The Crisis of Professional Skepticism

https://mitchhorowitz.substack.com/p/the-crisis-of-professional-skepticism

by mathgenius • 12 months ago

65 77 12 months ago

mitchhorowitz.substack.com

itsanaccount4• 12 months ago

I keep reading little mentions, here and there that entire lines of scientific inquiry were quashed over the last century.

As someone who is fascinated by the UFO witnesses coming forward, which I have posted about on this site to standard ridicule, I think theres something to it.

But as a former member of CFI, I am well aware of the number and levels of grifters in the world. So I look forward to that intersection, of impeccable reputation and genuine curiosity in a single person, who decides to ressurect these dead threads of research.

If the 1930s ESP experiments showed anomalies, lets reproduce them and learn something new. Same goes with Townsend Brown's high voltage gravity anomalies. I hope, but I expect to die disappointed.

jemmyw2• 12 months ago

If the 1930s ESP experiments showed anomalies, lets reproduce them and learn something new.

There's not really anything to learn. There's no widespread evidence of ESP going on. The experiments back then were evidence enough that it doesn't exist. Yes, there were statistical anomalies, but perhaps you are misinterpreting the meaning of that phrase? If you roll a dice and get a 6 ten times in a row, and then you roll it more times and show a regression then you had an anomaly. If you continue rolling 6 then it's not an anomaly, it's evidence of something else. In those experiments they got anomalous sixes, but wanted to believe it was evidence so made up a story about ability fading or other explanations.

There are various things that people want to believe, and they'll keep coming up for as long as there are people. We each have so many thoughts and feelings and a long enough life that in our lifetimes there will be a few instances where a thought or feeling circumstantially matches reality in a way that makes us believe something more is going on. Most of the time its probably harmless and not worth getting worked up about. Sometimes it deserves investigation, and when disproof is not heeded, a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams.

inglor_cz4• 12 months ago

"a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams"

That is something I don't believe at all. Humans are emotional beings and some will react by defending whom them perceive as "the underdog speaking truth to power".

All the previous mocking didn't stop the growth of the anti-vaxx movement, for example, up to some serious levels (see also: the current US government). Even ye olde religion is still quite strong in many, regardless of the absurdity of some of its claims.

Looking at this thread, I get the impression that there are many high-IQ and low-EQ individuals who don't get the societal ramifications of being seen as an "establishment asshole sneering down on people".

tpmoney3• 12 months ago

a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams.

I think this is only true if you think scammers are driven by a desire to avoid ridicule or if you think people that have been scammed are likely to respond positively to being ridiculed. As a parallel consideration, look at the current accepted wisdom for talking about online scams. As far as I know, the current consensus is not to ridicule people who have been ensnared by an online scam because it’s likely to get them to dig their heels in harder and more likely to cause them to not speak up if they think they’ve been scammed.

whoknowsidont• 12 months ago

As someone who is fascinated by the UFO witnesses coming forward, which I have posted about on this site to standard ridicule, I think theres something to it.

I mean I wouldn't call it "standard" at this point. The last 3 years the UFO community has made lofty claims and received unprecedented government attention but nothing has come out of it.

Every. Single. Video or piece of evidence has been debunked in a very rigorous scientific sense. The rest have been proven to be literal videos of balloons.

In one hilarious incident for MONTHS the UFO community believed there was a real video of the Malaysian airlines flight being abducted via some type of teleportation technology.

Meanwhile the video had been on the internet for like 10 years and the actual animator had to come and say he had made it himself.

When you compare such grand, extraordinary claims with the outcomes there's no logical choice but to just call the people involved in those circles grifters or Russian assets.

There IS a reason why Newsmax is pushing the UFO stories. And it's not because they're valid.

Quite frankly if I were in poverty and watched how the government treated the lower classes, while it gives unwarranted respect to UFO conspiracy theorists at the highest levels of government it'd lead me to do very drastic things.

And I'm not afraid to say that publicly.

igor472• 12 months ago

Absolutely! The entire UFO phenomenon is just edging its true believers, or like dubstep that takes infinitely long to get to the drop. Always there's something that's about to be revealed or blow the whole thing open, but then it's just more rumors and hearsay and blurry videos of not quite anything.

