Random forum fighting thread

[Laird]

And I'd be somewhat willing to wager that Dean Radin has said something similar too.

I'm like 95% sure it was Rupert Sheldrake. Maybe even 99%. His charming manner makes it easy to remember stuff he's said like that.

Yes, it was Sheldrake, at about 5.30 on this video:

Nor can I - the closest I can find is this: "[A]n occupational breakdown showed physicists, engineers, etc, to be very strongly represented amongst the Sheep, where psychologists were rarely to be found".

Perhaps Chris Carter had access to survey data that was not published, at least not in the New Scientist paper?

Or it was one of the other surveys that said that. But other people also cite Evans for that number, so it looks rather as though people have been copying from one another without checking their sources.

[Laird]

Or it was one of the other surveys that said that. But other people also cite Evans for that number, so it looks rather as though people have been copying from one another without checking their sources.

Which implies that somebody made up the numbers from whole cloth, which - and call me naive if you want - I find rather hard to believe.

Which implies that somebody made up the numbers from whole cloth, which - and call me naive if you want - I find rather hard to believe.

I'm just thinking it looks as though one author got the numbers from another paper but misattributed them to Evans by accident, and others copied that author without checking Evans's paper.

[Laird]

I'm just thinking it looks as though one author got the numbers from another paper but misattributed them to Evans by accident, and others copied that author without checking Evans's paper.

OK, thanks for clarifying. I find that a whole lot easier to believe.

I guess that leaves some people unmoved. Second-hand information regardless of origin is already distant.

By the time it is typed on here anything posted is already second-hand, from an anonymous user on the internet. But the matters of importance on which I comment come from direct personal experience, of the type which interrupts the routines of normal life and insists on being heard. If one gets caught in a storm and is tossed around by its force, one can no longer can be vague about the reality of such matters. That's why I post on these forums.

'Second-hand information regardless of origin is already distant' is a belief you have bought into but if is what you prefer, away you go!

The difference is that Pssst is actually in contact with the ETs, and no doubt they have cloning technology.

Then again, why is Steve001 so called? Is he just a prototype?

Then again, why is Steve001 so called? Is he just a prototype?

Yes, but the prototype proved to be very troublesome, so the project was abandoned. 

Much of science is non controversial so doesn't get mentioned here. Clearly some people come from a scientific background so want to see science expanded to account for the experiences and anomalies we discuss here. You are in effect, like so many ideological atheists and sceptics (and I'm not suggesting that you are one of them), accusing proponents of being anti-science because they challenge the orthodoxy. 

As far as I'm concerned, it is the assumption of materialism that I challenge. So long as scientists insist on science itself being confined to what they term naturalistic causes, then here will be dissent here, at Skeptiko and elsewhere. It isn't that science is wrong, it is that the base assumption of materialism needs to be challenged.

No, I'm accusing them of being anti-science because their language is explicitly anti-science. One of Alex's recent podcasts was entitled "Why We Shouldn't Trust Science". Stan said on another thread that a phenomenon was for religious/spiritual types to ponder, because "scientists" had exempted themselves - he suggested it couldn't be investigated scientifically because "scientists" didn't believe in it. David Bailey continually criticises "science" when what he means is the scientific establishment.

Do they think parapsychologists aren't scientists, or do they think they are but we shouldn't trust them?

An observation only.
It is notable that absolutely all parapsychologists and those whom are most referenced i.e. Radin, Bechel(sp?)... all use science.  Members like science as long as it is used constructively to prove psi.