Paranormalia

Denier Movements

I wrote a while ago about Debating Psychic Experience, a compilation of pro and anti essays, mainly in terms of Chris Carter engaging with sceptics Ray Hyman and James Alcock. I'm writing a review of the book for a journal now, and thought I'd have a look at couple of the other essays here (in separate posts).

One that struck me especially is by remote viewing expert Stephan A. Schwartz. Schwartz writes about something that I've been thinking a lot about recently, the way that psi relates to other controversial topics such as evolution and climate change (I touched on it here). His piece is titled The Antique Roadshow: How Denier Movements Critique Evolution, Climate Change, and Nonlocal Consciousness.

Schwartz complains about the lamentable effects of denier movements. Although creationism seems 'medieval and absurd', thanks to the efforts of well-funded religious organisations it's widely believed in the US (as, alas, it is increasingly in Britain). A 2008 Pew poll reports that no fewer than 55% of Americans believe the world was created in the last 10,000 years, with all species pretty much as they are today, and that the numbers have been steadily increasing over the past decade. Similarly, climate change deniers have been obstructing the development of rational policies to deal with what the best scientific research says is happening with our climate, with possibly fatal consequences.

The impact of consciousness-deniers, as Schwartz calls them, is less understood. But he argues this too has 'a very direct social consequence'. For the nonlocal aspect of consciousness 'may very well account for the insight of genius, for religious epiphany, as well as for psychic experiences'.

In an age when the acquisition and analysis of information as well as the fostering of innovation that produces breakthroughs will be critical determinants of societal success, learning how individuals make intuitive leaps that change the game is no small matter. More profoundly these studies, the collective product of multiple disciplines, are beginning to describe how consciousness and matter interact. Collectively they are defining a new paradigms.

Schwartz suggests that these three denier movements all share certain things in common. For instance, they make a point of defining themselves a sceptics but aren't really: it's an absence of doubt that defines their positions. Then, too, they are essentially there to defend a cherished paradigms slowly moving into crisis, just as described by Thomas Kuhn.

He gives examples of how all three movements are able to distort the science in order to influence policy-makers. The frauds are biggest and most complex in climate change denial, Schwartz says, carefully filtered through a network of denier institutes and think tanks. (Why is it oil companies that pour so much money into debunking global warming science? Does one even have to ask?) He describes the example of a climate denier Sceptics Handbook, that was created and funded by oil interests, including $676,000 from Exxon Mobil, and 150,000 copies distributed to opinion-makers across the US, largely neutralising the US government's parallel attempt to educate the public about climate change science.

The creationist lobby used its political influence over the Bush administration to stop the Grand Canyon National Park providing an official estimate of the geologic age of the canyon - to avoid offending religious interests. Far more serious is the effect it is having in classrooms, where children are increasingly being told that evolution science is no more than a theory and on a par with Old Testament twaddle.

On 'consciousness-denial', Schwartz describes with some relish the scandal surrounding the CSICOP's attempt to manipulate astrology data at the time of its founding, 'a comedy of incompetence, bombast, and a commitment to denial so powerful it overturned good sense and ethics, until the deniers were thoroughly tarred for their unscientific disdain of experimental evidence and integrity.' He also fingers Ray Hyman, who by the time he and Jessica Utts had examined the sample of remote viewing data provided by the US military's Star Gate program in the mid 1990s, was conceding that the experimental flaws that he had argued nullified previous research had disappeared. The effect sizes, he accepted, 'are too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes'. Yet seven years later he was still dissing remote viewing as if nothing at all had been agreed ('I didn't see any science at all, any evidence they got anything right other than pure guesswork').

Schwartz's essay is a bracing and passionate denunciation of the distortion of science and its consequences. But how close are the parallels between the three, and is it appropriate to conflate them?