UltraSane3• 12 months ago

I'm mid forties and I've been hearing about UFOs for as long as I can remember and yet there is absolutely no hard evidence for their existence. Thus I conclude they probably don't exist.

Same logic applies to Bigfoot.

itsanaccount4• 12 months ago

I appreciate you well defining the standard.

spondylosaurus• 12 months ago

I dunno. I can understand OP's point, but in an era where bullshit runs rampant at every level of society, it's hard for me to agree that "We need to hear these guys out" is either a priority or a generally good idea.

joe_the_user• 12 months ago

Yeah, it's extremely hard to get to a serious scientific discussion when field of "ufology" is so filled with grifters.

The main problem I'd see with CSICOP isn't dismissing alien visitor out-of-hand but rather tarring ideas that are merely unusual with the brush of crankdom - for example, I think Martin Gardener was attacking Alfred Korzybsky long ago. I'm not a Korzybskyite but I think his ideas are in no way tied to any super-natural or extra-scientific assertions.

halfcat2• 12 months ago

People are generally decent at knowing something exists, but generally poor at knowing what it is.

This is true for book reviews or UFOs/psychics/whatever. A reader can tell you the book wasn’t good and they’ll give a reason. Usually they’re right that it’s not good, and wrong about why.

The problem here is they’re right that it’s something (it’s not nothing), and probably wrong about the why. But most academic types won’t even acknowledge that it’s not nothing.

I could respect them if they said, “It’s not nothing, but right now the cost to inquire further into that topic is too high and not our area of focus”

lupusreal4• 12 months ago

I think the best approaches are either to ignore it (usually the best approach since their ability to spin bullshit will consume your whole life if you let it), or tackle it with a professional tone. Not to humor it, but to pick it apart logically while keeping a professional tone and abstaining from getting down into the mud with verbal insults.

Tackle it like Mick West. He's my model for skepticism done well.

tpmoney3• 12 months ago

I would ask whether the recent era is marked by more “we need to hear these guys out” style skepticism or more “online atheist” style skepticism. From my perspective, the “online atheist” version seems to have been a much more common one. From the aforementioned “online atheists” to Neil “a new year is just the earth going around the sun and nothing to celebrate” DeGrasse Tyson, to “I fucking love science” facebook feeds that very quickly became political dunking fodder rather than a genuine love of scientific things. From my perspective the current era has been marked by a significant lack of willingness for most people to hear anyone they don’t already agree with out.

A different commenter said something to the effect that the skeptic is not obligated to ignore years of research and contrary evidence. And I agree that they are not obligated to do so. But one can approach that in two ways, one can simply dismiss new claims out of hand because they contradict everything “everyone knows” and have been hashed before. Or one can ask for the evidence and simply hold the claimants to the same standards any “real” science is supposed to be held to. Ask for the evidence, ask for the studies and hold them to the same rigor that their counter evidence was already held to. You might not be obligated to do these things, but doing things you’re not obligated to do is one of those things that makes society run smoother.

The goal of engaging then isn’t to convince the person with the claim, but rather to convince outside observers that the extraordinary claim was given a fair chance to be proven and was not, even with that fair chance. XKCDs “lucky 10,000” idea also applies to “scientific woo”. The “lucky 10,000” will need to be convinced all over again every time, and if they have on the one hand a side with rocky but surface level convincing evidence, and on the other side mere derision and out right dismissal without examining the claims, then it shouldn’t be surprising that more and more people find the bad evidence convincing and the skeptics unconvincing.

tstactplsignore3• 12 months ago

I agree that the balance here is not entirely clear. But I think it's important to not let our perceptions of that balance be influenced by our personal social circles. If you encounter a lot of "online atheist" skeptics in your life, then I think it's important to just note that like, statistically, you're in a bubble. This kind of intense scientific skepticism isn't very common in a world where all sorts of clearly scientifically illiterate ideas poll at very high numbers.

I think there's a third way between "hear them out" and "online atheist", and that's basically a kind and gentle dialogue questioning pseudoscientific ideas while still focusing on trying to make clear the cognitive errors they are likely making.

