Rationally Speaking #53 - Parapsychology

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2012

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Massimo and Julia take on parapsychology, the study of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, precognition, and remote viewing. Its practitioners claim that there is more evidence for it than there is for other areas of scientific inquiry, such as string theory for which there is no empirical data at all. Yet string theory is taken seriously as a science whereas parapsychology is not. So, what is the scientific status of parapsychology? What does the best academic literature on the subject tell us? Finally, what can we learn from parapsychology about the practice of science in general?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.
0:35.6	Welcome to rationally speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and
0:40.1	nonsense. I am your host, Massimo Pilucci, and with me as always is my co-host, Julia Gilef.
0:45.5	Julia, what are we going to talk about today? Massimo, today our topic is parapsychology,
0:50.3	which is the study of psychic phenomena like extrasensory perception and precognition,
0:56.5	remote viewing. So we're going to talk about its scientific status or lack thereof.
1:01.9	What's the best evidence for it in the academic literature? And what does the study of
1:07.4	parapsychology tell us about the conduct and practice of science in general?
1:12.9	Wow. Yeah. Well, I guess I like to start with an anecdote then, which has nothing to do
1:18.6	directly with the scientific study of parapsychology, but it has to do with a commentary on
1:23.5	the scientific study of parapsychology. Okay. An anecdote me. So this happened during the last few months.
1:31.3	It's something that actually lasted for a number of weeks.
1:34.5	A colleague of mine, a young colleague of mine,
1:36.3	Martin Baldry at Kent University in Belgium,
1:39.3	and I are putting together an edited book for the University of Chicago Press
1:43.2	on the demarcation problem
1:45.0	that is on the difference between science and pseudoscience. And, you know, we've got a lot of
1:50.8	contributors as usually is the case with these books. And most of the chapters are excellent or at
1:58.1	least very good. And some of them are not so good and you know very rarely
2:02.8	however it happens in these books that you actually have to reject a chapter in this case it
2:07.7	happened and the reason it happened is because we asked a couple of people who should go of
	...

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