Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

Last edited Sat Dec 10, 2011, 02:16 PM - Edit history (1)

I remember reading the book by Puthoff and Targ about their experiments in remote viewing. They were published in scientific journals like Nature. (They had me pretty well convinced.)

Randi explains in his expose, that scientists are not expecting the amount of bamboozling on the part of claimants. This is illustrated somewhat by the way magicians fool audiences because they have difficulty imagining how much effort is being put into fooling them.

I have had a few people that attempted to cold read me. It probably works on many people, but I can spot the technique and trip them up. You, OTOH, may take the opportunity to get reacquainted with dead ancestors.

CSICOP long ago changed to CFI, and I am a member, and most of the daily controversy is with homeopaths and anti-vaccers. I know Randi, and I know that the $1M challenge is real, and that he has been wanting to drop it for some time, as the frauds avoid it, and most of the applicants are truly deluded people, so it's rather sad. (Exceptions are the dowsers. They design their own test, fail it, and then rationalize the failure.)

Evolutionary scientists have been fooled many times. They are certainly mare wary of fraudulent fossils than they were for Piltdown man.

Your rant against "pseudo-skeptics" requires some sort of backup. What evidence has been ignored? What do you have except, "Mysteries are mysterious."?

On edit: Looked at reports about that ranch. What about that ranch makes any reports of UFOs, sasquatches, orbs, portals, mutilations, or spirits, more credible without evidence? Or more immune to the antithetical arguments they generate?

--imm