LLMs are actually pretty good at this [1], which is remarkable, because LLMs are pretty stupid, and rarely knowledgeable about the details or nuances of any particular debate, especially on niche scientific topics. Like Ken Ham would "win" a debate about creationism with chatGPT because he's familiar with all of the tricky creationist arguments about radioisotype dating that ChatGPT isn't. But if we look at why AI typically succeeds in debunking conspiracy theorists when "online atheists" fail, I think it is because AI has infinite patience and respect for the user, where-as any online human debater eventually loses their patience, whether with an individual or over time. Being able to share new information with people while also being patient and respectful is basically this secret but it's just incredibly difficult to a person to do it.

Figuring out how to teach a generation of skeptics that aren't burnt out, jaded, and angry, is probably the secret sauce here to fighting misinformation.

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814

jaybrendansmith• 12 months ago

Right now we have grifters who have taken over the official channels. In the case of vaccines, they are deploying weaponized propaganda at scientists. Right now we need our skepticism, and we need to find a way to inoculate the public against these people who are 'asking questions' and making recommendations while citing fake studies. If anything, we very quickly need a resurgence of skepticism.

me-vs-cat• 12 months ago

The article's point reads to me as less "we need to hear these guys out" and more "be a skeptic without being a cynic". That sounds familiar: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

roenxi• 12 months ago

“I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists,”

It is actually a pretty interesting point to consider deeply. Engaging with people from a position of constructive scepticism does require going in with an open mind that could realistically be changed. However, anyone who has done that once or twice quickly realises that:

1) Most people appear to have avoided thinking critically about any of their beliefs at all. At best they are repeating poorly-understood arguments from other people they respect, at worst they are playing team sports.

2) Many topical problems appear to have been settled decades or centuries ago and people are just not interested in the problems they are professing to be concerned about. This happens a lot in politics; it is wildly unusual for a new topic to come before a legislative body and most policies that make it through the process haven't been thoughtfully assessed in terms of what happened the last time people tried it. The fact that people want to tinker with the laws at all is actually a pretty big tell that the process is weird - the situation a society faces doesn't change so quickly that the laws need to be adjusted every year. It should be a rather rare thing.

It requires a sophisticated understanding of the world and an unusual grasp of empathy to maintain a level of honest scepticism in the face of those two dynamics. Trying to have a conversation about why people believe something just turns up the answer that they do and they don't have any particular reason. Most of the time there isn't anything to discuss or dig in to.

Nevermark2• 12 months ago

Most of the time there isn't anything to discuss or dig in to.

Yes. It took humans centuries, millennia, or a couple hundred millennia, depending on how we think about it, to slowly, as a group of millions of people, develop the systematic checks and filters on our thinking that we call mathematics and science.

The surprise is having inherited that, some of us think checking our own beliefs this way is natural. We are healthy skeptics of ourselves.

That many people honestly (and I believe it is generally honest) don't "get it", don't understand how easy it is, for each of us to fool ourselves, is the unsurprising thing.

We did not evolve to discover solid truths. Just to navigate natural and social environments full of correlations, unlikely ever to be well understood, and statistically survive. Natural "beliefs" were/are simply imprinted correlations, adopted heuristics, or social identification, that upon being fixed, let us stop wasting time rethinking the incomprehensible. The pinnacle of innovation until recently.

CrossVR• 12 months ago

We did not evolve to discover solid truths. Just to navigate natural and social environments full of correlations, unlikely ever to be well understood, and statistically survive.

This is the important part. Evolution prepared us to build and maintain social groups that help us hunt for food and survive. Maintaining that social group is much more important to our nature than our ability for rational thinking.

Thus our rational thinking will readily make way for any beliefs that are required to maintain the social group, even if they are entirely contradictory and easily disproven.

PicassoCTs• 12 months ago

It helps to know how people where as teenagers. Teenagers are having by very nature of the thing in a crisis of faith, in their parents, their school, everything. It shows how you handle the world, when you had your first crisis of doubt. Weather you seek out the destruction of certainty, to wash away everything non-diamond aka science! Or if you for little brittle earthen sandcastles to hide on top because the fear of getting your feet wet is more horrifying, then standing a life long on a crumbling hill on a flooded beach, building your lifes work on a "this has worked before"- heuristics foundation.

keiferski• 12 months ago

This is usually given as a reason for people being dumb, not thoughtful, etc. But I think it’s more of a misreading of what these belief systems (itself a misleading name) are actually doing.