In my book Randi's Prize I've briefly touched on creationism in the context of psi-denial. Obviously religious fundamentalists and secularist scientists are unlikely bedfellows, unless one wants to characterise the latter as 'fundamentalist' in their adherence to scientism. Personally I wouldn't want to go that far, but I think the comparison is fair, if only to demonstrate that the opposite pairing, of creationism and parapsychology, which tends to be held by sceptical scientists, is false. The data-bank that supports creationism is virtually non-existent compared to evolution science. The data that supports psi, on the other hand, if not conclusive to sceptics, is at least voluminous and well-established.

On climate change, as I understand it, the controversy mainly centres on disagreement about the use of computer modelling for predictions of future weather patterns. I accept that there may be uncertainty about the extent and nature of the likely problems. But given the enormous intrusion of human activity on the planet's ecosystems I fail to see the justification for ignoring scientific warnings and carrying on as if there was nothing at all to be concerned about. Watching über-sceptic Lord Monkton on Rupert Murray's BBC film last week scratch around for rocks that would somehow wreck the case for man-made global warming seemed laughably trivial, and so exactly how creationists behave.

I have no data to back this up, but I suspect that the people who think the world was created a few thousand years ago in all its diverse glory tend often to be the same sort of folk who think that climate change is a conspiracy cooked up by liberals and 'eco-fascists' to impose a global tyranny. Murray filmed the same spluttering media blowhards who back the Tea Party movement getting apoplectic about claims of man-made global warming: it's the threat of extra taxes and constraints to individual freedoms they're bothered about. That's their religion. The idea that science might have something important to say about the planet we all call home, or that some kind of adaptation might be necessary and sensible, just doesn't come into it.

When it comes to consciousness I have a few qualifications. To begin with, I'm not sure about the term 'consciousness-denier'. Sceptics no longer deny that humans are conscious, as they did in the last century, they just say they can explain consciousness within the materialist paradigm. It's claims of psychic functioning which threaten this paradigm that they deny, so strictly speaking they are psi-deniers. I can see that for rhetorical purposes 'consciousness-denier' is a more emotive term than 'psi-denier', as many people are probably unfamiliar with the term 'psi', but perhaps for that reason alone we should be wary of it.

For there's the question of who psi-deniers are. Creationists deny established science on an epic scale, and it's hard to believe that many thinking people subscribe to it. (I'm sure there are notable exceptions, but that's surely what they are). Psi-denial, by contrast, is led by the scientific establishment, which has sound scientific and philosophical arguments for doubting the reality of psi, whether or not we agree with them. Those of us who act as advocates just have to get better at confronting their objections, which ideally should relate to the data. I'm not convinced that bracketing them with Creationists and climate change sceptics is the way to get their attention and overcome their doubts.

I also have a comment about the way Schwartz identifies the negative consequences of consciousness-denial, to use his term. It's clear that creationism in classrooms could have a profoundly negative effect on education, while the antics of the climate change lobby could quite literally be the cause of humanity eventually frying to cinders. These are clear and present dangers and need to be combated. Is psi-denial in quite the same category? The way sceptics obstruct the emergence of a new paradigm can be frustrating to those who already in a certain sense accept it. But this discomfort is surely just part of the process, the birthpangs so to speak; they're surely not going to stop it happening

Ideally it might happen now, of course. Schwartz argues that humanity urgently needs to understand new ways of accessing information. But as he himself demonstrates, the use of intuition as a means to gain knowledge is already available to us: scientists, doubtless including those who ardently deny the existence of psi, often benefit from it in achieving conceptual breakthroughs; it's also evident in the arts. Psi deniers aren't preventing anything. Anyone is free to believe in the reality of psi and investigate it, and to hold ideas of consciousness that are profoundly at odds with the materialist paradigm for their personal growth and benefit.

I'm glad to see someone raising this issue and Schwartz has admirably made the point. The business of denial is becoming more and more a feature of our world, and it's natural that psi advocates should see the behaviour of sceptics in those terms. But I also think we have to be careful about going too far down this road. Calling it 'denial' is one thing, likening it too closely to other more egregious forms of the same thing could be going too far. In the long run, raising the temperature of the debate about psi is unlikely to help.

