas of research that he was willing to let most of the establishment label him a nutcase in order to pursue them. You can read in more detail on his website, here.More particularly, you can read about his "Seven Experiments that Could Change the World" here. He explains the ideas behind each, and how each could be conducted in a rigorously scientific way. Science and logic are extremely useful, as I said, but they are not the only ways. What else do most of us do? Weigh things in the light of our past experiences. Talk to others who have wisdom on the subject. Educate ourselves as best we can. Meditate. Sleep on it. Constantly question and re-shape our views based on new evidence. I never know for sure that I have arrived at the truth; and I think anyone who believes this, is deluding themselves and stunting their spiritual growth -- whether they are religious or not.from an interview by Tom Collins with the late professor of comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell, You guys are so much fun to talk to. I'm going to see family in the US over Christmas and then I'm starting a new job. I hope I can find some time to keep chatting, it's very enlightening.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

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The problem is that people are saying that the whole idea of the paranormal is crackpot. Telepathy, psychokinesis, precognitive visions, ghostly encounters -- the whole lot is collectively dismissed as mistake or delusion.

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No, not collectively dismissed. The whole lot has been thoroughly investigated, for many years, and the claims people make have never succeeded, even once, to survive rigorous, scientific testing.What you are doing is demanding that scientists use limited resources to keep testing thoroughly disproven concepts.This is exactly what the Creationists do, you know.

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Science and logic are extremely useful, as I said, but they are not the only ways. What else do most of us do? Weigh things in the light of our past experiences. Talk to others who have wisdom on the subject. Educate ourselves as best we can. Meditate. Sleep on it. Constantly question and re-shape our views based on new evidence. I never know for sure that I have arrived at the truth; and I think anyone who believes this, is deluding themselves and stunting their spiritual growth -- whether they are religious or not.

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But you said that hunches and listening to your inner voice leads you to the truth before. Now you say you never know for sure if you know the truth.Thaose two statments are mutually exclusive.

If you want to talk about the nature of science and whether some people elevate science to a religion and so forth, then I still think you should do what I suggested before, propose a new thread. This thread is about how best to debunk. But you go on to say at the end of your post: If your plan is to keep going off-topic as a way of forcing someone else to propose a topic for what you really want to discuss, then I really, really wish you would stop. Sure I have, and you had no trouble finding one of the places where I defined it. My definition of reality can be expressed in more than one way, but one of the simplest is just to define it in terms of our senses. Anything that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, either directly or indirectly through instrumentation like thermometers and particle detectors, is part of reality. Let me answer your question with a question: if there's more to reality than can be detected by our five senses (and any reasonable sense you'd like to add, like sense of balance, etc.), how are we to become aware of this undetectable part of reality? But 80% of Americans can't find Iceland on an unlabeled world map. As someone famous once said, you'll never go wrong underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Such statistics are why the lack of quality science education in this country is constantly bemoaned.Scientific research is the term applied to investigation of a new or insufficiently well understood natural phenomenon. Debunking is the term applied to investigating claims of the type that have been shown false over and over again. Both scientific research and debunking apply scientific methods, they differ only in the stated goal. I think that's why you object to debunking, because it starts with an assumption of falsity instead of an open mind. But one doesn't want to keep one's mind so open that the contents fall out, which is what it would mean to ignore prior disconfirmations. Studying a purported phenomenon that has already been disconfirmed is what we mean by debunking. Ignoring prior disconfirmations is called denial.So having defined our terms, let us go on to examine what you say next about paranormal research: It seems in every post you either go off-topic or introduce untrue accusations, or both in the case of this post. No one has made any such claim in this thread. There are a small number of respectable paranormal researchers out there. A few posts ago I mentioned the research group at Princeton that just closed its doors, called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory. It operated continuously for 30 years, and when announcing the closing the director, founder Robert G. Jahn, said that he's still convinced the phenomena exist and that further research was necessary to establish the reality of the paranormal (A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors). Sheldrake publishes in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, why don't you check it out. Marilyn Schlitz is a respected ESP researcher, why not look her up.I know skeptics and debunkers have a reputation for automatically dismissing claims out of hand, but the reputation is undeserved. For example, researchers have been trying to find scientific evidence for ESP for literally decades, we know now that even the CIA funded (and later abandoned) ESP research in the hope it would be useful in espionage, and it is in light of this history that claims of successful ESP experiments are met with skepticism.If ESP were any mundane area of research then the results would have long ago caused research to cease, but there is something about ESP that is inherently appealing, and so it just never goes away, in the same way that claims of alien visitations and Bigfoot sightings just never go away. There is far, far more research into ESP than the record of non-success could ever justify. Again, what would you have science do? Lie about the results?--Percy

