Skeptics and Parapsychologists Have Something in Common

A new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology examines the similarities and differences between skeptics, parapsychologists, (scientists who study psychic ability), and believers in psychic ability. It challenges the idea that skeptics somehow possess different or superior thinking skills in evaluating the evidence for psychic ability. Here’s the introduction:

Introduction: Belief in psi, which includes psychic phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and post-mortem survival, is widespread yet controversial. According to one of the leading and perhaps most tested hypotheses, high belief in psi can be explained by differences in various aspects of cognition, including cognitive styles. Most of this research has been conducted with lay individuals. Here, we tested the hypothesis that academic researchers who investigate psi may exhibit different cognitive styles than lay individuals interested in psi, and are more similar to skeptics.

And this was their overall conclusion:

Discussion: Our research shows that academics who work with psi differ from lay psi individuals, but not from skeptics, in actively open-minded thinking. In other words, despite their high belief in psi phenomena, psi researchers demonstrate a commitment to sound reasoning about evidence that is no different from that of skeptics.

One of the myths that this research dispels is that skeptics are somehow superior critical thinkers when it comes to psychic research. This is certainly consistent with my own observations over the years. I have personally never seen any case where skeptics demonstrated superior skills at evaluating parapsychological research, or indeed, anything related to the paranormal or psychic ability at all. At best, they are equal in their critical thinking and at worst, they demonstrate obvious biases in their evaluations.

A very important aspect of this discussion is the idea of objective vs. subjective experience. This line isn’t clear cut and there is a lot of ambiguity on the table. What this means is that people who rely on their subjective experiences to create their worldview aren’t necessarily worse thinkers, only different in what they rely on. Objectivity itself relies ultimately on choosing what data to believe.

Better Informed Equals better at Being Objective

Also, lay individuals, whether skeptics or experiencers, were generally worse at critical thinking. No surprise there either. Objective evaluation is a scholarly skill that has to be learned. In general, lay skeptics and experiencers tend more towards knee jerk reactions to data that they don’t like and both exhibit more defensiveness over their positions.

A lot of bias comes from having an emotional attachment to a particular position. Spending more time with a subject includes careful considerations of contrary positions, which in turn will slowly erode strong emotions surrounding a subject and introduce more objectivity.

So these study results shouldn’t be very surprising. Informed people are better at evaluating a subject than uninformed people. Having said that, my long history with the controversies in parapsychology tells me that the situation is decidedly more complicated. This has less to do with logic and rational thinking and more to do with the nature of psychic ability. Believers are not really believers and skeptics aren’t really skeptics. There are deeper layers to this situation.

Who is Really the Believer?

Belief implies a reliance on faith without evidence and skepticism implies objectively examining evidence and not drawing unsupported conclusions. Yet “believers” often rely on evidence, it’s merely a question of interpretation and how much evidence they think that they need. And skeptics often begin from their own sets of beliefs before they examine evidence.

One complication comes from the self reporting nature of the study. It can only measure people’s view of themselves, not the accuracy of their self reflection.

For example, when examining beliefs about psychic ability, it is important to establish the reality of psychic ability first. If, for example, we were examining a discussion about whether trees exist, we would immediately divide that group into rational people who know that trees exist and irrational people who did not believe in trees.

The believers in trees would not be criticized for being inflexible about the reality of trees nor would their critical thinking skills be questioned for refusing to entertain any discussion about it, rather the tree skeptics would be criticized as tree deniers. The entire narrative completely flips depending on what we agree is real.

Who is the Rational One?

So if it’s assumed that psychic ability is real, then of course people are not going to be open to changing their minds about it. Doubt about whether a particular experience is real is weighed against whether it is within the boundaries of ordinary psychic experiences. If psychic experiences are not considered to be exceptional, then the bar for acceptance is not very high. In this case the classification of “believer” is grossly misleading because they are operating on knowledge based on experience, not on personal beliefs.

The other thing to consider is that skeptics tend to talk big about being open minded, and often sincerely believe this to be true about themselves, but in practice most of them demonstrate just the opposite to be true. What passes for careful rationality and critical thinking is often just pride and stubbornness with a lot of ego mixed in. So a skeptic might claim that their mind can be changed by evidence, but when push comes to shove, it gradually becomes obvious that no evidence will ever be enough. In the study, this was somewhat acknowledged by measuring a “need for closure.” While this is certainly related to stubbornness, there may still be a gap between what a person thinks about themselves and what they actually do.

Measuring Skeptical Stubbornness

Skeptical stubbornness is difficult to uncover because it requires repeatedly probing the skeptic to see whether they will change their mind in the face of contrary evidence, but revealing this trait is extremely important in evaluating their critical thinking skills. Part of stubbornness is the belief that one isn’t being stubborn, merely holding steadfast to the truth, so a survey or a psych test that is not designed to specifically uncover this is probably insufficient.

For example, if you asked a skeptic if sufficient evidence would change their mind, they would say that yes, it would. If you instead forced them to quantify exactly what evidence would definitively change their mind, (a successful telepathy test? A personal experience?) they would likely refuse to commit to a concrete answer that would force them to concede, or choose an answer that will always be out of reach. Either path demonstrates stubbornness and a deficiency in critical thinking.