Psi and Creationism

Charles Darwin is going to be everywhere in 2009, it being the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the 150th of the publication of The Origin of Species. So I thought I'd get my contribution in early.

The reason is, I've been thinking about that extraordinary poll published just before Christmas about state school science teachers' views on creationism. Apparently no fewer than 29% would like to see it taught in science lessons, alongside the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution. That's taught, not discussed, as if it had equal scientific standing. The milder view, that is should at least be discussed - and for merely suggesting which Professor Michael Reiss lost his job last summer as director of education at the Royal Society - was supported by a whopping 73%.

Even Richard Dawkins thinks it's defensible to mention it in a historical context, as a discredited theory. But teaching creationism as a rival theory to evolution, Dawkins adds, would be like teaching the stork theory alongside sexual procreation as an explanation of where babies come from.

That seems to me exactly right, if we're talking about the Genesis myth.  My belief in psi puts me at odds with most scientists, but I've never had any argument with them about that: the idea that the Genesis myth might be factually true, in the face of all the evidence from geology and biology - and for that matter in preference to all the other equally colourful creation myths that human cultures have produced at different times - always seemed to me to be utterly bizarre.

But there are two big problems with this survey. One is that it doesn't distinguish the old-school kind of creationism with the more recent Intelligent Design, which at least talks in biological terms, however little seriously they are taken by most biologists.  I guess most of the teachers who responded must have assumed that the latter was what was meant. That would make the poll result a bit less alarming: most people would see a difference between an idea which is scientifically dubious and one which is flat out nonsense. 

But the poll also mentions creationism in the context of the origins of matter, which is something else again. The anthropic principle, the idea that the incredible fine tuning required to create a stable universe, with the conditions for sentient life, implies the existence of a Designer, may not be what most scientists think, but it's hardly controversial in the way that biblical creationism is. For teachers to want to discuss that in classes seems absolutely natural - in fact it would be surprising if they didn't.

So the poll is deeply misleading. With three different ideas bundled as one, we don't really know how many teachers think what, or the kind of danger they pose to impressionable young minds.  All we have are a lot of scary headlines that reinforce the impression of creeping irrationalism and an imminent return to the dark ages. To me, that's what happens when scientists and science journalists, with all their natural prejudices, are allowed to determine the basis of the debate. It's a very obvious mistake, but in the original reports no one seemed to pick it up, because there's never any discussion about it - the distinctions aren't understood.

All this is relevant to psi, because parapsychology is viewed by scientists in exactly the same terms as creationism - as a dangerous and irrational pseudo-science, pursued by mavericks who scratch around for evidence to vindicate their religious preferences. Intelligent Design is the bigger target, benefiting as it does from the funding and evangelism that parapsychology conspicuously lacks. It's true, parapsychology might start getting unwelcome attention if moves to spread the teaching of it in British universities accelerate, but I think that's still some way off. In any case I can't see anyone going to court over it, as has happened with Intelligent Design.

There's a credibility issue here for psi advocates. Can they afford to let themselves be linked in the mind of the academic community with a knowledge movement which is transparently not scientific but religious? Or should they be actively striving to disassociate themselves from it?

I suppose that depends partly on what we actually think about Intelligent Design. Does it have any merit at all? 

I was taken to task by psi skeptics recently for calling creationists skeptics of evolution - I suppose the Randi crowd were provoked by the idea that they could have the smallest thing in common with religious fanatics. But if you think about it, even if they are at opposite ends of the belief spectrum, they have similar tactics.   My impression of Intelligent Design is that it tries to identify organisms that are too complex to have formed by natural selection. The classic one is the eye, but I've always found the Darwinist comeback convincing, as for instance in Dawkins's Blind Watchmaker. Evolution skeptics do just what psi skeptics do: search for weaknesses in the evidence that stop them from having to take the central claim seriously.