There's no such thing as "scientism." That's a weasel word that woo-promoters use to discredit science when it conflicts with their ideology. Science can detect anything we can detect with our senses. By definition, anything humans can detect that actually corresponds to external reality is being detected by our senses, because that's what senses do - they detect things in reality.Thus, experiences of "detection" that are not via the human senses must, therefore, be inventions of the mind - delusions. Sure,y ou'd like to hold out the idea that "there's more than what we can sense", but if we can't sense it, how would we know about it? How would we generate ideas about it that would be anything but guessing, and therefore immediately false?If there's something "out there", but we can't generate accurate ideas about it, what's the point in holding the door open when nothing good can come through?And moreover - what makes you think that science doesn't provide a nearly endless supply of "more than we can see"? It seems like science has illuminated a hundred invisible worlds, some as close to us as our skin, and the advantage science has is that those new worlds are really real, not the fancy of religion or philosophy. And we can generate, through science, through our senses, accurate information about those worlds.Surely generating accurate information is a more noble cause than generating flights of fancy. How on Earth can the mysteries of the universe we know about not be enough for someone? I just can't understand it. Why try to gild the lily? The universe is already vast and weirder than you can imagine. Anything you could make up with your little human mind - be it religion, or God, or spirituality, or the Force, or what have you - must pale by comparison to what's really out there.Science is the gateway to what's really out there. Your imagination, your gut feelings, can't take you nearly as far - they can't take you anywhere but where you already are. Well, one in 4 Americans had a diagnosed mental illness in the past year, and one in four of those had a serious mental illness, like schizophrenia.Also 50% is about how many Americans question the evolutionary model and promote some kind of creationism, incidentally. It is true. There has never been a paranormal experience that has survived rigorous inquiry. In almost every study the proponents of the specific woo under inquiry are worked closely with, to ensure that the methodology doesn't interfere with the test. If even the specific proponents of the paranormal signed off on the methodology, what possible objection can you raise? A lot of them do, when faced with the evidence. A fair number of them say "oh, I guess I didn't have a paranormal power I could use at any time. I guess it was just wishful thinking."

Interesting. There are some differences here from the sorts of things Percy was saying. I think this would make a fascinating new thread. And as Percy says, this discussion really belongs there and not here, however much some people want to engage with it at the moment (me included, to be honest).I'm going on vacation shortly and will be rather busy afterward, so I hesitate to begin a topic where I'll mostly have to drop out for a few weeks; I'd rather wait a little while. I also think I could do with some research into this subject myself so that my own views are more solid, and I have evidence at hand to back them.In the meantime, I'm happy to stay on topic here, and I'll make sure I do. RAZD has taken an interesting debunking approach on the other forum. He has given definitions of "delusion" and "cognitive dissonance." The latter is a particularly good one to refer to when distraction and denial tactics are being used, and when people simply ignore the evidence that has been presented.It's also interesting to see the approach he has taken to what I like to call regurgiposting. Instead of refuting a pasted page from a creationist website, RAZD has asked the poster to use their own words, and he has told them that quoting from another site without citation is plagiarism. He posted a link to a relevant TalkOrigins page full of refutations of the PRATTs contained in the regurgipost. At the moment the original poster is militant about having been called a "liar." I'm waiting to see what RAZD says. I've learned a lot from him over there so far; I should be able to do a better job of holding the fort once he's finished I think.

Take your time. My busy holiday stuff starts on Friday so I probably couldn't get back with a reply until January.

Differences? I don't think so. I agree with everything Crash said, and I only wish I had said it as well as he did.What might seem to be a difference appeared in his reply to where you said, "It is not true that all research ever done on the subject has reached negative conclusions," and I agree with his reply, because he qualified it with an additional condition. I replied in an unqualified fashion to what you said, agreeing that it isn't true that no research has ever provided supporting evidence for the paranormal. Crash qualified his reply, giving a nod to the fact that the more rigorous the study the smaller the effect, virtually nil in the best studies.LindaLou, I really think you're going to have to dig yourself out of your own confusion. You can again blithely dismiss the possibility that you're confused, but it's undeniable because apparently just the fact that two people phrase the same points differently leads you to conclude differences.There's an internal contradiction in your position that is for some reason apparent to everyone but you, again made apparent when you noted that 50% of Americans claim to have had a supernatural or paranormal experience, which you think lends support to the paranormal. But around 50% of Americans accept some variation of creationist views, and in this case you don't interpret the same percentage as lending support to creationism. You can't have it both ways.Even worse, you seem unaware that it is a grievous fallacy to argue the validity of anything on the basis of how many people believe it.Contradictions like this in your thinking have been pointed out again and again, to no avail no matter how many different ways people explain things to you. I think if there's to be any resolution for you that it must come from within.Science is not some weird entity distinct from the day-to-day world. Science just does what we all do everyday, which is to look around us and observe. The only difference is that science is very careful about observing - science has developed technologies and methodologies that raise observing to a high art. If someone thinks they've observed a paranormal phenomenon then if it really exists science can observe it, too, the only difference being that science will do it with great care and thoroughness. That's why the best way by far to determine if a phenomenon is real or not is science.--Percy

You've asked, nay begged me, to stop going off topic here. I wonder what keeps tempting me to do so . . .?You're OT mate, especially with the comments on the paranormal. I can certainly discuss them with you on another thread and explain there why I said what I said.I've been reading about the limitations of empiricism, trying to educate myself. More lectures about science=the Way to the Truth (TM) aren't very helpful to me right now. It is one way, and a good way, but The Way?Has it ever occurred to you that there may be a grain of truth here and there in what creationists say about their problems with certain aspects of evolutionary theory, independent of the blatant lies their leaders have told them? Just wondering. Occasionally I find them thought-provoking. In "debunking" I think you have to be careful to bear in mind what the other person is saying, rather than just making blatant statements about how science explains everything. The idea of morphic fields springs to mind . . .

LindaLou I know of a website where you might like to go learn something concerning science and how it differs from other kinds of knowledge .Check this site out and let me know what you think.http://explorepdx.com/help.html

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"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."Albert Einstein

My crystal ball tells me that you're only a short hop, skip and jump from becoming a creationist. The Way™ to debunk is not just to learn what's wrong with creationist claims so you can refute them. You have to learn what's wrong with the way creationists think.But you seem to think exactly the same way they do.Metaphysician heal thyself.

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Disclaimer: The above statement is without a doubt, the most LUDICROUS, IDIOTIC AND PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WILLFUL STUPIDITY, THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN OR HEARD.