Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real (which means science is broken) - Slate

Yesterday the magazine Slate posted this:

http://redux.slate.com/cover-storie...ed-esp-is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html?

It's the "cover" (they are an online magazine) story of their new issue. And the title is "Daryl Bem proved ESP is real" and the subtitle was "which means science is broken". Of course, the title caught my attention and I thought "Oh, I wasn't aware of any new experiment". And to my surprise there was no new experiment, it was yet another article talking about the famous 2011 paper "Feeling the future".

The article is well written, but it's more of the same. I wonder why people keep repeating the same story. Also, there was a lot of unnecesary quote trashing Bem and parapsychology in general

The first time E.J. Wagenmakers read Bem’s ESP paper, he was having lunch at a neuroscience conference in Berlin. “I had to put it away several times,” he recalls. “Reading it made me physically unwell.
(So much drama)
Bem had shown that even a smart and rigorous scientist could cart himself to crazyland, just by following the rules of the road.

Looking back, however, his research offered something more than a vivid illustration of problems in the field of psychology. It opened up a platform for discussion. Bem hadn’t simply published a set of inconceivable findings; he’d done so in a way that explicitly invited introspection.

Also, the paper barely discuss anything from parapsychology. It appears as if the whole field of parapsychology is just Bem + some unknown wackos vs. the world. Also, they barely touch any related research, for instance there's no mention of Julia Mossbridge, Jessica Utts and Patrizio Tressoldi recent works. Also the article barely mentions Bem early works in parapsychology, the word ganzfeld is nowhere in the text.

The article is more balanced during some parts and they also let Daryl Bem have the final word. However, I don't see the point in writing about all this controversy again. The point was already clear 6 years ago: Bem's paper was well made but inconclusive and psychology has some internal problems (specially because psychologists aren't very good statisticians). Also there was no need to publish some harsh comments against Bem and his work.
 
Yesterday the magazine Slate posted this:

http://redux.slate.com/cover-storie...ed-esp-is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html?

It's the "cover" (they are an online magazine) story of their new issue. And the title is "Daryl Bem proved ESP is real" and the subtitle was "which means science is broken". Of course, the title caught my attention and I thought "Oh, I wasn't aware of any new experiment". And to my surprise there was no new experiment, it was yet another article talking about the famous 2011 paper "Feeling the future".

The article is well written, but it's more of the same. I wonder why people keep repeating the same story. Also, there was a lot of unnecesary quote trashing Bem and parapsychology in general


(So much drama)




Also, the paper barely discuss anything from parapsychology. It appears as if the whole field of parapsychology is just Bem + some unknown wackos vs. the world. Also, they barely touch any related research, for instance there's no mention of Julia Mossbridge, Jessica Utts and Patrizio Tressoldi recent works. Also the article barely mentions Bem early works in parapsychology, the word ganzfeld is nowhere in the text.

The article is more balanced during some parts and they also let Daryl Bem have the final word. However, I don't see the point in writing about all this controversy again. The point was already clear 6 years ago: Bem's paper was well made but inconclusive and psychology has some internal problems (specially because psychologists aren't very good statisticians). Also there was no need to publish some harsh comments against Bem and his work.

Oh, please, not again! Didn't skeptics prove and demonstrate their deeply unscientific thought patterns immediately after Bem's publication? Do they intend to produce another self-exposure?

To explain: the sheer hilariousness of all these claims in that they effectively demand that science is only valid in skeptics' mind as long as it supports their non-scientific (or, more precise, pre-scientific) philosophical positions. No amount of scientific research, no matter how methodologically valid, would make to them to doubt, let alone change, their philosophical positions. They are beyond experimental testing and empircal checking.

If skeptics had enough integrity to confess that their position is non-scientific, and will be held by them no matter what scientifc research shows, it would be at least honest. Yet they claim to be "defenders of science", which they are not; they are, in painful but obvious fact, the most deadly enemies science ever had. They are much worse than Biblical Literalists and Young Earth Creationists, since they are much more powerful and influential, and constantly hide their hostility to the scientific inqury under the veil of "pro-science" rhetoric.

And, as Titus Rivas would correctly add, even on a philosophical, rational level their hardcore materialist positions are logically incoherent and nonsensical. Their fundamental position is absurdist irrationalism falsely pretending to be "rational".

The reason they still hold their position, despite its irrational and anti-empirical nature, is purely social: an aspiration to build a totally irreligious, despiritualised society. This aspiration, while having its roots in a genuinely progressive and libertarian secularity movement - the separation of religious communities and political power, so the former wouldn't have the latter to supress their opponents - was subverted by the constant regressive authoritarian temptation which always haunts progressive libertarian movements, and, if not resisted, may easily transform them into insane, enslaving totalitarian projects. The relatively liberated and polyarchic structure of modern Western societies, happily, won't allow the most furious skeptics to have total control under discourse and inquiry, which some of them, I suspect, strongly desire...
 
Oh, please, not again! Didn't skeptics prove and demonstrate their deeply unscientific thought patterns immediately after Bem's publication? Do they intend to produce another self-exposure?

To explain: the sheer hilariousness of all these claims in that they effectively demand that science is only valid in skeptics' mind as long as it supports their non-scientific (or, more precise, pre-scientific) philosophical positions. No amount of scientific research, no matter how methodologically valid, would make to them to doubt, let alone change, their philosophical positions. They are beyond experimental testing and empircal checking.

If skeptics had enough integrity to confess that their position is non-scientific, and will be held by them no matter what scientifc research shows, it would be at least honest. Yet they claim to be "defenders of science", which they are not; they are, in painful but obvious fact, the most deadly enemies science ever had. They are much worse than Biblical Literalists and Young Earth Creationists, since they are much more powerful and influential, and constantly hide their hostility to the scientific inqury under the veil of "pro-science" rhetoric.

And, as Titus Rivas would correctly add, even on a philosophical, rational level their hardcore materialist positions are logically incoherent and nonsensical. Their fundamental position is absurdist irrationalism falsely pretending to be "rational".

The reason they still hold their position, despite its irrational and anti-empirical nature, is purely social: an aspiration to build a totally irreligious, despiritualised society. This aspiration, while having its roots in a genuinely progressive and libertarian secularity movement - the separation of religious communities and political power, so the former wouldn't have the latter to supress their opponents - was subverted by the constant regressive authoritarian temptation which always haunts progressive libertarian movements, and, if not resisted, may easily transform them into insane, enslaving totalitarian projects. The relatively liberated and polyarchic structure of modern Western societies, happily, won't allow the most furious skeptics to have total control under discourse and inquiry, which some of them, I suspect, strongly desire...
You said what I was trying to say in the other thread just a lot better
 
Lol.I hate when journalists do that.

Sometimes the text reads like a slapstick comedy script. There's the batshit crazy scientist (Daryl Bem) whose experiment consists in showing heterosexual pornographic pictures to random people (and sometimes to gay people) in order to find ESP. And the serious and rigorous scientist (Wagenmakers) who keeps correcting the crazy one in order to protect science.
 
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