My point was exactly that AAAS shouldn’t endorse the PA, because they are incompatible in a number of ways.

But what standards do you apply to ‘normal’ psychology? What laboratory tests have been made that can prove what makes a person do something? Rigorous, objective testing of a person’s psyche is impossible – you need to do it without the subject knowing about it.

Statements about parapsychology being real have been controversial for about 100 years (discounting religion entirely), but the experiences are too valuable and too personal to rest on the scientific method.
You have to call a _lot_ of people, and even peoples, basically insane if you claim their experiences are not real. Which is fine with me, btw.

We need to remember that what we call parapsychology today has a history that is far older than the scientific method we demand to verify it. The elements of parapsychology have been interlaced with our consciousness since the first homo sapiens and the attempt to oust it from true knowledge is logically doomed to fail.

Whether or not an argument like this might mean anything in another discussion, you might want to notice that this discussion is not about whether parapsychology is “True Knowledge”, but whether a particular parapsychology association should be given endorsement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Your attempt to depict parapsychology as something somehow outside and superior to “the scientific method”, and your vague apparent connection between parapsychology and some kind of unspecified older [mystical/religious?] concept outside science, therefore doesn’t seem very helpful in this context since you seem to implicitly grant that parapsychology, “True Knowledge” or not, is not science.

If we accept what you say at face value then this seems then to be an argument that the AAAS shouldn’t endorse the PA– if accepting parapsychology means taking sides between the scientific method and [something "far older"], then the AAAS, given who and what they are, are obliged to side with the scientific method.

That said, testing this in a controlled university environment runs counter to the regular facilitation of parapsychological phenomena.

Normally a statement like this is interpreted as evidence parapsychological phenomena don’t exist. If the effect disappears when you try to study it in a rigorous manner, this is a point against the effect, not against the idea of studying things in a controlled setting.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Leave the real frontiers of science to the professionals. We promise not to bother you with any results that might make you uncomfortable.

Of course not; you don’t have any.

What a depressing comment thread. I can only suggest to these people that they get out more if their lives are so empty that they need to live in a fantasy world.

Maybe the burden of proof is too much to bear?

Parapsychology included. It’s been funded. Experiments have been performed. As someone mentioned, the CIA and Army are among those who have sponsored research. Why did they drop their programs? The current debate is not over whether poorly-informed and misguided individuals should be allowed to throw their money away funding further studies, but whether AAAS should lend their respect to such an unproductive field.

I find it very amusing to hear somebody claim this, especially when you have so many areas of physics that have been investigated (for how long?) that never actually lead to anything but dead end theories about explaining the world using “string theory” or “ether.”

String theory has been harshly criticized on precisely those grounds, so to appeal to string theory to escape criticism is counterproductive. There is a noticable difference: string theory is very difficult to test experimentally. In parapsychology, the experiments have been done, and replicable results have failed to appear.

Also, along the lines of Feynman, how exactly have these phenomena been studied?

In parapsychology, typically someone performs an informal, poorly-controlled exploratory study. They find something that interests them. When the experimental controls are tightened sufficiently to eliminate sources of error, including cheating, the results fail to continue. Frequently the proponents continue to insist that the early, poorly-controlled results still count.

So, until the day strolls on by where we have investigated such occurrences thoroughly enough using proper experimentation,

Which in parapsychology was decades ago.

Perhaps there is some unique physical process associated with such events that may not be evident in other studies or situations. Or perhaps,…

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps porcine aeronauts will emanate from one of your bodily orifices. I suggest you establish the existence of the phenomenon before you explore the causes of it.

Not to mention, what are you actually afraid of with these studies?

Raymond is out of rational arguments, and thus is reduced to making erroneous appeals to the emotional state of his opponents. Raymond needs to grow up.

Something to chew on: The End of PEAR

That said, what is important about scientific inquiry into any field, is not to be found in what subject we choose to study, what is vital about the scientific enterprise is the methodology used in our inquiry. In any case, we must be ever vigilant not to compromise the rigor of that inquiry in the service of a preexisting prejudice or wish for a predetermined outcome. Science history is littered with the bad results of imposing on the human mind “premature curiosity satisfaction” by means other than rigorous scientific inquiry.

Yeah, that’s the problem with a lot of modern parapsychological manifestations. They’re icky and feely and rather useless for making money.

Money isn’t god. It’s a tool. We create it and we define it.

http://www.exterminatingangel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=118