Although parapsychology has been studying paranormal phenomena for over 130 years, currently it exists mainly at the fringes of scientific institutions. Mainstream science largely ignores psi, e.g. physics textbooks make no mention of the possibility that mental events might influence physical objects at a distance and science funding agencies generally will not financially support parapsychology research (Alcock, 1987).[1]
Naturally parapsychologists object to this state of affairs and the authors of the opinion piece (Cardeña, 2014) “call for an open, informed study” of the subject. However, they do not explain what specifically prompted such a call at this particular time. Signatories to the piece include such mainstream psychology notables as Daryl Bem and Phil Zimbardo, as well as researchers into more fringe oriented topics like Dean Radin and David Luke[2]. The article starts off, apparently quite reasonably, arguing that scientists need to consider all evidence in an open-minded manner and “recognise that scientific knowledge is provisional and subject to revision.” This is in contrast to deciding things dogmatically or by appeal to authority figures. No argument from me so far. The author then goes on to bemoan the fact that purported phenomena such as telepathy and precognition have not been embraced by mainstream science. A set of claims is then made to the effect that parapsychology is a valid science and that there is evidence to support the existence of psi. Skeptics on the other hand argue that they find the evidence unconvincing because attempts to reliably replicate initially successful psi experiments have had a history of repeated failure. This is not to say that no effects have ever been replicated, rather that replication results have been inconsistent and contradictory.
What exactly the author and the signatories hope to achieve by publishing this article is not entirely clear. However, the following statement provides some clues: “This research has continued for over a century despite the taboo against investigating the topic, almost complete lack of funding, and professional and personal attacks” (emphasis added). Lack of funding and professional and personal attacks I can well believe. Funding bodies have limited resources and so may have good reasons for declining to fund a field they consider unpromising. Professional and personal attacks, however regrettable, occur in many fields of endeavor, and are hardly unique to parapsychology. But claiming that there is an actual taboo against investigating the topic is a very puzzling one indeed for which the article offers no evidence.[3] In fact, the article actually cites survey evidence to the effect that only a minority of scientists dismiss parapsychology as pseudoscience or an illegitimate area of study. If this is correct, then how could parapsychology actually be taboo? Does this minority group of parapsychology-deniers have some special veto power that they can impose on the majority?
Taboo implies that investigating the topic is strictly forbidden and that anyone who dares to defy the taboo can expect severe punishment. This is a pretty serious charge, as it implies that mainstream scientists have actively prohibited curious investigators from studying the subject with an open mind, contrary to the whole spirit of scientific inquiry. Some parapsychologists have gone so far as to accuse mainstream scientists of being prejudiced against the subject or even having an irrational fear of psi. A Google search of “parapsychology taboo” reveals that this claim is not new and has been widely repeated by parapsychologists. Dean Radin, one of the article’s signatories, in particular once gave a lecture called “Science and the taboo of psi” in which he claims flatly that “This taboo has been sustained for over 100 years.” (About 4:35 in the video.) He also states that “it is extremely difficult to get accurate reporting of this topic in the science media”[4] and implies that the media selectively reports only studies that disconfirm parapsychology but is strangely silent about ones that validate it. A few years after Radin’s lecture, Daryl Bem’s (2011) paper that claimed to provide evidence that people can “feel the future” received an enormous amount of media attention (e.g. in Discover magazine[5]). Perhaps parapsychology is no longer so “taboo” as it was a few years ago? Alternatively, maybe it never was taboo in the first place. The fact that mainstream science tends not to take parapsychology seriously is not proof of an irrational taboo, as scientists may have good reasons for being unconvinced of its claims. Cardeña and company enjoin sceptics to consider the evidence with an open mind, so it would be helpful to examine just what evidence there is that parapsychology has ever been a taboo topic.
According to Alcock (1987), when parapsychology research began in the 1880’s, a number of prominent psychologists, such as Pierre Janet and William James, along with scientists from other fields, were involved in looking for evidence of paranormal phenomena and psychical research societies were set up in France, America and Britain. The Fourth International Congress of Psychology held in 1900 in Paris had an entire section devoted to psychical research and spiritualism. Much of this research focused on investigating the alleged powers of spiritualist mediums, many of whom turned out to be frauds. As a result, many psychologists eventually lost interest in the subject.
Parapsychology attracted attention again in the 1930’s with the pioneering experimental research into ESP by JB Rhine at Duke University. A 1938 poll of psychologists found that 89% of them thought that the study of psi was a legitimate scientific exercise (Alcock, 1989). I suppose they were not aware that this was supposed to be a taboo subject. Unfortunately, methodological problems in Rhine’s studies were exposed that invalidated his conclusions, and psi research failed to gain mainstream scientific support.