When it comes to these two things: sorting out whether belief is actually experience or whether claims of being open minded and objective are just lip service, it’s very hard for academic studies to sort these two things out, but they have huge ramifications for the conclusions. The flaky believer magically transforms into an open minded holistic thinker and the critically thinking skeptic becomes a stubborn fool.

Know Your Universe Before Passing Judgment

This is an important point because evidence is mounting that we live in a universe where consciousness, not the material world, is fundamental to reality. In that case, reality itself is relative to the observer, which must necessarily change our perception about what constitutes belief vs. reality. It no longer becomes a question of whether someone is correctly viewing reality, but about how far off they are from what is often referred to as “consensus reality.”

The takeaway here is that I think that we have to be careful in our assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of “believers” and “skeptics.” It is a question with far more depth and nuance than first appears. If we don’t question our underlying assumptions, we may lose sight of thinking processes that are far more complex than first appears.

The Afterlife Equation: E = MC2

Credit: Taton Moise, Unsplash

(Part 1 of three.)

Albert Einstein’s iconic equation, E = MC2, is part of his special theory of relativity. But it is also a handy summary of what happens when the physical bodies die but the soul/consciousness survives. Hence, this article’s title. ‘The afterlife Equation.’

This most famous of equations states that E, the energy content of a body (the planet Mars or a tree), is equal to its mass, M, times (or accelerated by) the velocity of light squared, C2, which is the speed of light multiplied by itself. That is 186,281.7 miles per second times 186,281.7 miles per second. Pretty darn fast.

Einstein published E = MC2 in 1905, the year he earned his doctorate in physics, without much follow-up. He focused more on developing a solid theoretical basis for his concept of relativity.

Although it may have been only of passing interest to Einstein, this equation transformed the field of physics. In one stroke, Einstein overturned a fundamental tenet that had stood since the 17th century days of Sir Isaac Newton. He held that energy and matter are separate and distinct and have no relationship to each other.

Matter and Energy

This equation states otherwise. It proposes the fundamental equivalence of matter and energy by demonstrating that they produce equivalent effects. This was Einstein's “principle of equivalence,” which states that if two phenomena produce equivalent effects, they must be different manifestations of the same fundamental law.

The equivalence principle is Einstein's most momentous conclusion. It is regarded as the foundation of modern physics. And, in the grand tradition of free inquiry and questioning everything, let us play with this tantalizing possibility: Something can go faster than the speed of light. What exactly could that something be? Could E = MC2 actually hold the key to unifying science and spirituality or even to the theory of everything (TOE)?

Please note the word here is spirituality, not religion. If science and religion ever line up on the same team, the rest of us are toast. (Dogmas backed by data? Nightmare!)

The Afterlife’s Equation - Scientific Heresy

To pose an answer, let’s commit scientific heresy (yay!) and rework E = MC2. Why not? This equation is not holy writ, even if scientists do tend to revere it and the shaggy-haired genius who first devised it. And since it’s just a bunch of variables, we are free to make those variables stand for anything we want them to represent.

We are searching for a greatly enlarged understanding of equivalence, beyond just matter and energy. To achieve this, we start by redefining all the variables except M. This variable remains the same and means mass, or matter. We need new definitions, however, for E and C2 or our equivalence principle won’t differ from the original.

Our current understanding of energy, the E in the equation, is much too limited. At present, science defines energy as the capacity for work, or the ability to do work. And that definition confines energy strictly to the material universe, cutting off any spiritual connections.

We seek a new definition of energy that transcends the limitations of the strictly material, because that new definition of energy will help explain why it’s possible to exceed the speed of light, how to unify science and spirituality, and establish a TOE.

Energy is the capacity for (the ability to) love.

This deceptively simple redefinition of energy holds profound implications. The capacity for love or the ability to love encompasses but is not limited to the ability to do work. The ability to love embraces and addresses spiritual realities in addition to the physical universe. E, defined as the ability to love, is precisely what we need in our TOE, or theory of everything.

E, then, represents the complete energy spectrum, nonphysical as well as physical. Moreover, the E in our equation also encompasses a very special type of energy: the ability to love without hindrance, limitation, or restriction. In other words, E represents the highest, widest, most powerful possible energy or ability to love, which is love unlimited by any conditions.

This E has been known by many names to many people. Scientists call it the God particle, but it is not a particle according to their understanding of such. The ancient Chinese gave it the name chi (also written as QI), and, recognizing its healing potential, made use of it through acupuncture and acupressure. The ancient Hindus named it prana, the “life force” that sustains everything.

What they’re all really talking about is unconditional love, or love without condition or limitation. E stands for unconditional love, meaning that unconditional love is the fundamental building block of the material as well as the nonmaterial universe. Furthermore, E is seamless and not divisible into ever smaller and smaller units. E is divine essence, the ultimate source of everything and the ultimate power anywhere.

A Vibrational Universal Concept

What gives E such power? To explain that requires us to recognize something that is a fundamental characteristic of E and the entire universe: It is all based on vibration.

