Articles
'NEW SCIENTIST' fails
to pass the 'legal test.'
The 13th March 04 issue of the British based journal NEW
SCIENTIST (NS) made "The Power of the Paranormal" its main theme. It
had three special reports and its full front page depicted a large bent spoon
- misleading the reader by asking why won't the paranormal 'surrender to science.'
NS failed to pass the test of 'legally admissible' reasoning in publishing
two of the articles which used inferior reasoning. A third article by Robert Matthews
is far more balanced, more incisive, more informative and more acceptable. So
I'll only be dealing with the first two articles. The first two articles
are full of negative mis-description, critical deletions and are aimed at raising
doubt about the validity of psi. They are full of anti-psychic nuances and give
one the impression of a Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan trying very hard to write about
blacks with equanimity. The first anti-paranormal article 'On the edge
of the known world' was published by NS without the author being named. Why not?
Intellectual cowardice? Is it implied that the editor of NS wrote the article?
What was the anti-psychic writer afraid of - being eternally remembered for his
specious and deficient reasoning? Or was it perhaps because of an attempt to willfully
mislead? In the first two sentences of this article, I detected four egregious
fundamental errors of fact and interpretation. First, psi empiricists would strongly
object to being negligently labeled 'believers.' Empiricists who accept the existence
of psychic phenomena will tell you that it is NOT a matter of 'beliefs', it is
a matter of empirically accepting the objective evidence being tested. Just because
you accept that 7+5=12 you are not a 'believer' in arithmetic. Accordingly, it
is erroneous in the extreme to label psi empiricists 'believers.' The phantom
writer of the first NS article deliberately chose the terminology of the skeptics
and subjectively accepted the argument of those hard core traditional scientists
who reject anything psi. But other more balanced empiricists will tell you they
do NOT have the luxury of 'beliefs' and would be insulted by the sloppy derogatory
descriptive label of 'believers.' Secondly, I do not accept the contention
in the first sentence that '…skeptics and believers have been struggling
for more than a 100 years to show whether or not psychic powers exist.' There
are many empiricists AND scientists (including from earlier times Sir Oliver Lodge,
Sir William Crookes et al and more recently Prof Gary Schwartz, Dr Dean Radin
et al) whose attitude is - as mine is - that psi DOES exist and it is skeptics
who have the problem of not accepting psi. The negatively minded expresses it
as a 'struggle' - we empiricists do NOT. Also, '… yet still there
is nothing even approaching a definitive answer.' That is most unfair and unreasonable
because that statement shows that the phantom author of the NS article has NOT
read, studied, analysed or understood the empirical evidence supporting psi. What
has to be strongly stated here is that there will never be sufficient psi evidence
for those skeptics who do not want to accept it. Clearly, the inevitable conclusion
is that the writer of the first article is a closed minded skeptic being a judge
in his own cause. Fourthly, the same writer asks, '… so, why don't
we know (about psi)?' The answer is very simple: the skeptics have not done their
homework. No wonder the skeptic writer exhibits negative prejudice and colossal
ignorance about the objective evidence for psi. These four blunders in
the first few lines of the article epitomize the tone of the whole article which
shows the intentional negative bias of the phantom writer. Space does not permit
me to deal with the numerous other blunders of the first article. Now let's
go to the second anti-psi article by John McCrone (JM). Overall it is a cynical,
negative attempt to belittle and dismiss psi. Again either the writer is too intellectually
lazy to discover the most impressive objectively conducted experiments or his
intrinsic bias restricts his research to material which is fundamentally consistent
with his own deeply entrenched negative partiality. Why not? Hereinafter are only
just some of the issues raised from his article: 1) as hereinbefore stated,
JM uses the unfortunate label of 'believers' - a favourite trick of the skeptics
to undervalue the work of those empiricists who have accepted the validity of
psi. This has already been dealt with above.
2) JM states about the 'experimenter
effect', ' …the outcome of an experiment hinges upon the beliefs of the person
running it.' That is a typical skeptic's view. As an empiricist I would reject
that kind of general definition of the 'experimenter effect.' Empiricists would
argue that the experimenter effect relates to a situation where a negatively minded
experimenter will negatively affect psi experiments. But those who are NOT negatively
minded are NOT necessarily 'believers'. Those who do not decide the outcome BEFORE
the experiment commences and who are open minded are NOT likely to negatively
skew or influence in the results in any way. Further, JM states, '… believers
tend to get positive results. Skeptics don't.' Skeptics have NEVER obtained positive
results in psi experiments! That's why they are skeptics - I state that they are
technically not competent to conduct objective empirical experiments when professional
empiricists do get positive results!
3) 'The return of the experimenter effect
is leading some skeptics to claim that parapsychology is regressing back into
the pseudoscientific dark ages.' Interesting, this low level propaganda type of
statement was highlighted by giving it extra size and extra bold print. It is
one of the most unscientific, negatively prejudicial and loaded statements JM
makes. Which skeptics specifically are claiming that? On the basis of what evidence?
Or is it JM's own 'projection'?
