beekay

I saw a segment of the Pet Psychic a few weeks ago. I laughed the whole damn time. I find it hard to believe that folks actually watch this crap and buy off on it!

Anyways, the segment I saw had the Pet Psyshic (PP) visiting a small zoo. Supposedly one of the bats housed there had recently developed a bad temperment whereas before it had been docile. The lady in charge of that department had asked the PP to come by and see if she could tell why the bat was acting up.

So, the PP enters the enclosure, asks a few questions of the zookeeper and eventually announces that the bat didn't like the recent addition of a couple of other bats into its enclosure. The bats sleep in the same little box together, and the PP claimed that the bat in question wanted its own private box back. Nothing too shocking there. I could have easily come up with that solution too.

The only truly "mystic" thing the PP did was say that the bat had a broken wing a few years ago. The zookeeper was completely shocked because that little tidbit was true. "There is no way she could have known that," said the zookeeper later.

And so there was the happy ending. There is no follow-up that I know of to see if the bat got any better after getting his own box.

About the broken wing revelation ... I suppose that the PP or her staff could have discovered that tidbit while doing research beforehand. Or maybe the PP just took an educated guess along the lines of 'why would this bat be brought to this zoo in the first place?'

Your thoughts ...

clark

<strong>Originally posted by Veil of Fire: I dunno, I find String Theory pretty damned bizzare.</strong>

String Theory is very theoretical, and I believe controversial. It is being studied and critiqued by physicists all over the world. I'm no expert on theoretical physics, but I don't think string theory and pet psychics are in any way comparable. The former is crtically studied by thousands of physicists who enjoy tearing each others' works apart, and the latter is basically only promoted by a single television entertainer with fuzzy credentials. Is this "appeal to authority"? Maybe, but I think it's more of a degree of confidence of the epistemological value of various sources of scientific knowledge. For the same reason, I trust medical advice given to me by my doctor over medical advice given to me by my six-year-old neighbor.

<strong>Problem being here is that you're using highly subjective terms in what should arguably be a completely objective debate. </strong>

Except in mathematics, there is always a degree of subjectivity. There are degrees of certainty with science and scientific theories. The more a new theory contradicts the existing knowledge base, the less seriously anyone takes it. That is probably why there is such little research from scientists on pet psychics - most would rather do worthwhile research than debunk something their colleagues consider ludicrous. If a scientist were to discover that pet psychics held any water and were able to prove it (through peer reviewed journals reporting repeatable, double-blind experiments), that scientist would be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize.

<strong>Further, subjectivity or not, Appeal to Ridicule is never evidence for or against a claim. There always must be some form of reasoning behind any judgement, be it objective or subjective, beyond "thinking about it makes me giggle". </strong>

Appeal to ridicule is more of a rhetorical tool than a logical tool. It reflects the critical view of new idea that contradicts existing science. New ideas are great and monumental in the general body of knowlege. They don't, however, come from a charlatan on TV. They come from scholars' rigorous experimentation and defense of a new theory to one's scientific peers.

<strong>I also reject the notion that until something is proven is must be completely rejected. That kind of mentality fosters a tendency to disbelieve legitimate results when they do emerge. After all, if a study conducted by the US Government comes out proving the existence pet telepathy, I can garauntee you that many people on this board would say "Bah, study or no study, it's still just too stupid to be true", and/or more would simply refuse to take ANY government study seriously from that point foward. "They said they found evidence of PET TELEPATHY! They're a bunch of crocks!"</strong>

If pet psychics held any water at all, it wouldn't just be the "US Government" claiming it's true. Scientists in labs all over the world would attempt to repeat any "successful" test of pet psychics. If these test were successful, then the whole idea of pet telepathy would have credence, people would accept it, and the initial experimenters would write their Nobel Prize acceptance speech (and the whole discipline of biology would have to be rewritten).