The concept of vibration as the foundation of all realities is not new. Thousands of years ago, Heraclitus, one of the earliest known Greek philosophers, intuitively grasped this principle. He maintained that everything is constantly in flux or motion. String theory from modern particle physics states that all realities, perceptible or not, consist of the essence of strings of vibrating particles.

Vibration-based change, or what Heraclitus called flux, is the only constant in life. In other words, everything and all things, nonmaterial as well as material, are fundamentally vibrational frequencies. This is why mathematics can help us explain a great deal about our multiverse. Mathematics is the language of vibrational frequencies.

We see the physical counterpart of flux and string theory by making the simplest of observations. The weather changes. The seasons come and go in cycles. The water in the oceans constantly migrates around the globe. Out of the acorn arises the oak tree, changing greatly throughout the course of its development.

E is most powerful, then, because there are no limits to its vibrational range. There is no ending, no beginning. E, that divine essence-energy, that ultimate source, encompasses all other vibrational frequencies, meaning everything else that exists.

(Part 2’s redefinition E = MC2 explains what goes faster than the speed of light. )

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Parapsychology’s Journey to the Mainstream

Here’s a little secret for you: Parapsychology, the scientific study of psychic ability, is a respectable science. They have been vetted by mainstream science, and it’s been that way for over 50 years. The journey from the backwater fringe to respectability wasn’t easy, but they were helped along the way by open-minded scientists who put away any prejudices they might have had and studied the evidence.

This is the story of how the Parapsychological Association (PA) became an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and how sober science overcame emotional prejudices.

A Scientific Organization is Born

Up until the 1950s, parapsychology existed as loose associations between various organizations and researchers. Lab studies have been going on since 1930 under J.B. Rhine, and they had a scientific journal. The Rhine Research Center had been around since 1935 and the Society for Psychical Research was even older, having been around since 1882, and the American Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1885.

Around the middle of the last century, scientists involved in this research realized that a modern, formal scientific organization was needed. One that mirrored the structure of other new science organizations and would meet the strict requirements of rigorous scientific inquiry.

In 1957, parapsychologists, who had suffered from the perceived lack of respectability in the field, decided to take action to remedy that. They formed the Parapsychological Association, with members around the entire world. (This is no big deal today, but back then, having an international association was quite an accomplishment. Long distances posed considerable challenges to communicating. Telephone calls were very expensive and everyone relied on writing letters.)

Petitioning the AAAS

Creating this association meant that they could then petition for formal recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (AAAS) It was hoped that formal recognition would aid scientists in pursuing psychic research at their universities and also help with getting funding grants.

To be considered for acceptance as an affiliate, the Parapsychological Association had to have been in existence for at least five years. So in 1963, the association president, Dr. Carroll Nash, submitted an application for admittance to the AAAS.

First Try: Nope

At the time, applications first went to a committee, which then reviewed them and decided whether an application would come up for a vote. The application was quickly rejected by that committee, and the general assembly never got a chance to vote.

In 1967, Douglas Dean ran for president of the Parapsychological Association on the grounds that he would try again. He won the presidency and promptly submitted a new application.

Second Try: Closer, but Nope

The ‘67 attempt made it through the committee but then had to be reviewed by the AAAS board of directors. However, some prominent scientists on the board considered it ridiculous that parapsychology should be considered at all, and this second attempt also failed. But this also brought a storm of protests which are a familiar part of the parapsychology landscape. When parapsychology is dismissed out of hand, it can produce a backlash from scientists who recognize the unfair treatment. (The last time this occurred was about ten years ago.)

The AAAS abolished the committee for affiliations in 1968 for “unrelated reasons”, which parapsychologists took as a bad sign of things to come. In fact, this had the effect of making the process better, not worse.

Third Try: Also Nope

In 1968, Dean, now the parapsychological association secretary, submitted yet another attempt at affiliation. Although they had the support of the AAAS president of the time, Dr. Walter Orr Roberts, the application didn’t even make it past the first hurdle. Internal politics, rather than science, was the probable cause.

In 1969, Dean had been elected secretary again and had misgivings about trying again. Part of it was the cost, time, and effort involved. It cost $150, ($1,213 adjusted for 2023 inflation), and the AAAS Committee required a prodigious 4 ½ pounds of documentation, which was very time-consuming. These were reprints of the best, most up-to-date parapsychology papers, copies of the PA constitution and by-laws, as well as any articles in encyclopedias.

At that time, of course, everything had to be typewritten, meaning that any mistakes not discovered during typing weren’t correctable. Not only that, copying in those days was a difficult affair. Copiers were large, primitive things that were expensive and not the sort of thing a small association would have.

Part of Dean’s misgivings was that the AAAS was considering altering its criteria for affiliation yet again, and Dean felt that not applying for a year might prevent unwelcome changes to the process. But it turned out that the changes being considered were to help parapsychology get past the gatekeepers and get their case to the floor for a full vote. Also, Dr. A. Spillhaus, AAAS President-elect, as well as chairmen of the first committee hurdle that the parapsychological association would have to clear, was on board as a supporter.