The belief aspect is interpreted by intellectual, argumentative types as the key lynchpin, whereas the actual “believer” (again, loaded language here presuming that belief is central) is a member of the community because it provides social benefits, a sense of meaning in a confusing universe, a connection to their personal ancestry and culture, and so on. The actual belief itself isn’t unimportant, but it’s not the reason why the person is there in the first place.

This is why the approach of atheists critiquing some specific belief of X religion or Y holy book never convinces the religious practitioner (a better word than believer, IMO) of anything. Adopting a belief didn’t get them into the community and critiquing that belief won’t get them out.

As the cybernetic phrase goes, “a system is what it does.” Not what it claims to be doing, or is described as doing by a particular class of people. And that is why skepticism often doesn’t really go anywhere – it’s focusing on the belief and ignoring the vast anthropological and sociological aspects under the surface.

ziofill• 12 months ago

About 20 years ago I used to volunteer for CICAP, the Italian skeptics society. One year we had a big convention with lots of cool speakers. Obviously also some weirdos with wacky ideas showed up at the venue. I will always remember how Marino, one of the senior members, used to interact with them: he didn’t take them seriously, but he made them feel heard. I bet many of them came ready for a “fight” (or to be ridiculed) and they found enough respect to be content and leave in peace.

halfcat2• 12 months ago

This is what made Art Bell’s radio show, Coast to Coast AM, so great. Whether he was a believer or not, he was a great storyteller and took a default position of respect and good intent with every caller. If someone claimed to be a time traveler, well hey that’s big if true, so let’s hear more.

TwoNineFive• 12 months ago

Comparing an Italian skeptics society to a for-profit entertainment radio show is idiotic. These organizations exist for different reasons, have members with different motives, and have completely different audiences.

For every uneducated 1AM unsleeping pleb, like yourself, who treated the ridiculous skeptically, ten more probably took it as fact. That show is probably responsible for a lot of real-world harm, and they made a lot of money doing it.

KennyBlanken• 12 months ago

It should be noted that the author thinks ESP is a Thing, and it's worthy of study / research. They're essentially concern-trolling / no-true-scotsman-ing skeptics - that they're not the right kind of skeptics or occasionally skeptics also did misleading things, and bullied those poor poor ESP researchers and hurt the field of ESP research and that's why we don't hwave any proof ESP is a thing. That a skeptic didn't perfectly skeptic-ize a ESP researcher (or two, or three) doesn't mean ESP research has the slightest legitimacy or value because regardless of a skeptic's methods, the burden of evidence on something as extraordinary as ESP is purely on the researcher claiming ESP exists.

Of James Randi, he complains in another article (which for some reason BoingBoing published...) on his site: "[Randi made] it more difficult for serious university-based and academically trained researchers to study ESP and mental anomalies, and to receive a fair hearing in the news media."

Uh....Yes? That was the point? Randi dedicated his time and energy to debunking shysters. At best they were seeking fame while popularizing paranormal crap and hurting scientific literacy...and at worst taking advantage of people finanically to varying degrees.

TV used to be awash in idiots claiming to be psychic or able to do absurd things like magnetize their bodies with their mind. I remember Randi was on such a show with such a "magnetic" person, watched them stick something metal to their body...then he whips out a container of baby powder, applies it to the guy who claimed to be able to magnetize himself...and wouldn't you know, the "magnetism" disappeared....because the reason something metal stuck to him was because his sweaty skin had enough stiction (and probably using some rosin to 'help') and use a part of their body angled a bit from vertical. And Randi then demonstrates this, showing he can "magnetize" himself, too.

Randi was a magician, saw people abusing lazy/shitty magic to rip people off, and didn't like that. And the world is a better place for it. That he had an ego, or that his methods weren't perfect, or he was too aggressive for the author's taste - is all completely irrelevant.

What's next, complaining that some doctor is an asshole for appearing on TV to refute people claiming ivermectin cures covid, thus making it impossible for people to seriously study ivermectin's covid benefits? Or that they were too aggressive in responding to the shyster?

at_compile_time• 12 months ago

What's next, complaining that some doctor is an asshole for appearing on TV to refute people claiming ivermectin cures covid, thus making it impossible for people to seriously study ivermectin's covid benefits? Or that they were too aggressive in responding to the shyster?

