be skeptical of skeptics (part 2)

Sorry I have been so delinquent in posts of late. Got busy at home and work, then got sick. Still have that audio from our summer jaunt at OSR to go over, but in the meantime, humor me as I flesh out some more of our views on this whole ghost thing.

Before I begin, however, I must say that I agree more with this article than I did the last one I reviewed. When it comes to ghost hunting, in my opinion, there is zero room for psychics and/or mediums. Why? Because their talents are as unproven as the unproven phenomena you're investigating -- I trust you can see the flaw in this methodology. To prove a psychic is really speaking to a ghost, you would first have to prove the ghost was there to speak to. To my way of thinking, if the Sealed House does prove that ghosts exist -- and develops a way to "catch" them -- then that information could be later used to test a psychic. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way around.

ANYway ... Back to the task at hand: Responding to the skeptical beliefs that irk me most...

One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. Besides, an event may not be unexplainable at all, only unexplained, possibly later being solved (e.g., a slamming door might have been caused by a draft or may have been a prank).

"One cannot draw a conclusion from lack of knowledge" -- PRECISELY. Yet the skeptics do exactly that, by claiming ghosts don't exist because there is NO EVIDENCE. Sounds like a conclusion drawn from a lack of knowledge to me. The key is to COLLECT EVIDENCE and see if it proves or disproves the theory, which is what the Sealed House will do. What you don't do, in science, is say, "Well, we've got no evidence of that, so it can't be real. No point testing it."

Also, "...only unexplained, possibly later being solved..." always means to skeptics "not a ghost." This is bias going into the "experiment" and thus negates its scientific validity outright. If the "scientific" inquiry doesn't allow that one of the possible explanations IS a ghost (or some heretofore completely unknown phenomenon that has generically been called a ghost), then it's not a valid experiment -- it's just as bad as the believers claiming every EMF bleep is a ghost. "Unexplained," by definition, means no conclusion can be definitively drawn -- which means it could as easily be a ghost as not.

The scientific approach to hauntings does not begin with the unproven, seemingly contradictory notion that entities are at once nonmaterial and quasi physical. Rather, in scientific inquiry one seeks to gather, study, and follow the evidence, only positing a supernatural or paranormal cause when all natural explanations have been decisively eliminated. Investigation seeks neither to foster nor debunk mysteries but instead to solve them.

The part about what a scientific inquiry does is exactly true and is exactly what the Sealed House will do. And yet not one investigation by a skeptic has gone into it with the attitude from the last sentence, despite their constant attempts to claim that they are scientific -- but to be fair, nor has a single believer gone into it like this.

Having said that, a true scientific approach to a haunting DOES begin with unproven, seemingly contradictory notions, just as most scientific theories do. If you are truly just following where the evidence leads you, then you have to allow that a ghost -- a phenomenon heretofore completely unexplained by science -- may indeed exhibit some contradictory characteristics. Sort of like quantum entranglement -- which is the other point of the Sealed House: Why is it okay to for quantum physicists to try and prove quantum superposition (that something can be in two places at once), but it's not okay to think that a nonmaterial entity could interact with the material world?

source:

• Investigative Files: Ghost Hunters; Joe Nickell; Skeptical Inquirer; May 2006

be skeptical of believers

Paranormal Investigators Videotape Apparent Ghost In Graveyard

I'm always a bit excited when I read headlines like that, wondering if this is it -- this is the one that will be proof-beyond-doubt. Sadly, that's never the case. The more "real" they look, the more I tend to think someone is a good video editor. On the other hand, like this one, the more "odd" they look, the more I tend to think it could have been explained some other way. I guess there's just no pleasing some folks.

In this case -- where Louisville-based AfterDark Paranormal Investigations claims to have videotaped a ghost in a Bardstown cemetery on May 20th, 2006 -- I would have figured out where the setting sun was to get its light angles, then searched for something hanging in one of the trees that could have been reflecting light onto the lens of the camera. I do a lot of video taping of my family, and I am constantly amazed by the amount of "light abberations" that get captured. The reason I, personally, believe this particular video to be one such aberration is because it moves too consistently -- every time the blob moves, it moves in the same way for about the same length of time. This, to me, could speak to something reflective dangling somewhere, twisting in a light breeze and creating the same circular, repeating pattern of refracted light on the lens.