May the Fourth Be With You

So Dean got the paperwork together and tried for a fourth time. In addition to everything else, they had to submit 20 pages explaining why they wanted affiliation and that they had met several criteria. They showed that the membership was about two-thirds PhD’s, some from top-flight schools.

Dean, unfortunately, found a typing mistake. The Parapsychological Association had nine members in the AAAS, not four. Fortunately, this mistake was not considered serious, and the application proceeded. On December 26, the application cleared the first committee. At long last, the application would finally go to a full vote at the general meeting. The meeting, on the 30th of December 1969, was held at the Boston Statler-Hilton ballroom, which was huge.

Dean related how it all played out:

‘Now the Parapsychological Association. Do I hear a motion? Silence. (Dean cringed, since he had tried to arrange a friend but could not – and perhaps it was as well. (The next ten seconds were interminable.) Then a soft voice spoke up and said ‘Yes.’ ‘Is there a second? Silence. ‘(Again Dean nearly died. Do we lose it because there is no second to the motion?)

But after five seconds someone said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Is there any discussion?’ Several members tried to get to the microphones. A man whose name Dean could not hear said: “In our agenda it states that ‘the aims of the PA are to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science.’ The so-called phenomena of parapsychology do not exist, and it is impossible to do scientific work in this area, so that we have a null science. I therefore will vote against this motion.”

A woman member said: “We are not familiar with what parapsychology is, and so we are not qualified to make a vote on this association.” (This was not quite correct, since Dr. McConnell had undertaken the huge task of mailing several items of literature describing parapsychology to all 530 delegates during the fall.)

Dr. Glass added: ‘The Committee on Council Affairs considered the PA’s work for a very long time. The Committee came to the conclusion that it is an association investigating controversial or non-existent phenomena; however it is open in membership to critics and agnostics; and they were satisfied that it uses scientific methods of inquiry; thus that its investigation can be regarded as scientific.

Further information has come to us that the number of AAAS fellows who are also members of the PA is not four as on the agenda but nine.” (Even the typing error was now working in our favor.) ‘Is there any further discussion?’

Up to this point, it had been nothing but critics speaking, but then a mostly gray-haired woman with blue eyes and large glasses stood up. Everyone immediately recognized her.

A Surprising Voice of Support

It was Margaret Meade, the anthropologist whose work with the nonliterate people of Oceania made her famous. Her textbooks were required reading in college classes; she would later become president of the AAAS and be posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom.

She spoke in defense of parapsychology:

“For the last ten years we have been arguing about what constitutes science and scientific method and what societies use it. We even changed the bylaws about it. The PA [Parapsychological Association] uses statistics and blinds, placebos, double blinds and other standard scientific devices. (Then in a ringing statement.) The whole history of scientific advance is full of scientists investigating phenomena that the establishment did not believe were there. I submit that we vote in favor of this Association’s work.”

Dr. Bentley Glass, the AAAS president, then spoke up:

The question of a vote is raised. Because of the controversial nature of this motion we should have a show of hands. Please raise your hands those Council members in favor of the motion?

Dr. Glass was referring to the normal parliamentary practice of calling out: “All those in favor?” and then the members in support would shout “Aye”. Then he would ask: “All those against?” and if anyone objected, they would shout “Nay.” On most votes, though, no one opposed, and things moved briskly along.

Since he knew that accepting the Parapsychological Association was going to be contentious, he asked for a show of hands. And this was when the actual ratio of skeptics to everyone else was exposed. By counting the number of tables and the average number of people sitting at each table, they were able to establish that the count “against” was somewhere between 30 and 35 votes. The count “for” was somewhere between 160 and 180. The “mainstream skepticism” never materialized.

Motion Carries: The PA Is an Official Science Organization

Glass continued:

It seems that the motion is carried. If anyone desires a count of the hands, I will ask for the vote to be repeated. [Silence]. The motion is carried. Now to Item 8.

The motion passed, and the Parapsychological Association was officially admitted into the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You can find it here: AAAS List of Affiliates.

Most scientists, it turns out, are not nearly as hostile to parapsychology as skeptics make them out to be. A 1981 survey by James McClenon of AAAS members showed that 69% of them considered parapsychology to be a legitimate science. 42% of them believed in the existence of psychic ability.

For the Parapsychological Association, this was huge: scientists could join the association without risking their careers, existing members would have less to worry about and funding would be easier to come by.

A Challenge to the Affiliation

Less than a decade later, the AAAS affiliation with the Parapsychological Association got its first real test when physicist John Wheeler called for its expulsion from the AAAS. This made the news. (Here and here.) And it was a big deal, effectively overshadowing everything else parapsychologists were doing.

Parapsychologists asked Wheeler for evidence to back up his claims, and he stated that he had proof of fraud and a witness. But that person denied this was true, and Wheeler was forced to retract his claim and issue an apology.

After that, AAAS changed its bylaws to make it much more difficult to expel an affiliate. This was about as clear an acknowledgment of the pathological nature of the attacks on parapsychology as one was likely to find.

