Is parapsychology science?

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Parapsychology is one of the most criticized fields of study. Its critics sometimes lump it together with popular interests such as astrology and the pursuit of Bigfoot. Other skeptics who are more familiar with the field, such as Ray Hyman and James E. Alcock, make more nuanced criticisms. One especially cogent criticism is that in order to be taken seriously parapsychology needs to do more theoretical work to explain its results. Parapsychology needs also to produce results which are more easily replicated by any experimenter, and its laboratory results should not be dependent on rejection of the "null hypothesis." This means that many parapsychological experiments such as psychokinesis experiments using random number generators, instead of demonstrating a positive effect (for instance levitating a table), depend on showing that things deviated from blind chance (Radin, 2006; Hyman, 1995). But such experiments do not put their finger of what caused this deviation from chance. This is known as the "psi assumption," because parapsychologists think they have detected psychic phenomena when they show such a deviation (see Ganzfeld experiment). However, parapsychological experiments sometimes live up to a higher standard than experiments in other fields.

Parapsychologists say that since its inception in the 1880s, parapsychology has gone through many phases, building on its past experience. It has come from the field and the séance room into the laboratory, and the [parapsychology_ganzfeld_experiment.html ganzfeld is one experiment which is repeatable, though with more difficulty than the basic experiments of many other scientific disciplines. Other fields like physics also indirectly detect the phenomena they study, and thus rejection of the null hypothesis is a genuine result. But it is the methods of parapsychology and the rigor of its academic study -rather than any results or lack thereof- which makes parapsychology science. Because of this, even many of parapsychology's harshest critics -whose view of the facts of the field is hotly debated by parapsychologists-, say that parapsychology is in fact science.

Some critics dismiss psychical research... as unalloyed pseudoacience. Despite the long history of self-delusion, non-replicable findings, and fraud that has plagued the field, it must be conceded that there is, today, a core of honest and competent researchers who employ the conventional methods of psychological research in their quest for paranormal phenomena... [and these] should not be branded as pseudoscientists (Beyerstein, 1996).

James E. Alcock, says that:

Thus, to the sceptical reader, I stress that these parapsychological writers are in our camp, the scientific camp. They believe in science and strive to apply it (Alcock, 2003).

Speaking of remote viewing skeptical psychologist Richard Wiseman told the Daily Mail that

I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.

But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.

Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence.

Writing in the December 1998 issue of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT) Ed J. Gracely, Ph.D., wrote that

An alternative I have heard suggested is to drop the extraordinary proof argument and instead to hold paranormal and alternative medicine claims strictly to the ordinary requirements of replicability and good research. This approach sounds sensible but it has a serious flaw. Skeptics are not willing to accept the plausibility of most paranormal claims unless the evidence is extremely strong. We risk being perceived (correctly) as disingenuous if we call for solid quality research, then revert to the extraordinary claims argument should it in fact appear.

In some areas of paranormal investigation, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), the research is already often better done than much orthodox scientific research, with controls and double-checks most scientists would regard as overkill. Skeptics mostly still feel that the intrinsic implausibility is so great that nothing short of airtight and well-repeated research would be sufficient to support ESP. Little or none of the existing research rises to that level, so we remain skeptical. (Some recent work has been of high quality, see Ray Hyman's article, "The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality", in the March/April 1996 Skeptical Inquirer, pp 24-26.) Had skeptics said some 40 years ago that all we wanted was reasonable quality replicated research, we might now be having to eat our words.

Magician, debunker and skeptic James Randi, commenting on How to Think Straight About Psychology by Keith E. Stanovich, said

If Stanovich is referring to parapsychology as a pseudoscience, I disagree. It has all the structure and appearance of any other science, and must be respected as such. The fact that differentiates it from other sciences is largely that it has no history of successful experiments upon which to base conclusions.

In 2003 Marie-Catherine Mousseau tried to ascertain parapsychology's status as a science by comparing parapsychological peer-reviewed journals with those of mainstream science. In her article Parapsychology: Science or Pseudo-Science? published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration she wrote,

Many efforts have been made to set up "necessary and sufficient" criteria for science (Chalmers, 1999), but no consensus has been reached. Why not? One might argue there are no such things as "epistemological invariants" for science, that each discipline (or even each lab) could have its own rules and methods (see Zingrone, 2002). However, even if there is no clear criterion for science, there must be a way to distinguish it from pseudo-science if the latter term is to have any meaning (Mousseau, 2003).

Mousseau says that there is no way to judge whether a discipline is or is not science based on an examination of its results. Even when there are no results or the field lacks enough evidence to form a theory, it still can be science if it follows the scientific method.

Thus predictability and reproducibility usually bring results; results bring consensus and acceptance by mainstream science. However, this process is the final objective. A science in the making may not yet have gone through these different stages. That does not mean that it will not, that it is not science. That is why the criterion of assessing what is science by its results is not reliable (Mousseau, 2003).

According to Mousseau, the average level of scientific discourse is lower in the journals of mainstream science than it is in parapsychological journals. However, parapsychological results are sparse, and it does not have a theory to explain them. Possibly because of this, parapsychology is in some ways a less robust science than other fields. Mousseau said that journals of parapsychology did not have as many experimental reports relative to articles of an epistemological nature. She thought this might occur because parapsychological experiments are difficult to conduct. In spite of this, Mousseau found that parapsychology did not meet a list of criteria for pseudoscience which included such things as suppression of unfavorable data, failure to recognize alternative theories, and over-reliance on anecdotal evidence. In part, Mousseau concluded that

Mainstream scientists could also learn from the generally extreme rigor of [parapsychology's] experimental approach which aims to address any kind of possible criticisms and which is necessary to separate a very elusive phenomenon from the background noise. They could learn from their concern to publish unsuccessful experiments, whereas mainstream scientists often neglect to report negative data although it can be very useful (Mousseau, 2003).

References

Alcock, J. E. (2003). Give the null hypothesis a chance Online version. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10. (6-7), 29-50.

Beyerstein, Barry L (1996). DISTINGUISHING SCIENCE FROM PSEUDOSCIENCE. Prepaired for the Center for Curriculum and Professional Development in Victoria B.C., Canada.

Could there be proof to the theory that we're ALL psychic? By DANNY PENMAN, 28th January 2008 in the Daily Mail Online Version

Gracely, Ed J. Why Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof © 1998, PhACT Online Version

Hyman, R. (1995). Evaluation of the program on anomalous mental phenomena. Online Version Journal of Parapsychology, 59 (4).

Mousseau, M.(2003). Parapsychology: Science or Pseudo-Science? Online Version Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 271-282,

Radin, D. (2006). Entangled minds: Extra-sensory experiments in a quantum reality. New York, NY: Paraview Pocket Books.

Randi, J. Website of the James Randi Educational Foundation, Retrieved February 19, 2005 Online Version.