And seeing as that explanation is just as likely (or unlikely) as a ghost, you do have to default to the (currently) most likely cause. However, that doesn't mean we have to go the whole skeptics' nine yards and then extrapolate that this is proof that all such "evidence" of ghosts is bogus. All we have done here is surmise that this evidence is most likely bogus -- even while allowing that, at some future date, it may well prove to be otherwise. Unfortunately, the source of this anomaly was not very well investigated, setting up for failure the assumption of "ghost."

source:

• Paranormal Investigators Videotape Apparent Ghost In Graveyard; WAVE 3 news (wave3.com); Oct 31, 2006

be skeptical of skeptics

Regarding a story by Benjamin Radford on LiveScience.com (via the Skeptical Inquirer), with my blow-by-blow of the summary in the story itself (links below):

The supposed links between ghosts and electromagnetic fields, low temperatures, radiation, odd photographic images, and so on are based on nothing more than guesses, unproven theories, and wild conjecture.

True. However, Mr. Radford oversimplifies the issue and presents an argument that could be used against any scientific inquiry. What this effectively says is, "Since we can't prove a direct link between A and B, there's no point looking into the question." Such thinking pretty much negates the need for science, period. Someone phone the Kansas school board and tell them to print up stickers for all science books that say, simply, "This is based on guesses and wild conjectures."

What Mr. Radford's argument fails to consider is that the very point of a true scientific inquiry is to take the "guesses" (they call them "theories" when it involves, for example, quarks, dark matter, or super strings) and attempt to prove them, thereby either succeeding or failing, leaving the "wild conjecture" proven true or proven false. What scientists don't tend to do is shrug and say, "Well, that's an unproven idea -- no sense exploring that one."

If a device could reliably determine the presence or absence of ghosts, then by definition, ghosts would be proven to exist. I own an EMF meter, but since it's useless for ghost investigations--it finds not spirits but red herrings--I use it in my lectures and seminars as an example of pseudoscience. The most important tools in this or any investigation are a questioning mind and a solid understanding of scientific principles.

Can't argue with that, but again, Mr. Radford is being painfully hypocritical, especially as the skeptic attempts to present himself as having a "solid understanding of scientific principles." If that were true, he would realize that, again, he is himself guilty of what he accuses the other side of doing: Guessing.

Since an EMF meter has never been truly proven or disproven to detect ghosts, how can a true scientist or skeptic say -- point blank -- that "it finds not spirits"? How does Mr. Radford know? In order to say this -- unequivocally -- he would have to have detected ghosts in some other way, to develop a control sampling for further tests. Conversely, he would have to prove that every time an EMF meter detects something, it was irrefutably explicable as something other than a ghost (or other "unknown").

What he's really saying is, "I don't think EMF meters detect ghosts because sometimes they detect odd electro-magnetic fields with an explicable source. Therefore, every time an EMF meter detects something, it's not a ghost." Now does that sound very scientific, boys and girls?

Using the most recent numbers, [there are] about 11,000 unsolved murders per year, and 110,000 over the course of only ten years, and probably well over million over the course of the twentieth century in America alone. Where are all the ghosts? And why aren't they helping to bring their killers to justice, with so many crimes unsolved? Why would they hang out in scary mansions instead of directing police to evidence that would avenge their murders?

This has to be the dumbest argument of all. There. I said it. If this is how Benjamin Radford approaches scientific inquiry, he needs to hang up his lab coat and look for a landscaping job. What he's assuming is that, if ghosts are real, he (Mr. Radford) has a perfect understanding of what motivates a ghost to haunt a place. I'd wager Mr. Radford can't fathom what motivated me to dig a drainage ditch across my driveway when I could have been doing something much more enjoyable, but does this mean, therefore, that I didn't dig said ditch? Let me spell it out another way, point by point:

Benjamin Radford's "guesses and wild conjectures" about something he doesn't even believe in:

• All victims of murder haunt the world as ghosts


• All victims of murder can easily communicate with law enforcement to aid the investigation into their deaths


• All victims of murder hang out in "scary mansions"

First, his initial assumption may be wrong, plain and simple. There is absolutely nothing to say that anyone who dies will "stay behind" or "cross over." In fact, most researchers into the subject say that hauntings -- if real -- prove that free will exists, because once we die we appear to have the choice of whether we stay or go. My own assumption would be that a good number of murder victims would rather cast off this mortal coil than hang around trying to talk to people who can't hear or see them.

