Chris Wrote:Is that really an "oft-made claim"? In the first post in this thread you wrote that you'd once been told that by someone here.
By a strange coincidence, earlier today I tried to find out who you were referring to, but the only occurrence of the phrase that Google could find was the one in your post.
Let me be clear, and I believe I've addressed this somewhere on this forum - that statement was made by me in a private conversation with Linda. It was incredibly poorly phrased, and I was not right to have stated it in the manner that I did. It is not an "oft-made claim".
What I was in essence attempting to convey was my belief, which as far as I understand her position Linda appears to disagree with, that any intelligent and informed person can, as Brian did above, analyze a study, evidence, research, etc, and come to a legitimate and defensible, as well as rational, conclusion about that material without being a "professional" in the sense that I feel Linda seems to use the word.
The way I think Linda approaches this seems to be that you aren't qualified to really speak on something unless you're a pro (ironic, given how little deference she gives to actual parapsychological researchers, instead leaning on some vague and nebulous group of "mainstream scientists" who she claims do not buy into the psi research). I do not agree with that for so many reasons that it's hard to type them all out; but for starters, everyone doesn't have time to get an advanced degree in and do a load of independently verifiable research in a topic every time they are interested in such a topic or want to become informed on it. There are plenty of people who are not scientists who, without a doubt, have the intelligence to have become one if they so chose - and who are fully capable of reading a paper or looking at a study and recognizing what a reasonable conclusion is, or potential flaws in methodology, or confounding factors, etc.
Certainly, to some degree, we have to take expert opinions at face value, because we don't all have the time or means to independently verify every single claim out there. But this in no way means that we have to just defer to the researchers at every turn, bowing to their vast knowledge. Researchers on a specific topic certainly know more information about the topic than a lay person, and are more familiar with the methods being studying it. This does not, however, mean that those people are vastly better equipped to discuss or reason through the implications of their study, or to see its potential flaws (whatever they might be), than some third party who is not an expert in that field. Really, that's what any mainstream scientist who isn't a parapsychologist is doing, assuming they've actually taken the time to read up on and become informed on the psi topic they care to opine on.
It seems to me that Linda's approach is utterly dismissive of people who seek to evaluate evidence or research if they don't have the requisite degree or stature, whatever that is to her. I think it's arbitrary and also unreasonable. There are loads of people who may not be qualified in Linda's eyes to analyze evidence, who in fact are every bit as good as a professional scientist at thinking critically about the research done. There's a difference between knowing material and studies and being able to actually connect the dots and make reasonable and reasoned inferences from that research. Not every scientist possesses that ability, and there are certainly many lay people who do.
So, my apologies for the foolish misstatement. I do not claim to have many examples where lay people specifically, by themselves, overturned scientific consensus. But as Brian pointed out here, and in the tectonic plates thread, there definitely is ample historical evidence of the scientific mainstream community making a claim that ended up being entirely wrong. Anyone who does their best to be unbiased, who familiarizes themselves with the research, and who is intelligent can analyze evidence. As Brian said, you don't need a PhD to do that.