Following this line of thought, I actually think that parapsychologists have more in common with Darwinists than with creationists. Parapsychologists and Darwinists have each gathered a vast body of data, have classified and analysed its characteristics, and are more or less unanimous about its significance. Both are opposed by a small group of critics - debunking conjurors and psychologists in one case, scientists with fundamentalist convictions in the other - who think they have a better idea, and are applauded by a large community of believers - scientists and atheists in one case, traditional Christians in the other - who don't bother with the detailed arguments, but assume that the battle is being won on their behalf.

In scientific terms, of course, psi is utterly toxic to Darwinism: a brain that can somehow communicate with a particular brain some distance away - or in some cases the other side of the world - is not something that could have come about purely by natural selection. Something else is involved: Rupert Sheldrake's ideas about morphic resonance are a fascinating alternative, even if they leave a lot unexplained.  But I don't sense that parapsychologists are keen to pick a fight with Darwinists about this, in fact rather the opposite: they tend to talk about a sixth sense having 'evolved' - as a warning mechanism, for instance.

But still, psi is a scientific claim, and has nothing to do with religion. Whatever their critics like to say, parapsychologists don't share the religious basis of creationism. They aren't 'mystagogues in search of a soul', in James Alcock's striking and fatuous phrase.  Charles Tart has an interest in spirituality, but I don't think that's typical. I'm not aware of any obvious religious yearnings in psi experimenters like Charles Honorton, John Beloff, Dean Radin, Adrian Parker; or in field investigators like Ian Stevenson, Alan Gauld, Guy Lyon Playfair, William Roll, etc. It's just not something they talk about or seem particularly interested in. It's trying to get to grips with a natural phenomenon that motivates them. 

Of course it complicates matters that psi is connected with spirituality and religious experience, and especially with the idea of survival of death. But it's difficult for hostile scientists to make the necessary distinctions here. I believe that most of them barely understand that psi is seen by many parapsychologists not to point to survival, but to provide an alternative explanation of psi phenomena.

Against that, it's hard to deny that however little parapsychologists are motivated by religion, psi does have potentially powerful religious implications. If it were ever acknowledged to be genuine by the scientific establishment we would be in an utterly changed intellectual environment. I don't mean that lots of thinking people would stop being agnostic or atheists, but it would hard for them to base these convictions on scientific certainties about the universe having a purely mechanist basis.

So, coming full circle, scientists are right to see parapsychology as a threat to the mechanist worldview that informs their thinking, and atheists are right to see it undermining secularity.  But there is one more thing. The kind of religion that psi seems to encourage, for want of a better word, is not the creationist religion. Creationist beliefs and psi-type beliefs are the focus of two quite different strands of religious thinking. It's the difference between Bible thumping Christianity and New Age spirituality. Telepathy, spirit survival, and near-death experiences are all anathema to the evangelicals who tend to be gung-ho creationists, and their intolerance doesn't win them any friends in the opposite camp either.

There's a lot of stuff going on here, and I admit that much of it is just thinking out loud. So let's try to nail it down a bit.

First, it's becoming clear that the term 'creationism', as used by scientists and journalists, covers a spectrum of different ideas and beliefs. Until this is better understood there's going to be confusion about who thinks what, and how much it matters.

Second, parapsychology can suffer by association with creationism, and those of us who believe that psi is real need to decide where we stand. Does psi mesh with the idea that the universe was designed by an Intelligence? Should we be sympathetic to rival attempts to undermine the mechanist worldview? Or should we reject them as poorly evidenced and unconvincing?

Following on from this, are these two types of alternative 'knowledge' compatible with each other? If one is convinced by the intellectual arguments for ID, can one also accept the arguments for psi? Or would its very different religious implications rule that out? If psi ever becomes intellectually respectable, it's likely that ID will be too. In that case the knowledge community, presently united round a core idea, will be divided into hostile religious camps, each claiming to be backed by scientific evidence, and each promoting very different worldviews. An interesting, but rather disturbing thought.