Overall, the AAAS has expressed curiosity about psychic research over the years, far from being a hostile gatekeeper, the organization has demonstrated openness and a business-as-usual approach, which parapsychologist Annalisa Ventola documented in an article titled “There is no Gate: On the PA and the AAAS” for Mindfield, Volume 8, Issue 2. In it, she referenced a 1981 survey by James McClenon that showed 69% of AAAS members considered parapsychology to be a legitimate science, and 42% of respondents to the section on parapsychology believed in psychic ability.

Progress, But More Work is Needed

The field of parapsychology still faces an uphill battle for respectability, but what’s interesting here is that the majority of negativity isn’t coming from mainstream scientists; they find it interesting and don’t automatically dismiss this field of research. The bulk of the skepticism, it seems, is coming from a very vocal minority.

Wikipedia and the Paranormal

I’ll get to Wikipedia in a moment, but first a little background. One of the more depressing aspects of my job as a Parapsychology journalist is dealing with the skepticism. It’s not that skepticism isn’t warranted when dealing with the paranormal, it absolutely is, it’s that the vast majority of skepticism is just . . . bad. Any open minded person arguing with people who are strongly skeptical quickly realizes that their claim to being tough minded and objective is really just stubborn people never admitting to being wrong. It’s not critical thinking, it’s just . . . tedious.

Where skepticism really goes off the rails is when it becomes a belief system. This is what I documented in my book PSI WARS: TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet. The skepticism has become more of a fringe atheist religious-like crusade to bring rationality to an increasingly irrational world, it seems like it should be a good thing. Who doesn’t want more rationality? Amiright?

Pseudoskepticism

In practice, what they do is properly called pseudoskepticism, which isn’t a careful analysis of specific objections, but rather a general dismissal of both people and subjects that they disagree with. Even the word “rationality” becomes a sort of dog whistle.

In their case rationality refers to a very specific belief system that these skeptics fully embrace: They believe in a material universe. (This is increasingly up for debate as quantum physics repeatedly demonstrates that the universe is entangled and not locally real. As Rovelli pointed out, even physics itself is relational.)

This materialistic belief, which is at the core of this true believer skepticism, leads to assumptions about reality which these skeptics hotly defend. They believe that psychic ability can’t possibly exist and its study is pure pseudoscience (another skeptic dog whistle); holistic medicine is nonsense and is also pseudoscience. One finds this all over Wikipedia now. Reddit User Hastener_Of_Days wrote this assessment.

The way the terms "pseudoscience" and "fringe" are used on Wikipedia, is now akin to jewtagging. It's really quite disgusting. In the Wikipedia coverage of any of these areas, most notably Homeopathy, readers are treated like children, and are quite literally beaten over the head and forced to a conclusion. This is distinct from the original Wikipedia model of neutrality, where you simply present the facts, in due proportion to their reliability, and trust the reader to come to the right conclusion.

Weird Skepticism

When you travel down the rabbit hole of this organized skepticism it gets really weird. Congratulating children on discovering that Santa Claus isn’t real; attacking naturopathy, (the science of promoting self healing in the body. It’s a licensed profession found in many hospitals); licensed chiropractors (found everywhere, accepted by insurance companies) are also apparently pseudoscience to them for . . . reasons. Religion is an infantile belief that does more harm than good. Religions are responsible for most wars.

And now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to discuss Wikipedia and the Paranormal.

Bias and Lack of Scholarship

If you concentrate on Wikipedia articles about holistic medicine, or the paranormal, you’ll find that most of the articles are not just written from a skeptical point of view, but one that is strikingly similar to that of a particular skeptic organization.

Wikipedia, for example claims the following about parapsychology:

Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Parapsychology has also been criticised by mainstream critics for many of its practitioners claiming that their studies are plausible in spite of there being no convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.[1][10][11]

What is wrong with this? What’s not wrong with it? Parapsychology isn’t a pseudoscience. The Parapsychological Association is an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here is a quote from a paper by a very skeptical critic who has worked with parapsychologists and is familiar with the research:

Parapsychology at its best—as exemplified by, for example, the articles in the Journal of Parapsychology—appears to meet most if not all of the benchmarks of true science as opposed to pseudoscience.

His views are shared by other skeptics familiar with the research such as Richard Wiseman and Susan Blackmore. When you limit your search to the tiny handful of critics who actually engage with the research you come away with an entirely different take on this scientific field.

Bad Citations

Some of their citations to back up this Wikipedia article are over over 30 years old, others are just someone’s opinion that they wrote down, unsupported by evidence. One says the opposite of what they’re claiming. This isn’t what valid citations look like; it’s just Wikipedia editors scrounging up whatever they can find to support their weak argument.

And lastly, we see the claim that there is no convincing evidence. Here is a paper that Wikipedia editors seem to have mysteriously failed to cite despite the fact that it’s extremely well known within the field:

The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review

Parapsychology is an area of expertise for me; I can see the flaws in articles like this because I know what’s missing and where the editors are making claims that I know aren’t true. I have read many of the documents they’re referencing, I know who’s who in this field, when someone is just a poser and who is the real deal.

