Steve Taylor, Ph.D.
> Psi and Science: Why do some scientists refuse to consider
the evidence for psi phenomena?
Steve Taylor, Ph.D., is senior lecturer
in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of
several best-selling books, including The Leap and Spiritual
Science.
Posted June 17, 2022 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan
Key points
- In a 2018 survey, over half of a sample of Americans
reported a psi experience; a 2022 Brazilian survey revealed 70% had
a precognitive dream.
- Some scientists will not engage with the evidence
for psi due to scientism.
- The ideology of "scientism" is often associated
with science, but leads to a lack of open-mindedness, which is contrary
to true science
Psi phenomena, like telepathy and
precognition, are controversial in academia. While a minority of academics
(such as me) are open-minded about them, others believe that they
are pseudo-scientific and that they can’t possibly exist because
they contravene the laws of science.
However, the phenomena are much less controversial to the general
public. Surveys show significant levels of belief in psi. A survey
of 1200 Americans in 2003 found that over 60% believed in extrasensory
perception.(1)
This high level of belief appears to stem largely from experience.
In a 2018 survey, half of a sample of Americans reported they had
an experience of feeling "as though you were in touch with someone
when they were far away." Slightly less than half reported an
experience of knowing “something about the future that you had
no normal way to know” (in other words, precognition). Just
over 40% reported that they had received important information through
their dreams.(2)
Interestingly, a 2022 survey of over 1000 Brazilian people found higher
levels of such anomalous experiences, with 70% reporting they had
a precognitive dream at least once.(3)
This may imply that such experiences are more likely to be reported
in Brazil, perhaps due to a cultural climate of greater openness.
How can we account for the disconnect between the dismissal of psi
phenomena by some scientists, and the openness of the general population?
Is it that scientists are more educated and rational than other sections
of the population, many of whom are gullible to superstition and irrational
thinking?
I don’t think it’s as simple as
this.
Evidence for Psi
You might be surprised to learn that the evidence
for phenomena such as telepathy and precognition is strong. As I point
out in my book, Spiritual Science,
this evidence has remained significant and robust over a massive range
of studies over decades.
In 2018, American Psychologist published an article
by Professor Etzel Cardeña which carefully and systemically
reviewed the evidence for psi phenomena, examining over 750 discrete
studies. Cardeña concluded that there was a very strong case
for the existence of psi, writing that the evidence was "comparable
to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines."(4)
For example, from 1974 to 2018, 117 experiments were reported using
the "Ganzfeld" procedure, in which one participant attempts
to "send" information about images to another distant person.
An overall analysis of the results showed a "hit rate" many
millions of times higher than chance. Factors such as selective reporting
bias (the so-called "file drawer effect") and variations
in experimental quality could not account for the results. Moreover,
independent researchers reported statistically identical results.(5)
So why do some scientists continue to believe that there is no evidence
for psi? In my view, the explanation lies in an ideology that could
be called "scientism."
Scientism
Scientism is an ideology that is often associated
with science. It consists of a number of basic ideas, which are often
stated as facts, even though they are just assumptions—e.g.,
that the world is purely physical in nature, that human consciousness
is a product of brain activity, that human beings are biological machines
whose behaviour is determined by genes, that anomalous phenomena such
as near-death experiences and psi are unreal, and so on.
Adherents to scientism see themselves as defenders of reason. They
see themselves as part of a historical "enlightenment project"
whose aim is to overcome superstition and irrationality. In particular,
they see themselves as opponents of religion.
It’s therefore ironic that scientism has become a quasi-religion
in itself. In their desire to spread their ideology, adherents to
scientism often behave like religious zealots, demonising unwelcome
ideas and disregarding any evidence that doesn’t fit with their
worldview. They apply their notion of rationality in an extremist
way, dismissing any phenomena outside their belief system as "woo."
Scientifically evidential phenomena such as telepathy and precognition
are placed in the same category as creationism and conspiracy theories.
