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):
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."
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?
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:
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:
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:
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