Parapsychology received mainstream attention in the 1960’s and 70’s. In 1969, the Parapsychology Association became an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The AAAS is a well-respected international institution of mainstream science, rather than some fringe organisation. (It is worth noting that a 1982 survey found that only 4% of 339 of “elite” scientists in the AAAS thought that ESP had been scientifically established (Alcock, 1987).) More tellingly, in 1974, Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, agreed to publish a paper by Targ and Puthoff (1974), which presented results of a series of experiments apparently showing evidence of paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance and remote viewing. Several of these experiments used the now notorious Uri Geller as their test subject. This paper was preceded by an editorial ("Investigating the paranormal," 1974) which noted a number of shortcomings of the paper identified by the peer reviewers, such as weaknesses in design and presentation, “uncomfortably vague” details about the safeguards and precautions against conscious and unconscious fraud, and the criticism that the paper seemed more “a series of pilot studies… than a report of a completed experiment.” The editors go on to say that in spite of these criticisms, two of the three reviewers of the paper felt that it should be published because it was a serious attempt to “investigate under laboratory conditions phenomena which, while highly implausible to many scientists, would nevertheless seem to be worthy of investigation even if, in the final analysis, negative findings are revealed.” The editor goes on to explain that although Nature is a highly respected journal, they occasionally publish “high-risk” papers, and that “the unusual must now and then be allowed a toe-hold in the literature, sometimes to flourish, more often to be forgotten within a year or two.”
What the quotes from the editorial show is that the editors and reviewers of one of the world’s most highly respected journals, far from demonstrating dogmatic prejudice against a “taboo” topic, went out of their way to be open-minded and allow informed discussion of a controversial topic, even though it was regarded by many scientists as “highly implausible” and the paper itself was methodologically flawed.
A similar incident occurred again in 2011, when Daryl Bem, one of the signatories to the Frontiers article claiming that parapsychology is taboo, published his paper on precognition (Bem, 2011) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This journal is considered the flagship publication in its field, and news of this paper generated an enormous media response, even before it was officially published. Once again, the editors of the journal were moved to write an editorial explaining the reasons why such a paper was accepted and included this statement:
Yet again, the editors of a respected mainstream journal have gone out of their way to ensure that parapsychological research receives a fair and informed hearing, even though in this case the editors acknowledge that they find the reported findings very hard to believe. Admittedly, it is a rare event for papers on parapsychology research to be published in such top-tier journals. However, the fact remains that they were published. Alcock (1987) also notes that between 1950 and 1987 over 1500 parapsychological papers were abstracted in Psychological Abstracts, which is published by the American Psychological Association. Research on the subject has hardly been suppressed by the mainstream then.We openly admit that the reported findings conflict with our own beliefs about causality and that we find them extremely puzzling. Yet, as editors we were guided by the conviction that this paper—as strange as the findings may be—should be evaluated just as any other manuscript on the basis of rigorous peer review. (Judd & Gawronski, 2011)
In summary, the claim by Cardeña and colleagues that investigating parapsychology has been taboo, and Dean Radin’s claim that “this taboo has been sustained for over 100 years” due to dogmatic prejudice and close-mindedness appears to be far removed from the truth. Parapsychology has had multiple opportunities for over a century to earn mainstream acceptance. Furthermore, when parapsychologists have had studies published in mainstream journals, scientists have responded by subjecting them to careful scrutiny rather than ignoring them or dismissing them without informed consideration. After Daryl Bem published his paper on precognition, other teams of scientists independently attempted their own experiments to see if Bem’s results could be replicated. In 2012 a meta-analysis of all known attempts to replicate Bem’s findings was published (Galak, LeBoeuf, Nelson, & Simmons, 2012) which concluded that the average effect size for precognition was no different from zero. Some parapsychologists such as Dean Radin, have accused critics of parapsychology of being “scientific fundamentalists” who are unwilling to consider that their model of the world might be wrong. On the contrary, Smith (2011) points out that mainstream science has actually advanced by accepting challenges to its model of the world. He gives the recent example of the discovery of dark energy. Prior to this discovery, the conventional view in cosmology was that the expansion of the universe was slowing down. However, astronomical observations led to the observation that the rate of universal expansion was actually accelerating instead, suggesting the existence of a previously unknown antigravity force. Five years of observation was all that was needed to completely revise our understanding of cosmology and now dark energy is being studied intensively and receives massive funding. Compare this to the over 130 years that parapsychologists have had to establish the existence of psi. It seems to me that if parapsychology has not won widespread acceptance it is because of faults within the subject itself rather than because of alleged bigotry on the part of scientists or some supposed taboo which seems to exist mainly in the minds of parapsychology believers.
Footnotes
[1] On the other hand the United States government provided millions of dollars of funding into military uses of psi research, particularly remote viewing, for over 20 years, only to abandon it in 1995 after it had produced no useful applications.
[2] Examples of David Luke’s interest in fringe topics include a paper on non-human entities perceived under the influence of psychedelic drugs and the paper “Parapsychology as a science of magick: An occult perspective on psi.”
[3] The quote from the article includes a citation by Cardeña (2011) which gives examples of professional and personal attacks against (and by) parapsychologists, but contains no mention of a “taboo” or issues with funding.
[4] As an example of faulty reporting of parapsychology in the “science media” he cites an article from The Boston Globe, an online newspaper. Why he considers a general news source to represent the “science media” is not exactly clear.
[5] Discovery magazine has a more credible claim to represent “science media” than The Boston Globe which Radin cites.
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