One example was a response to Eztel Cardeña’s American
Psychologist article (cited above) by the longstanding skeptics
Arthur Reber and James Alcock. Aiming to rebut Cardeña’s
claims of the strong evidence for psi, they decided that their best
approach was not to actually engage with the evidence, but simply
to insist that it couldn’t possibly be valid because psi itself
was theoretically impossible. As they wrote, “Claims made by
parapsychologists cannot be true … Hence, data that suggest
that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology
or improper data analyses.”(6)
A similar strategy was used by the psychologist Marija Brankovic in
a recent paper in The European Journal of Psychology. After
discussing a series of highly successful precognition studies by the
researcher Daryl Bem, she dismisses them because three investigators
were unable to replicate the findings.(7)
Brankovic neglects to mention that there have been 90 other replication
attempts with a massively significant overall success rate, exceeding
the standard of "decisive evidence" by a factor of 10 million.(8)
Beyond Scientism
It’s worth considering for a moment whether
psi really does contravene the laws of physics (or science), as many
adherents to scientism suggest. For me, this is one of the most puzzling
claims made by skeptics. Tellingly, the claim is often made by psychologists,
whose knowledge of modern science may not be deep.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of some of the theories of modern
physics—particularly quantum physics—is aware that reality
is much stranger than it appears to common sense. There are many theories
that suggest that our common-sense view of linear time may be false.
There are many theories that suggest that our world is essentially
“non-local,” including phenomena such as “entanglement”
and “action at a distance.” I think it would be too much
of a stretch to suggest that such theories explain precognition and
telepathy, but they certainly allow for their possibility.
A lot of people assume that if you’re a scientist, then you
must automatically subscribe to scientism. But in fact, scientism
is the opposite of true science. The academics who dismiss psi on
the grounds that it “can’t possibly be true” are
behaving in the same way as the fundamentalist Christians who refuse
to consider the evidence for evolution. Skeptics who refuse to engage
with the evidence for telepathy or precognition are acting in the
same way as the contemporaries of Galileo who refused to look through
his telescope, unwilling to face the possibility that their beliefs
may need to be revised.
References
1. Wahbeh H, Radin D, Mossbridge J, Vieten C, Delorme
A. Exceptional experiences reported by scientists and engineers. Explore
(NY). 2018 Sep;14(5):329-341. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2018.05.002. Epub
2018 Aug 2. PMID: 30415782.
2. Rice TW. Believe It Or Not: Religious and Other
Paranormal Beliefs in the United States. J Sci Study Relig. 2003;42(1):95-106.
doi:10.1111/1468-5906.00163
3. Monteiro de Barros MC, Leão FC, Vallada Filho
H, Lucchetti G, Moreira-Almeida A, Prieto Peres MF. Prevalence of spiritual
and religious experiences in the general population: A Brazilian nationwide
study. Transcultural Psychiatry. April 2022. doi:10.1177/13634615221088701
4. Cardeña, E. (2018). The experimental evidence
for parapsychological phenomena: A review. American Psychologist, 73(5),
663–677. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000236
5. Storm L, Tressoldi P. Meta-analysis of free-response
studies 2009-2018: Assessing the noise-reduction model ten years on.
J Soc Psych Res. 2020;(84):193-219.
6. Reber, A. S., & Alcock, J. E. (2020). Searching
for the impossible: Parapsychology’s elusive quest. American Psychologist,
75(3), 391–399. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000486
7. Brankovic M. Who Believes in ESP: Cognitive and
Motivational Determinants of the Belief in Extra-Sensory Perception.
Eur J Psychol. 2019;15(1):120-139. doi:10.5964/ejop.v15i1.1689
8. Bem D, Tressoldi P, Rabeyron T, Duggan M.
Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous
anticipation of random future events. F1000Research. 2015;4:1188. doi:10.12688/f1000research.7177.2
Fonte: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/out-the-darkness/202206/psi-and-science?fbclid=IwAR0rpkb8-vfYk8O0fq2dk92BBNV4o6DZdHG05xMT-j4tBYOmF9CHR8zndag
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