That might not be the best example to use here because the incentives are entirely backwards. The people claiming to have ESP were doing it for fame and money, whereas the scientists and medical professionals claiming that ivermectin was effective for treating COVID were doing it in spite of the professional stigmatisation that came with it. The unscrupulous would have been shilling for pharma as they always have, that's where the money is, not sticking their necks out for some off-patent drug.

jdietrich• 12 months ago

the scientists and medical professionals claiming that ivermectin was effective for treating COVID were doing it in spite of the professional stigmatisation

Many of those people went from earning six figures a year as medical professionals to earning six figures a month as "influencers". Patreon has radically altered the marketplace of ideas, for better and for worse; for those who are unscrupulous or merely deluded, there are now some very attractive alternatives to mainstream legitimacy.

tstactplsignore3• 12 months ago

For the most part you have the financial incentives of pharma backwards... it is very easy to make a killing and because very famous being the kind of doctor or scientist willing to go to bat for pseudoscientific ideas. They get invited to podcasts, make their own podcasts, accrue thousands of followers, get paid to write articles for right-wing think tanks, get easy ghost-written book deals.... and after Trump's election, high-profile positions in the government. This is especially true for people who fail at the normal scientist / doctor career path.

I also don't really think there is any money per se in "shilling" for pharma, at least for like, 99% of doctors and scientists. Pretty much all doctors and scientists I know who dedicated a lot of time to communicating on covid-19, including studying ivermectin, running the trials on it that failed, didn't really get any extra money for doing so. Just a lot of hate mail.

inglor_cz4• 12 months ago

"that his methods weren't perfect ... is all completely irrelevant"

It is relevant if the movement he founded is pedantic about methods of other people. In that case, he should be able to pass his own rigorous muster, applied by others.

andai• 12 months ago

Just wanted to point out that in this comment primarily supported by pointing out logical fallacies, there are several logical fallacies.

tim333• 12 months ago

Thanks. I was puzzled about what the article was about and why it waffled on so. I guess "I kinda believe in ESP and think the skeptics are mean" wouldn't have got many readers.

ceckGrad8• 12 months ago

Randi dedicated his time and energy to debunking shysters.

That's not how I see Randi. I see him as a profoundly dishonest person who claimed to be doing debunking when in fact he was not.

Debunking is great, but it requires actual attention and critique. Randi customarily dismissed weird claims and claimed that they had "failed his test." In fact he had not tested them; he had not done anything more than glance at them and toss the letters in his outbox or his trash.

For example, it is very weird to claim a human can go indefinitely without food. If presented as a miracle, this claim is called "inedia." Randi received letters from presumably delusional or dishonest people who claimed to be able to live without food in a miraculous sense. Randi claimed that he had debunked these claims but he never investigated them. If he had actually taken the trouble to debunk these claims, he would have been a real debunker. Because he dismissed the claims out of hand and declared victory, he was a charlatan. Randi was very willing to have CSICOP collect donations for his cause, but he did very little actual debunking.

If an honest debunker -- someone like Feynman -- had been approached by such a claim, Feynman would have met the claimant, said a lot of rude things, and written something informative. He might have actually taken some numerical measurements. That is the sort of debunking I would pay money for.

On very rare occasions, Randi tried to do some real debunking. The results were not what I would call satisfactory. His colleagues at CSICOP (later CSI) were a little more diligent, but not very good at debunking. An example is the Demkina case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Demkina

CSI/CSICOP was supposed to be providing a team of experts, but they bumbled around like the Keystone Cops. CSICOP, to me, seems to have the same problem as allegedly "Christian" churches -- the preachers talk a lot, claim to embrace lofty ideals, collect monetary donations, and nothing useful happens. I don't believe these self-proclaimed "Christians" are worthy of the name -- why would I believe that self-proclaimed "skeptics" are worthy of the name?

ceckGrad8• 12 months ago

Randi dedicated his time and energy to debunking shysters.

A lot of people informally call Randi himself a "shyster." But if you mean "shyster" in a legal sense, the only "shyster" Randi spent time and energy on was Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga.