One lab experiment does not a body of knowledge make. A classic example of this was a study done at Baylor Univ. that concluded that magnets might relieve arthritis and other pains. Many new age and alt-med quacks saw this study and began making magnetic bracelets, insoles and other devices, and began the pseudoscience of "magnetic therapy". The Baylor study was repeated at many other university and never received the same results. The scientists involved at each of these subsequent studies all concluded that magnets have no effect on pain, other than placebo. Of course, you can still buy "magnetic therapy" devices all over.

An example of a crazy idea I heard came from a lame New Orleans talk radio show several years ago. The guest was a spokesman from some weird "spacey" religion; it might have been Raelian. The guest told of his new cosmology: how the world came into being and how space aliens populated earth. This was the most sensible of what this guy said. The show took calls, and at first there were a couple of skeptical callers asking for backing scientific data. Subsequent callers, accused the skeptical callers of being closed minded and not open to new ideas. Bullshit. One should be skeptical of such ideas that contradict current knowledge. Skeptical does not mean closed minded. If a new idea survives critical tests, it then becomes part of the body of knowledge. The spacey cosmology, of course, can not survive these tests. With modern equipment, astronomers would certainly have found some evidence of such a monumental idea. They, of course, have not. Similarly, biologists and animal behaviorists have no evidence of the ability of people to telepathically communicate with other animals. It can be argued that they have evidence against it. Until a new idea can stand on its own, it deserves ardent skepticism and even ridicule.

THOUGHTfully Yours,
Clark Adams

[typo fixes]

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: clark ]</p>

The Lone Ranger

Excuse me for butting in . . .

Regarding the existence of "psychic abilities," there have been a number of attempts to verify/quantify their existence. So far, all such attempts have been disappointing, to say the least.

For example, the term "extrasensory perception" was coined by <a href="http://www.parascope.com/en/rhine.htm" target="_blank">J. B. Rhine</a>, who conducted experiments on "parapsychology" at Duke University during the early part of the 20th century. The vast majority of his experiments failed to find any evidence for the existence of "psychic powers," but there were a few interesting exceptions. Subsequent reanalyses of these studies found severe methodological flaws, however. Modern attempts to replicate his studies have failed to produce any convincing evidence for the existence of psychic abilities.

The Committe for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal <a href="http://www.csicop.org/" target="_blank">(CSICOP)</a> has sponsored investigations of scores of "psychics" -- so far all the "psychics" they've tested have proven incapable of performing when asked to do so under controlled conditions with a trained stage magician watching. CSICOP has published several books detailing some of their investigations. Check out Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal, by Joe Nickell, a former detective who has made a specialty of investigating claims of the paranormal.

Similarly, while Randi himself can be somewhat abrasive, the <a href="http://www.randi.org/" target="_blank">James Randi Educational Foundation</a> famously offers a prize of over $1,000,000 for anyone who can demonstrate the existence of paranormal powers or abilities. Again, all who have tried to do so have failed so far.

Anyone who's interested in seeing how easy it is to fool yourself about the existence of "psychic" powers would be well-advised to read some of the writings of Susan Blackmore, particularly In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist. Blackmore is a psychologist who started out as a strong believer in the existence of psychic abilities. She devised various experiments to test the limits of people's psychic abilities, and discovered that no matter how carefully she designed her experiments, none of her test subjects could consistently perform at better than chance levels.

The physicist Lawrence Krauss, in such books as Beyond Star Trek has explained in considerable detail how most "psychic" phenomena, at least as popularly envisioned, would clearly violated established physical laws. For example, many claims of "telepathy" would require the "psychic" to somehow generate and manipulate (presumably with his or her brain) more energy than the human brain is capable of generating. The fact that "psychic energies" don't seem to obey the inverse-square law of dissipation is also highly suspicious.

Nicholas Humprey, in such books as Leaps of Faith has made similar claims -- namely that not only have tests of "psychic claims" consistently failed to find evidence for their existence, but if these psychic abilities did exist, most of them would necessarily violate some very well-established scientific principles.

***

Hope this is of some help.