Which brings up his second assumption: If ghosts could interact with us so easily as to aid the cops in catching a killer, would we even be having this discussion? Or is Mr. Radford saying that if someone doesn't know sign language, and a deaf person tries to communicate with them using sign language, then that deaf person isn't really trying to communicate, because the other person isn't getting the message? Which is to say, just because we can't "understand" (or even detect) the ways in which ghosts try to communicate with us is not proof that they aren't trying to communicate with us. It's just proof that maybe we can't understand sign language, as it were.

Finally, we have his third contention, which he clearly feels disproves the existence of ghosts: They all hang out in scary mansions. Well, anecdotal as it is, I'd say the literally hundreds (thousands?) of stories regarding haunted "normal" houses -- complete with loving families and kids and pets and fridges stuffed with elementary-school art projects -- pretty much defeat this assumption. The lore tells us that ghosts tend to hang out wherever they died -- so, by Mr. Radford's special form of logic, this means every building on Earth is a "scary mansion" (including, of course, wide open fields, like Gettysburg).

And so, to form my own conclusion, it appears to me that Mr. Radford has neither proved nor disproved anything, though he has done a good job of pretending his own "wild conjectures" are somehow valid, scientific reasoning. They aren't. They certainly aren't scientific and also tend to be far from reasonable, to boot. All Mr. Radford has proved -- yet again -- is that nothing on this topic has been proved either way. We are still left with the conclusion that ghosts -- like dark matter and other dimensions beyond four-dimensional space-time -- may or may not exist.

What we need to do is cut the believe/disbelieve rhetoric and actually look into the question scientifically. Sort of like these scientists, who seem to have taken a big leap toward proving quantum superposition by making an object move simply by looking at it -- a leap they didn't make by assuming that because they'd never been able to do this before, it wasn't worth looking into:

[S]urprisingly, the research also has shown how researchers can lower the temperature of an object -- just by watching it. The results, which could have applications in quantum computing, cooling engineering and more, appear in the Sept. 14 issue of the journal Nature. ... "By looking at it you cannot only make it move; you can pull energy out of it," said Schwab. "And the numbers suggest, if we were to keep going on with this work, we would be able to cool this thing very cold. Much colder than we could if we just had this big refrigerator." ... For that he's focusing on another principle of quantum mechanics -- the superposition principle -- which holds that a particle can simultaneously be in two places. "We're trying to make a mechanical device be in two places at one time. What's really neat is it looks like we should be able to do it," he said. "The hope, the dream, the fantasy is that we get that superposition and start making bigger devices and find the breakdown."

Read that last bit again: "We're trying to make a mechanical device be in two places at one time."

"Impossible!" all the Mr. Radfords of the world just exclaimed in unison.

"Maybe ... maybe not," the real scientists calmly reply, as they go about the business of trying to prove (or disprove) the previously unproven.

Sources:

• Benjamin Radford; The Shady Science of Ghost Hunting; Skeptical Inquirer/LiveScience.com; October 27, 2006


• Device Tests Uncertainty Principle with New Precision; Cornell University/NewsWise.com; September 22, 2006

top 10 ghost photos

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while, but there's just not that much news. Okay ... well, there is now, since Angie has submitted two accounts of her recent personal ghosthunts, but I don't have the time to post them this week ... Next week, I'll get right on those.

In the meantime, how's this for lazy -- I'm going to blog someone else's blog. Still, the Top 10 Ghost Photos is certainly worth seeing (you might have to scroll down quite a bit to find the article because, at least on my screen, there's something screwy with the display).

dead woman shows up for dinner

I don't know how well Ananova archives its stories, and this one is so short, it's worth sharing in full (please don't sue me!):

A Brazilian woman shocked her family by turning up alive and well a week after her own funeral.

Relatives of 18-year-old Maria Fabiana Franco thought she was a ghost and wouldn't let her in the house. Miss Franco, from Vitoria, had been missing for two weeks when her sister wrongly identified the body of a young woman as being her. Adriana Lacerda, the sister, said: "The dead woman was identical to my sister. They even had the same scar on the same eyebrow!"

The body was buried in the family grave and the family were still mourning a week later when Miss Franco turned up. A police spokesperson told Terra Noticias Populares: "The family was so happy but really scared at the same time. They didn't let her in until we arrived, they thought they were seeing a ghost."

Miss Franco told police she had run away with her boyfriend but had to return home after he was arrested.

source:

• 'Dead' woman shocks family; ananova.com; September 26, 2006