When you say "shyster" you are using loaded, ambiguous language. A scholar would define his terms more clearly. You are probably referring to people like Uri Geller, who are semi-public figures that make money by making claims that are hard/impossible to verify through respectable channels. You might center your definition of "shyster" on Uri Geller or some other public figure.

I don't want to put words in your mouth. I would truly love to see your definition of "shyster," and refer to the professional community that accepts your definition. Then I would ask the professionals why Randi himself does not fit the description of "shyster."

If you believe (first) that people like Uri Geller are shysters and (second) that Randi made the world a better place by harassing people like Uri Geller, you can provide a definition of "shyster" that can be referred to the appropriate professional body -- perhaps the American Bar Association or the I.C.E.

lutusp4• 12 months ago

This kind of misinformation is often recycled in journalism and reference literature [ ... ]

Including this article, whose preferred outlook quickly becomes clear. This can all be resolved by objective research programs having strong controls and a high bar of statistical significance (much higher than P = 0.05). Speaking hypothetically, of course.

My sympathies for parapsychology are self-evident.

This should be the first sentence in the article, not nearly the last, buried in the footnotes.

The article tries to say that, because of bad actors, parapsychology research has failed to resolve basic scientific issues. This is false. Bad actors on both sides notwithstanding, an evidence vacuum continues to draw air away, leaving room only for breathless argument.

pogue3• 12 months ago

Are there any universities or mainstream organizations that are still considering or studying parapsychology in any way?

lutusp4• 12 months ago

Apparently so (https://library.ctstate.edu/c.php?g=1318271&p=9694905). The link includes some obviously pseudoscientific projects, as though the list was meant to ridicule the field.

A Google search for "recent parapsychology research programs" lists any number of loony projects that seem designed to make the field look absurd.

ceckGrad8• 12 months ago

I don't know whether IONS is mainstream; it is not a university. It is at:

https://noetic.org/about/origins/

Rupert Sheldrake is certainly not mainstream, but he has earned quite a few academic qualifications:

https://www.sheldrake.org/about-rupert-sheldrake/biography

However, any organization that dares to mention parapsychology as worthy of study puts a target on its back. The people who imitate Randi will automatically label it as too far outside the mainstream to be taken seriously.

Parapsychology is not my field of academic credentials, so I will not be taking up the cudgels to defend it -- or Mitch Horowitz-- here. However, skepticism and logic are supposed to be within my bailiwick, so I ought to take up the cudgels against those who present illogic as logic and those who decry logic as illogic. Mitch Horowitz is not exactly a legendary logician, but Randi was a positively harmful influence on logic, so I feel justified in pointing out that Randi was a force for irrationality.

igor472• 12 months ago

If you're actually interested in skepticism, I recommend the podcast Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU). James Randi was a good friend of the hosts. The show mainly is a discussion of general science news from a skeptical lens. Their attitude towards the paranormal stuff is pretty dismissive, but this is because they've engaged with the believers for decades and have discovered a complete disregard for evidence or truth in those communities.

I also really the movie "behind the curve", which goes deep into the flat earth movement. Really a great way to understand what motivates these people (status in their community, mostly) and how they think (with lots of bias).

shusaku• 12 months ago

James Randi was a good friend of the hosts.

Maybe not a timely recommendation after reading an article that says

James Randi (1928–2020), whose career I considered in my October 26, 2020, article “The Man Who Destroyed Skepticism.”

mistercow3• 12 months ago

OK, so this author doesn’t like James Randi. So what? We’re discussing in a thread about his post, so his word is gospel?

lupusreal4• 12 months ago

Reasonably good article. I don't agree that Randi was wrong to be dismissive of so called "academic" purveyors of parapsychology, but do agree that his belligerence and general methods were a problem. Coining catchy insults based on rhymes of people's names is just schoolyard bullying, it has nothing to do with skepticism but thanks in part to Randi this kind of infantile belligerence became synonymous with skepticism.

This kind of association is why I usually tell people that I'm "not religious" instead of an atheist. When I describe myself as an atheist people recoil and brace themselves, as though I've just thrown down a challenge and announced my intent to sperg out and start throwing insults. An association they've learned from experience, as I've seen it done myself more times than I can count.

Animats3• 12 months ago

Mandatory XKCD.[1]

If any of this stuff worked, there would be commercial applications by now.

