The criticism that there is no reliably reproducible demonstration of psi

Hume’s Syndrome: Irrational Resistance to the Paranormal


See also:

When Science Becomes Scientism: Carl Sagan and His Demon-Haunted World

There's some stuff R.A.Wilson also noted questioning Sagan's integrity that I'll dig up.

I can't help but think that if the great scientific thinkers of our time were to be unshackled from:
- their fear of being ostracized by their peers
- their need to pay the mortgage with the money that xyz foundation pays them

and they had the time to really look closely at all the evidence, 

they would reach the conclusion that there is something undeniable going on here, and they would get down to the work of figuring it out. 

In this dream world of mine, I imagine uncovering the truth in relatively short order. 

Well,,, as much of the truth as we are capable of understanding that is...

"That's an aphorism made popular by Carl Sagan but it's not a principle of the scientific method, as per the agreed upon definition linked in my previous post.
Just parroting the above adage doesn't make it true. Also the "extraordinary" qualifier is very arbitrary and based on your assumptions of what goest out of the "ordinary"."

The usual example is that the claim "there's a red car in my yard" is more likely than the claim "a UFO landed in my yard" therefore the latter would require extraordinary evidence. In reality, if we had to apply the scientific method there wouldn't be any difference. If you think you can make your experiment less rigorous when testing for a "red car in my yard" then you're just making bad science.

Other than that every step of the scientific method wouldn't change an inch, regardless of wether you're looking for a red car, a UFO or the mighty spaghetti monster.

"Also anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty would question the idea that ESP/PSI is an "extraordinary claim". ESP is tightly related to consciousness which in turn is the biggest mystery in the universe. It has no place in our standard model, it doesn't even have a place in the philosophy that drives most of our sciences, and top it all off
there isn't a decent theory out there that can explain what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence.

To claim that ESP is an "extraordinary" phenomena we would need to at least have figured out what consciousness is, and be sure that that the two are at odds."

Come again?!
What has this to do with anything?

Do you really comprehend what you've written?  Your description is a fine example why psi is extraordinary.

If there exist a better standard of scientific evidence that allows us not to fool ourselves with things such as ESP/PSI, why the heck are we using an inferior one for things like finding cures to deadly illnesses, sending people in space or finding out how the cosmos work?

Postulating that such higher standard exists is admitting that most of our scientific knowledge stands on pretty shaky grounds.

What the adage means is be cautious before making grand claims. Did you hear about the faster than light neutrinos that weren't?

I said extraordinary evidence, not extraordinary claim, so this is irrelevant. Nonetheless, I would say the multiverse and string theory.

It's obvious you know. Then why is it you don't know what the adage means?

It's obvious you know. Then why is it you don't know what the adage means?

It seems pretty clear he knows what it means, his point is that "extraordinary" is a subjective descriptor.

Sam Harris, for example, would agree with me that materialism is an extraordinary as well as nonsensical claim.

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

It's obvious you know. Then why is it you don't know what the adage means?

I am asking you to actually describe to me what extraordinary evidence entails for you. What would qualify as that?

Something different than, you know, just saying that it's "extraordinary".

Do you really comprehend what you've written?  Your description is a fine example why psi is extraordinary.

Sorry, I don't understand your objection. The part you have colored in red was referring to consciousness not PSI.
Given the miniscule knowledge we have on the nature of consciousness it's pretty arbitrary to define PSI claims as extraordinary. Anything we don't understand is literally extraordinary, as in "out of the ordinary knowledge".

But that's not the point. The point is that there aren't two sciences, one for "normal claims" and one for "extraordinary" ones. If they existed the former would just be bad science.

What the adage means is be cautious before making grand claims. Did you hear about the faster than light neutrinos that weren't?

Then you should explain why the level of evidence used for something like the Higgs boson (or faster than light neutrinos) would not be sufficient for "consciousness nudging the collapse of the wave function".

http://deanradin.com/evidence/Radin2012doubleslit.pdf
http://deanradin.blogspot.it/2012/07/one-more-time.html

Given the principle that science helps us "not fooling ourselves", if PSI claims require extra evidence then our sciences are founded on a level of evidence that still allow us to fool ourselves. Is this what you believe?

And if so, how can you claim that PSI is extraordinary given that most of our sciences are built on shaky foundations?

And if so, how can you claim that PSI is extraordinary given that most of our sciences are built on shaky foundations?

Could you elaborate? I don't completely disagree, given my own look into this issue, but I'd say applied science rests on a ground that is at least somewhat strong?

While I'm happy that the thread I founded has proved so wildly popular , this question about "extraordinary claims/extraordinary evidence" isn't really what I had in mind when I did so. After all, the sceptical claim I was addressing is that, so far from meeting an extraordinary standard, the evidence for psi hasn't even met the ordinary standard of replicability. (I do think there's some truth in the criticism, insofar as there's a difficulty in replication that needs to be explained, though I don't think it's clear what the explanation is - whether it's no psi, capricious psi, or psi that would be well behaved if only we could understand it well enough.)

On the "extraordinary" thing, it sounds sensible enough on an everyday level. If a man calls at your door claiming to be from the planet Venus, you're going to give his identification a closer look than if he says he's come to read the meter. But I'm not sure it really makes that much sense as a scientific principle. I think the real problem is that some scientists have fallen into the lazy assumption that a hypothesis is "proved", for once and for all, if the probability on the null hypothesis is less than the magic figure of 5%. Of course that's nonsense. On that standard, the null hypothesis is going to fail one time in twenty, just by chance. Ironically, I think parapsychologists are less likely to fall into that trap than conventional scientists, because there's more awareness of the issue. But they're not immune, either.

Could you elaborate? I don't completely disagree, given my own look into this issue, but I'd say applied science rests on a ground that is at least somewhat strong?

Sure, I was playing along with Steve001's assertions.
If there exists a special form of science for "extraordinary claims", which would allegedly be the ultimate method for avoiding to fool ourselves, then we're admitting that the science for "normal claims" leaves the door open for errors, thus making it rest on pretty shaky grounds.

Of course I don't think that's true, and our applied sciences seem to confirm it.
Thus the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a nothing more than a catchy slogan that doesn't add anything new to the method.

Makes sense?

Sure, I was playing along with Steve001's assertions.
If there exists a special form of science for "extraordinary claims", which would allegedly be the ultimate method for avoiding to fool ourselves, then we're admitting that the science for "normal claims" leaves the door open for errors, thus making it rest on pretty shaky grounds.

Of course I don't think that's true, and our applied sciences seem to confirm it.
Thus the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a nothing more than a catchy slogan that doesn't add anything new to the method.

Makes sense?

There's no special form of science for extraordinary claims. What it means  though is when such a claim is made extra care needs to be taken to make certain the result demonstrates the claim and not something else  entirely or even sloppy research. Was it to you I suggested to look up faster than light neutrinos?