It’s Worse than Mere Incompetence

The Wikipedia editors had to go out of their way to make this article as blatantly false as it is. This isn’t incompetence; it’s deliberate. And it isn’t a one off either. The vast majority of articles related to parapsychology of any substance are treated this way, including biographies.

This extends into articles about the paranormal, including psychics and mediums and also pretty much any holistic medicine or holistic medical practice you care to name. They are so littered with references to criticism that you’d think this was a gossip column and not an encyclopedia.

To understand why Wikipedia is horrifically inaccurate and/or misleading about paranormal topics and holistic medicine, you need to understand the connection between the editors and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

The Link between Organized Skepticism and Wikipedia

CSI is an organization dedicated to skepticism. They publish the Skeptical Inquirer and came into being at a convention of the American Humanist Association in 1976. It was founded by Paul Kurz and Marcello Truzzi. Truzzi left the organization after realizing that impartiality wasn’t the goal.

Because the organization is driven by a non mainstream atheistic belief that the paranormal is impossible and that they, the chosen few, are providing rationality to an increasingly superstitious and irrational world, this has led to their never ending battle against an increasingly convincing body of scientific evidence, with at least one of their leading skeptics grudgingly conceding first that parapsychology is a real science and then that the results of some of the experiments are valid.

And as I said earlier, they dismiss chiropractic care, naturopathy, acupuncture and other generally accepted holistic medical practices as pseudoscience. For those interested in a longer read of their history, here is an article by the late Guy Lyon Playfair. (here) There is also an accounting of their deliberate attempt to suppress the results of an experiment they conducted when they didn’t get the results they wanted. (here)

This cultist skeptical organization and others like it, form an echo chamber where they cherry-pick their way to conclusions they want, often relying on their own members to form the arguments and then citing those as proof. They pounce on positive portrayals of psychic ability or holistic medicine, making sure to write articles and then seek media attention to promote their viewpoint.

The Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia

Out of this toxic stew, the Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia was born. I first found out about them after I’d finished reporting on parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s dust up with TED talks and had started writing my book about the controversy in 2013.

Sheldrake, at the time, was the subject of a great deal of controversy after his TED talk was banished to the hinterlands of an unsearchable corner of TED. He is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page written about him and his Wikipedia page got worse in proportion to the increase in fame he was experiencing. A few Wikipedia editors with an agenda had targeted him and were making changes to his biography to portray him as a pseudo scientist and quack.

It was strongly suspected by journalists who cover this subject, Greg Taylor of the Daily Grail, myself and Robert McLuhan, who works with the Society for Psychical Research, that the Guerrilla Skeptics had a hand in this. They never admitted to it and they operate in such secrecy that this could never be factually established. Susan Gerbic, founder of the Guerrilla Skeptics wrote in the Skeptical inquirer:

Plus, when asked, I always refused to offer transparency of who our members are, what conversations we have been having, or what pages we have worked on.

The Problem of Secret Editing Groups

Except for Gerbic herself, who uses her real name on the platform and personally operates in the open, no one really knows who they are or what they’re doing. That this has been allowed to exist on Wikipedia is a clear demonstration of the flaws inherent in the platform. So what is the problem of an organization like the Guerrilla Skeptics? A reddit user familiar with Wikipedia outlined the issues:

With the advantage of being able to coordinate in private without anyone on Wikipedia knowing these people are acting as a group, it is if course suspected that GS [Guerrilla Skeptics] breaks any number of really quite important Wikipedia rules. Rules against canvassing, rules against vote stacking, rules against using blocking powers in your own interests, and rules that say you must declare any relevant conflicts of interest.

The rules that essentially ensure that Wikipedia is a level playing field for all editors, equal under the wiki law, given the same opportunity to propose and defend their edits as anyone else, and letting the benign force of consensus result in the best edit for Wikipedia.

Even other Wikipedia editors are sick of them and put them on trial. But on a platform that allows anonymous editors, all kinds of shenanigans can take place which cannot be prevented. This includes individuals being both editors and their own administrators under different names, organized editing to capture administrative positions and control arbitration processes.

If they have succeeded at this, they can then ban other editors over disagreements by misusing Wikipedia’s own rules. A product of anonymous editing is that a secret group can gain de facto control over information on sections of the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia Cannot Prevent This

Wikipedia’s enforcement abilities are limited to banning specific editors. Even if they had decided to ban the Guerrilla Skeptics entirely they could not have done so. They don’t know who the members of the organization are; nor would it help if they did know. Banned members only need to come back under a different name. They can ban IP addresses, but it’s easy enough to get around that.

I see little reason to doubt that they are behind the steady degradation of paranormal topics on Wikipedia. when one sees the Wikipedia treatment of various paranormal subjects, one finds many references to articles by CSI fellows, Skeptical Inquirer articles and other sources that are unique to the skeptic community. Various members of CSI and their editors have favorable Wikipedia pages, while their paranormal and parapsychology counterparts are either omitted or their Wikipedia pages contain a lot of skepticism. This type of editing is literally their mission.

Guerrilla Skeptics = The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

If one needed further proof of the connection, one needs to look no farther than the Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine of CSI. Gerbic writes for it and they have a page for her. She’s described as their Wikipediatrian. It’s safe to say that her views and theirs align.