[1] https://xkcd.com/808/

inglor_cz4• 12 months ago

This is a bit simplified.

Volcanos work, too, but there are no commercial applications of them, even though the energy contained within could power entire cities for years.

Even with known and proven natural phenomena of smaller dimensions than volcanos, harnessing them is a huge challenge. It was proven that some people can smell Parkinson's [1], and this is probably caused by changes in the sebum (skin oils) of the patient. There are likely other potential diagnoses by smell (lung cancer [2], infections [3]), but despite reading about future electronical noses for about a decade, there are none deployed in clinical settings.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/07/woman-who-ca...

[2] respiratory-research.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12931-021-01835-4

[3] https://news.ki.se/detecting-disease-by-smell

mistercow3• 12 months ago

I would argue that home owners insurance is a commercial application of volcanos. No, it doesn’t harness them, but if you live somewhere that could potentially be affected by an eruption, your insurance company is paying attention to the science in figuring out how to cover that risk.

gus_massa• 12 months ago

Geothermal energy is close to harvesting volcanoes, at least understanding the magma and heat flow.

ceckGrad8• 12 months ago

If any of this stuff worked, there would be commercial applications by now

Criticism A: Lots of people claim to have made money off dowsing/clairvoyance for mineral exploration. Debunking them is nontrivial. McMoneagle would be a tough nut to crack.

Criticism B: If an oil company is using an alleged clairvoyant such as McMoneagle, they are not likely to be candid and are not likely to cooperate with debunkers.

Criticism C: The market is frequently unfair and genuine working inventions don't always get to market.

inglor_cz4• 12 months ago

Interesting. During my life, I met two "belligerent skeptic" types, who, as mentioned in this essay, were more interested in personal attacks than anything else.

Both came from families where they were force-fed religion at young age and this was their method of revenge.

While I understand their motivation, it is a "two wrongs don't make a right" situation. Creating an emotional association "science == assholes" is already backfiring on us quite hard.

pogue3• 12 months ago

I got about half way through the article and wasn't sure what I was reading, or if it was worth my time so I had Perplexity summarize it for me [1].

Tbh, from the title I had expected it to be how skeptics were dealing with living in a post truth world under a Trump presidency, but it's in regards to the paranormal & 'parapsychology'.

[1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/summarize-this-article-for-...

mjburgess• 12 months ago

Neither parapsychology, nor any science, can thrive without them.

This is an absurd article. Scepticism is not the psychological disposition to treat the increasingly implausible with the same equanimity as the increasingly plausible. The sceptic is under no obligation to ignore decades or centuries of science, nor be partisan to no established body of knowledge.

Sceptics are at their very best profoundly partisan to such bodies of knowledge, and at the same time, very mindful and knowledgeable about their limitations. Otherwise scepticism is just paranoia or gullibility.

This is an article in praise of gullibility as the highest form of scepticism, a very common attempted rebuke to sceptics when one has failed to meet the reasonable standard of evidence they demand.

It is also a subtle ad-hom, it says, "look at some of the mild hubris and minor moral failures of some particular sceptics" whilst sneaking its way to, "Neither parapsychology, nor any science, can thrive without them.". As if there is a connection.

The principled and knowlegable sceptic, who is not credulous nor obnoxious, not paranoid nor overly trusting -- this is a person in 2025 who would give no time to "parapsychology" because of the decades of time already given, to great effect. There is no science there, no truth, nothing.

ceckGrad8• 12 months ago

Scepticism is not the psychological disposition to treat the increasingly implausible with the same equanimity as the increasingly plausible.

Okay, maybe that is a fair description of skepticism, but you're stating it as if you're an authority. I don't know that you're an authority on skepticism.

The sceptic is under no obligation to ignore decades or centuries of science, nor be partisan to no established body of knowledge.

I don't think there is any authority figure who can say what skeptics are obliged to do or not to do.

Sceptics are at their very best profoundly partisan to such bodies of knowledge,

I have no reason to believe you know what the "best" sort of skeptic is.

This is an article in praise of gullibility as the highest form of scepticism, a very common attempted rebuke to sceptics when one has failed to meet the reasonable standard of evidence they demand.