'Night all,

Michael

Arrowman

Or, have a look at a bat's wing. The condition of the bones (including scarring from a break which has healed) might be easily determined by simple visual inspection.

I'd be more impressed if she had started channelling Adam West....

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Arrowman ]</p>

wdog

thanks all for the discussion, and her name is sonya, not sylvia, my fault. the reason she has drawn attention is that she has her own tv show and cases like this

<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/tv/2002/2002-06-03-pet-psychic.htm" target="_blank">http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/tv/2002/2002-06-03-pet-psychic.htm</a>

I just wanted to know the modus operendi. how does she really get the info? is the guy lying when he says that she did not know? I just could not find a lot of info

MrDarwin

Oddly enough, some people seem to believe we should be willing to believe just about anything in the absence of any evidence (either for or against it), and in the absence of any reason to believe in it, other than that somebody somewhere asserts that it is true. An interesting way to view the world, but one that I don't happen to share. UFOs come to mind: there may very well be aliens zipping around in spaceships--I can't disprove it--but until somebody presents some good hard evidence, I'm not going to spend much time or energy thinking about it, or even trying to debunk it.

This discussion reminds me of the old saying, "keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out." It also reminds me of another saying, "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." My own personal philosophy is that I tend not to believe in things that are entirely unsupported by evidence, contrary to what I know about the world around me, and most of all, contrary to common sense. I'm willing to change my mind; just present the evidence. But why should the burden be on me to prove something isn't true, when nobody has presented any credible reason to believe that it is true in the first place?

But what do I know, I'm just an "intellectually dishonest diptard."

Corwin

Maybe... but at least you aren't an hysterical, overcredulous troll.

MrDarwin

Let me reply with an anecdote of my own:

Many years ago my aunt visited Medjugorje (where the Virgin Mary was supposedly appearing to a group of Yugoslavian children). Nothing miraculous happened to my aunt, but she came back with stories of people's silver rosaries turning into gold. She was quite adamant that this was true, even though she hadn't seen it happen herself. I didn't believe for a minute it had actually happened, whereas she was absolutely convinced (1) it had, (2) that it was a miracle, and (3) that it should have been the nail in the coffin of my atheism. What could I say? I certainly had no way to disprove it. (I did point out that if such a miracle had really occurred the Catholic Church would be trumpeting it from the rooftops, but she didn't find this persuasive. She believed the church was overly conservative when it came to verifying miracles.)

Well, many years later, I was reading a story about just this thing, and as it turns out, many pilgrims had cheap silver plated rosaries, and the metal underneath was copper. People rubbed their rosaries vigorously while praying, rubbing the silver right off and revealing the copper (and at the same time giving it a nice shine). Mistaking this for gold, people believed that it was a miracle.

Now, was I wrong to disbelieve my aunt? Or was I right to be skeptical of purely anecdotal evidence, and to demand better documentation before believing in such an unbelievable claim?

And am I wrong now to be skeptical of the claims made on a television show, which is produced entirely for entertainment and commercial purposes?

Veil of Fire

Lone Ranger:
Thank you. That's all I was asking for; someone to support the conclusion.

Darwin:
Why is that any worse than doing the opposite? Rejecting a claim in the absence of any evidence, other than someone said it was bullcrap?

As I said elsewhere, I'd be HAPPY to accept anecdotal evidence as reason to reject a claim. "My cousin Bill tried that, but he died anyway, so I don't believe in it". That would be perfectly fine! Anything that's even a teensy tiny bit objective!

MrDarwin

VoF, a quick question for you: when such controversies come up, why don't you do a bit of websearching, and report back what you find? Instead, it seems you refuse to take one side or the other, wait for somebody else to take a side (usually to be skeptical in the absence of evidence for something), and then excoriate them for failing to provide hard evidence for whatever side they've taken.

I'm not asking this to be antagonistic, I'm just curious; and if I've mischaracterized you, I apologize. I haven't followed a lot of the discussions in which you've been involved, so perhaps I'm guilty of overgeneralizing.