The result is that there’s a never ending stream of edits to paranormal articles on Wikipedia that all look like they were written by people from the same group with the same agenda. It might be acceptable if it was all out in the open, but the fact that it’s being organized by a group that claims to be benign, but collaborates in secrecy creates serious credibility problems for Wikipedia.

Their secrecy is a double edged sword. On the one hand they have plausible deniability, but on the other hand there is absolutely no reason to trust anything Gerbic says. “We operate in total secrecy, but you can trust us.” is not convincing to any objective party.

Fair Minded Scholarship is Missing From Wikipedia

For many of these articles, particularly for anything related to parapsychology, there are a number of knowledgeable people who could contribute sufficient documentation to balance the articles, but have been shut out of the process. They have run into coordinated efforts that rebuffed their attempts and in some cases, kicked them off Wikipedia, solely for scholarly disagreement. They are simply shut out of the process. I documented a couple of these cases in my book, and I know of others.

You have to be organized to do that. It takes several people working together to kick someone off that platform. And the only organization that exists on Wikipedia with the means and the motivation is the Guerrilla Skeptics. It would also partly explain why they operate in secrecy because ganging up to kick people off the platform for the kind of disagreement that is supposed to be a normal part of the Wikipedia process is frowned upon, to say the very least.

Wikipedia Can be Fixed

All of this could be fixed with a couple of changes to how Wikipedia is edited.

1. Require people to use their verified real name to edit. So many problems can be solved by just this one thing. When people are tethered to their online behavior, they tend to be less obnoxious.
2. Ranking by real world expertise. Once Wikipedia limits people to using their real names, they can be ranked by their real world expertise and removed from discussions where they have nothing important to contribute. If an area has a governing body, they have the final say. Encyclopedia articles are supposed to tell you about the subject matter and the best people to do that are those that are experts in that field. True experts generally know what the evidence is, both for and against their subject.

Do those two things and many of Wikipedia’s worst problems will go away. People with actual expertise will be able to edit and trolls will be powerless to stop them.

Paranormal Science: Where Ghosts And Psychics Fit In

One of the truly fascinating things about the Internet and the vast sharing of information that comes with it, is the ability to see how various people imagine science to be. Almost invariably, it’s wrong. Very few people it seems, outside of academia, truly understand what science is or even how it works. And this is important for understanding how science relates to the paranormal.

So here is your ordinary person’s guide to science.

Philosophy of Science

We begin with the philosophy of science. Why? Because science is a branch of philosophy. Before you can do science, you have to first agree on what it is. That’s philosophy. Ultimately, science is an agreement that the study of the natural world requires special rules for evidence. You can trace this all the way back to Ancient Greece and a philosopher named Aristotle.

He recognized that measuring things was the only way to create truly objective knowledge and that reasoning about the physical world must come from real world findings. Up until this time, there were those who believed that all knowledge could be gained through pure reasoning.

Creating scientific categories, such as biology, physics, psychology, parapsychology, zoology and botany, for example, is part of the philosophy of science.

You need philosophy to determine what a scientific theory is. The philosopher Karl Popper suggested that theories needed to be falsifiable to be scientific. That means that if there is no conceivable way to prove the theory wrong, it’s not a scientific theory.

So I say that the moon is made of cheese. We can test that theory by visiting the moon. If I say that the moon is actually a goddess, there is no conceivable way to test for that, so the theory, -whether it is correct or not-, is not scientific.

While there are some issues here, the basic idea is sound. A theory that is incapable of ever being proven wrong isn’t really a theory. (The Multiverse theory falls into this category. It’s forever un-provable.) This concept is important for understanding where science and paranormal science meet, and where they do not.

Science is Not Truth, It’s About What You Can Measure

A very important fact about science is that it is not the arbiter of truth. Science is about what we can measure and our idea about how things work can change with new information. If you can’t measure it, then science has nothing to say on the subject. Consciousness, for example, surely exists, you cannot experience reality without it, but it cannot be directly measured. Since you need consciousness to study consciousness, we can never have a truly objective view of it.

Emotions are not measurable and neither is pain, but no one can argue that they don’t exist. You and I exist mentally as unique humans, but science cannot observe our mental uniqueness directly. We can’t objectively observe inside another person’s mind.

We have to acknowledge that our most fundamental reality is our own experiences (aka “qualia”). These experiences are the only reality we will ever know. It is as close to truth as we will ever come. Science is when we examine those experiences closely, measure them, and form a collective agreement about them.

We have our personal memories and history itself, which we can never revisit and study except through what exists in the present. They affect us in the present and, in some cases, long into the future, yet they are beyond measurement.

My point here is that we’ve been taught to think of science as being synonymous with reality, but it can only describe things that are measurable and there is far more to reality than that even without delving into the paranormal. There is reality that is not measurable, but still exists.