I don't think you are reading the article correctly. I don't expect you to justify your interpretation to me, but I wonder whether you have a method to justify your interpretations to anybody. Maybe you are a very systematic and logical debunker, and you can justify your debunking calculations to your peers. If that is so, you should be a university professor or a think-tank principal investigator. You could share your debunking methods with the world that needs them.

It is also a subtle ad-hom,

I think you are misreading that.

The principled and knowlegable sceptic, who is not credulous nor obnoxious, not paranoid nor overly trusting -- this is a person in 2025 who would give no time to "parapsychology"

Well, maybe you really are qualified to decide which skeptics are principled and well-informed. If you really are qualified, you should be teaching others to be skeptics. If your methods really are so foolproof, you could purge the world of superstition.

But maybe you are not qualified to speak as if you were an authority on who is a skeptic and what methods are skeptical methods.

raffael_de• 12 months ago

  "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

- Book of Bokonon

alan-crowe• 12 months ago

What I found most interesting in the article was the frank acknowledgement by J B Rhine that Walter Levy, director of the Institute for Parapsychology was committing fraud.

I view research into parapsychology with a background assumption that I understand the motivation. Reductionist materialism suggests that death is the end. Parapsychology may imply the existence of souls, a spiritual realm, life after death, and maybe the chance of heaven. What wonderful balm for existential angst!

Does this make me doubt research into parapsychology? No, quite the opposite. A researcher can only soothe the pain of existential angst with genuine results. If they fake the research, they know that they faked it, and it provides no consolation. My take is that I cannot dismiss positive results in parapsychology as fraud.

Grifters are real. It is possible in principle that researchers in parapsychology are faking results with an eye to making money selling pills that "boost your ESP". I think that I am able to spot and dismiss grifts without difficulty, and that it is not what is at issue here.

But now I learn that I'm wrong. Walter Levy's results are fake. I have to flip from modus ponens to modus tollens. Instead of saying "I understand the motivation, therefore Levy's results are genuine", I have to say "Levy's results are fake, therefore I don't understand the motivation".

I'm in a pickle. A central principle of how I understand the world is that fraud is motivated. No motive, no fraud. Now what? Since there is motiveless fraud, much of what I thought I knew about the world is on shaky ground.

matthewdgreen• 12 months ago

The nature of faith is that you believe without proper evidence; the only problem is that sometimes other people choose to (improperly) lack faith, and you need to help them.

conartist6• 12 months ago

My form of skepticism is just waiting for proof. Happy to wait. Costs me nothing. Just get the proof from your hands to mine without it vanishing into smoke.

I think software engineering opens the mind a little to being willing to believe things that should be impossible. Some of my bugs are certainly ghost stories: "...and the programmer never figured out how something that weird could be happening!" Others have pushed me to the brink of questioning my own sanity, only to have it all snap back into place when the explanation is finally laid bare.

While I have no particular reason to "believe in ESP" it is impossible not to recognize the very real state it puts a person in to have seen some kind of evidence that nobody else will believe, and I don't necessarily see any reason to suppose that someone somewhere in this psychic card testing didn't see evidence of some real information transfer effect. But what effect?

We know beyond doubt that people can pick up on perceptual signals without really understanding what we're picking up on. I once had the strange experience of "seeing" a cat in pitch black because I was creeping up some stairs and the cat was a few feet directly in front of my head. I'll swear to you up and down that I never saw it with my eyes, though I couldn't say for sure. I'm convinced that I actually heard it, not even its breathing but the lack of any ambient room noise coming from directly in front of me caused an immediate cognitive dissonance in some part of my brain that knew nothing should be there to absorb sound. In the immediate moment this led to my knowing something irretrievably that at the time I really could not say how I knew. But also I was blessed with proof. I reached out, and there was a cat there.

I guess my point is that the most logical explanation to me is that in a card-guessing experiment you have two players who keep careful records but who both want the guessing game to be won by the guesser. You're allowed to keep playing with different guessers and to keep practicing the game until you get results, so it's logical to me that you should eventually find a guesser with whom you build a rapport, and who becomes able to pick up on impossibly small clues that the clue-giver does not know they are giving and the guesser does not know they are receiving. Nothing about my skepticism of supernatural claims prevents me thinking a guesser could develop an outside-logic means of perception that could explain those kinds of results.

The Crisis of Professional Skepticism

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