4) 'No single experiment could be trumpeted
as proving the existence of psychic powers.' Again, I reiterate, either JM is
totally ignorant of the most important psi evidence or he is using NS space to
attack the paranormal thinking he is going to kill it. Others with more substance
tried and failed - no doubt JM will inevitably fail too. Why has this JM not tried
to rebut the voluminous evidence in The Conscious Universe- the book by Dr Dean
Radin one of the most highly credible psi scientists we have to day? Intellectual
cowardice? Intellectual laziness? Wilful and intentional misleading of the readers?
OR all three?
5) Why has JM cited Richard Wiseman, implying he is objective
experimenter? The track record of Wiseman shows he is a debunking, closed minded
skeptic. Whilst psi scientists with the highest credibility are getting positive
results, Wiseman has NEVER produced positive results ever. Pre-cognitive psychic
Chris Robinson stated that Wiseman was willfully most unfair when he tried to
do a report on Chris, misreporting to make the results favourable to skepticism.
That would show that Wiseman will keep on obtaining negative results as long as
he remains a closed minded skeptic. Legal assessment of phenomena and reasoning
are superior to what we have read in NS because there would be no deletions and
everything stated would be subject to cross examination for credibility, to seek
the truth. With absolute certainty, JM would fail his materialists and skeptics
very badly. JM consciously or otherwise tries to persuade the reader to accept
his deeply entrenched materialistic partiality by willfully deleting critical
and relevant information. In a courtroom JM would be asked something like,
"Have you ever heard of Dr Dean Radin?" "Or Professor Gary Schwartz?"
"Or Professor Jessica Utts?" - and a host of other leading empiricists
and scientists who have accepted the objective EVIDENCE of the existence of psi.
Further, JM would be asked if he ever heard of and studied the most dramatic empirical
evidence for psi experiments that he FAILED to mention in his article. JM (and
other materialists) would be asked about certain psychic phenomena which have
been demonstrated by some of the most credible psychic people on earth. Why did
the NS, the phantom writer of the first anti-psi article and JM FAIL to mention
Natialia Demkina with the X-Ray vision, a most powerful psychic who has been investigated
by scientists and found her to be genuine. The question would be, "If you
are not calling these highly credible witnesses cheats, liars and frauds, what
evidence do you have that these phenomena were not experienced - especially when
the critical psychic demonstration was evidenced by hard core skeptics?" Further,
the legal process through cross examination and expert witnesses would elicit
some very peculiar information - e.g. 'beliefs' of some of the scientists and
writers on science - such as JM. A lawyer would have no problems at all in showing
in an impartial venue that some scientists and writers actually 'believe' that
reductionist science is the only criterion for assessing the existence of any
phenomenon. Fundamental beliefs, whether in science or religion or in anything
else are hard-wired into our systems and anything which remotely tends to challenge
them will be met with hostility and anger. The legal process would show
that in the world to-day science is split into at least two camps: the old, traditional
reductionist science and the 'new science' - supported by many modern scientists
particularly physicists - where unexplained phenomena involving non-physical energy
is NOT dismissed or discarded but is being given more research- because the understanding
non-physical energy will have huge consequences. If a phenomenon has been
experienced and accepted having happened by competent impartial objective authority
as in the case of the abovementioned Natalia Demkina, why is not orthodox science
accepting this phenomenon? Why is it that orthodox scientists assume that any
successful psi experiment has to be fraudulent? Why is it that these said orthodox
scientists fail to explain the phenomenon? Legal reasoning would admit
in evidence that some phenomenon has been experienced if it has been verified-
especially if observed under repeatable conditions by very highly credible empiricists.
Just because orthodox science cannot explain such a phenomenon, it does NOT mean
the phenomenon did not occur or was not experienced. Psychic phenomena
have been recorded for more than two thousand years of history. No matter what
the critics say, the acceptance of psi is growing exponentially. In the last twenty
five years voluminous empirical evidence has been produced and researched by the
governments of major counties including Russia, China, Israel, the U.S. Is
NS implying that there is a world conspiracy among some of the most brilliant
men and women scientists who walked on this planet earth who accept psychic phenomena?
Do they get together at world conferences to fool the rest of the world? The level
headed would say 'we think not!' An open-minded reader would be impressed
by the number of brilliant scientists and empiricists participating in a Conference
sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences next June discussing the afterlife
and mind-matter: D Byron Ph.D., Jane Kata Ph.D., Ed May Ph.D., Dean Radin Ph.D.,
Marilyn Schlitz Ph.D, Professor Russell Targ Ph.D, Jessica Utts Ph.D. And with
absolute certainty, these scientists are not going to accept beliefs in lieu of
empirically based research. The skeptics - and the NS debunkers might try to mislead
you to believe that. One most definitive statement I would like to make:
not ALL scientists are traditional hard core debunkers or skeptics and against
psi as the NS tries to impute. I would say that most physicists and many other
scientists who genuinely investigated psi AGREE that it does exist and needs more
research and more refinement. It is clearly understood that if some astute
scientist is going to criticize the inadequate contemporary scientific methodology
or if scientists confirm that there is such thing as non-physical energy then
in some not too advanced universities these scientists could be bullied. Learning
that there is such a thing as non-physical energy scares the daylight out of some
scientists and will inevitably cause a revolution in science - it is happening
now. Victor Zammit A LAWYER PRESENTS
THE CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE www.victorzammit.com
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