Personal Experience Overrides Science

Science is ultimately just one way to gain knowledge. Personal experience, for example, teaches us far more than we could ever gain through science alone. Personal experience is such a powerful arbiter of truth for us, that it rightly (or wrongly) will override whatever we learn through science. If science says that something doesn’t exist, and we experience it directly, we typically don’t question our personal experience, we toss out the scientific opinion.

It’s important to remember that science is made up of people documenting specific personal experiences in a controlled way according to a particular format and then other people agreeing that their personal experiences doing very similar tasks had much the same results. This is done through experiments, peer review and publishing in scientific journals.

Listen Now

Naturally, some people have experiences that go beyond the norm of what most people experience. The experiences typically are neither measurable and nor replicable, so they fall outside the realm of science. But this doesn’t mean that they’re not real; only that we can’t independently confirm them. Just because you can’t study something scientifically, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. If you don’t understand that distinction, you don’t understand science.

The paranormal falls into a gray area between what’s measurable and what’s not. That’s why it’s referred to as paranormal and not normal. Maybe you can measure it, maybe you can’t.

Now that we’ve gotten past the theory, it’s time to move on to what happens in practice.

The Types of Sciences

Science typically take two forms: investigative, and lab work.

Investigative science typically involves subjects that can’t study as experiments. You can’t bring a volcano into a lab, nor study an indigenous tribe that way. Most anything involving field work, like archaeology, can’t be done as an experiment because the environment in which the phenomena take place either makes that impossible or it is part of the context.

Likewise, you can’t study ghosts, poltergeists and hauntings outside their environment. They are typically tied to a location and can’t be studied and replicated like a lab experiment.

Surveys are investigative science.

And then you lab experiments. This is the image most of us have of science. A typical scenario goes like this: a scientist proposes a project and seeks funding. Once the funding is acquired, a study is performed, the results are written up and it is submitted to a scientific journal that specializes in that subject. Typically two other scientists from the field are requested to review the study, some back and forth dialog happens, corrections are made and if the study passes their review, the journal publishes the study. Voilà, science.

This is what parapsychology is. The paranormal is studied through lab experiments and confirmed through replications. It’s not exciting and the effects are small, but this is where the knowledge base is grounded and legitimacy is created.

But life is rarely that simple and you have to take into account how the real world operates to understand the difference between the idealized version of science and the real deal.

The Political Side

Science, like the rest of the world, follows the money. Most research normally occurs in areas where the most money can be made. Right now, for example, that’s batteries. There is a great deal of money to be made for the team that comes up with the first easily mass-produced, inexpensive, lightweight battery that makes an electric car price competitive with gas — powered vehicles. The promise of profit means that this area of research is mostly investor funded.

Less Funding For Psi and Parapsychology

As you get into more esoteric areas, there is less funding to be had, and most of it comes in the form of grants, funded by governments and if it’s even more esoteric, it generally gets funded by private endowments and grants. Parapsychology is very esoteric with a near zero chance of profits being made. It is also marginalized because of existing prejudices, so grant money is hard to come by.

In academia, where most original research occurs, you have a relatively large group of people trying for a limited pot of money. Because of this, science gets very political. The HIPPO rule is usually in effect, (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), meaning that your status matters more than your idea when you are applying for a grant. The higher the status, the more likely that your request will be granted. The thinking goes that the people who have been the most successful in the past have the best chance of success in the future. This also means that proven ideas that are expanded are far more likely to get funding than original ideas with no background of success.

But that is not the whole story. There is a tug of war between making sure that proven research continues to get funding and allowing novel research to introduce new ideas and concepts.

Nobody Ever Got Famous for a Replication

Reputations are made on successful new research, not replications and discovering dead ends, so you’ll find a whole boatload of new research with supposedly positive results and relatively few replications. This has led to an endless parade of small published studies that are highly regarded, but have never been replicated or whose results could have been random. The worse offenders have been in psychology and medicine, but this has affected other disciplines as well.

There’s nothing nefarious happening here; there is no attempt to deceive, (mostly,) rather, it’s just how the pressure of publish or perish works. An experiment might yield a lot of different data and then the researcher, (with their reputation on the line) in looking through it and trying to find something important, commits a type one error, -they find a positive result where there is really just random noise-. Basically, if you comb through enough data, something is going to achieve significance merely by chance. Peer review doesn’t always catch this kind of problem.

There are other problems that can occur, which I won’t get into, but the message here is clear: don’t believe everything you read about research findings.

Paranormal Research

One of the things I’ve always liked about parapsychology and paranormal research in general is that, because of the negative attitudes toward it and the lack of financial rewards, the field naturally weeds out people who aren’t genuinely curious. It is a field of innovative, independently — minded people who want to put out good research. It’s why parapsychology leads all other sciences by a wide margin in the percentage of double — blinded experiments.

Science isn’t Pure

Science is a messy process filled with human frailty that sometimes reveals truth, but just as often just brings up more questions. If you need to know about the functioning of our natural world, that is literally what science does. But once you move to the larger questions of the nature of our existence, you find yourself interacting with the paranormal. There the rules change and we find ourselves dealing with the line between the measurable and that which will always challenge scientific attempts at understanding.

Embrace science in all its glory, but pay attention to its limitations as well. It is not the final arbiter of our reality.