The psychology of paranormal beliefs

Summary Investigation of paranormal claims has failed to find any repeatable paranormal phenomena, yet beliefs in such phenomena are extemely prevalent. Some of the psychological mechanisms which support these beliefs are described. Mental imagery, subjective validation, coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud all contributeto the folklore in this field. Magical thinking is as evident today as it ever has been. Recent research suggests that increased skepticism concerning paranormal claims can result from special educational procedures which emphasize critical thinking rather than learning scientific facts.     

The psychology of paranormal beliefs

Investigation of paranormal claims has failed to find any repeatable phenomena, yet beliefs in such phenomena are extremely prevalent. Some of the psychological mechanisms which support these beliefs are described. Mental imagery, subjective validation, coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud all contribute to the folklore in this field. Magical thinking is as evident today as it ever has been. Recent research suggests that increased skepticism concerning paranormal claims can result from special educational procedures which emphasize critical thinking rather than learning scientific facts.     

Paranormal health claims

Faith in paranormal cures has always been the last hope of many sufferers from chronic or incurable diseases. Magico-religious rituals of healing are still around, but some have been replaced by pseudo-scientific systems, thinly disguising old superstitions in new obscurantism, more appealing to the half-educated. In medical quackery, inventiveness seems to be limitless, and only the main paranormal healing systems can be reviewed here. The increasing popularity of 'alternative' healing indicates the extent of dissatisfaction with dehumanising aspects of modern, technological medicine and its preoccupation with curing the curable at the expense of caring for the incurable. This leaves the sufferers, and also healthy people labelled with non-existent diseases, bleeding prey for the sharks roving the seas of medical ignorance.     

Paranormal health claims

Summary Faith in paranormal cures has always been the last hope of many sufferers from chronic or incurable diseases. Magico-religious rituals of healing are still around, but some have been replaced by pseudo-scientific systems, thinly disguising old superstitions in new obscurantism, more appealing to the half-educated. in medical quackery, inventiveness seems to be limitless, and only the main paranormal healing systems can be reviewed here. The increasing popularity of alternative healing indicates the extent of dissatisfaction with dehumanising aspects of modern, technological medicine and its preoccupation with curing the curable at the expense of caring for the incurable. This leaves the sufferers, and also healthy people labelled with non-existent diseases, bleeding prey for the sharks roving the seas of medical ignorance. Medicine came into the world with a twin brother called Charlatanism — Lavoisier     

The experimenters' regress: from skepticism to argumentation

Harry Collins' central argument about experimental practice revolves around the thesis that facts can only be generated by good instruments but good instruments can only be recognized as such if they produce facts. This is what Collins calls the experimenters' regress. For Collins, scientific controversies cannot be closed by the ‘facts’ themselves because there are no formal criteria independent of the outcome of the experiment that scientists can apply to decide whether an experimental apparatus works properly or not.No one seems to have noticed that the debate is in fact a rehearsal of the ancient philosophical debate about skepticism. The present article suggests that the way out of radical skepticism offered by the so-called mitigated skeptics is a solution to the problem of consensus formation in science.     

Psi experiments: do the best parapsychological experiments justify the claims for psi?

Since the founding of the Society of Psychical Research in 1982, psychical researchers have, in each generation, generated research reports which they believed justified the existence of paranormal phenomena. Throughout this period the scientific establishment has either rejected or ignored such claims. The parapsychologists, with some justification, complained that their claims were being rejected without the benefit of a fair hearing. This paper asks the question of how well the best contemporary evidence for psi--the term used to designate ESP and psychokinetic phenomena--stands up to fair and unbiased appraisal. The results of the scrutiny of the three most widely heralded programs of research--the remote viewing experiments, the psi ganzfeld research, and the work with random number generators--indicates that parapsychological research falls short of the professed standards of the field. In particular, the available reports indicate that randomization is often inadequate, multiple statistical testing without adjustment for significance levels is prevalent, possibilities for sensory leakage are not uniformly prevented, errors in use of statistical tests are much too common, and documentation is typically inadequate. Although the responsible critic cannot argue that these observed departures from optimal experimental procedures have been the sole cause of the reported findings, it is reasonable to demand that the parapsychologists produce consistently significant findings from experiments that are methodologically adequate before their claims are taken seriously.     

Psi experiments: Do the best parapsychological experiments justify the claims for psi?

Summary Since the founding of the Society of Psychical Research in 1982, psychical researchers have, in each generation, generated research reports which they believed justified the existence of paranormal phenomena. Throughout this period the scientific establishment has either rejected or ignored such claims. The parapsychologists, with some justification, complained that their claims were being rejected without the benefit of a fair hearing. This paper asks the question of how well the best contemporary evidence for psi — the term used to designate ESP and psychokinetic phenomena — stands up to fair and unbiased appraisal. The results of the scrutiny of the three most widely heralded programs of research — the remote viewing experiments, the psi ganzfeld research, and the work with random number generators — indicates that parapsychological research falls short of the professed standards of the field. In particular, the available reports indicate that randomization is often inadequate, multiple statistical testing without adjustment for significance levels is prevalent, possibilities for sensory leakage are not uniformly prevented, errors in use of statistical tests are much too common, and documentation is typically inadequate. Although the responsible critic cannot argue that these observed departures from optimal experimental procedures have been the sole cause of the reported findings, it is reasonable to demand that the parapsychologists produce consistently significant findings from experiments that are methodologically adequate before their claims are taken seriously.     

Misuses of biology in the context of the paranormal

Public suspicion of science stems from science's challenging of perceptions and myths about reality, and a public fear of new technology. The result is a susceptibility to pseudoscience. In claiming that creation 'science' is as valid as evolution the creationists misquote scientists and seek to spread their own 'scientific' myths concerning a young age for the earth, an act of creation based on a particular literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible and a single worldwide flood. They use methods of debate and politics, rather than scientific research. A selection of their arguments is examined and the nature of the evidence for evolution is discussed. Problems with the creation 'science' model are noted. In the myth of the hundredth monkey phenomenon, original research is misquoted to denigrate scientific research and support sentimental ideas of paranormal events. The misuse of science is seen as damaging to society because it reduces the effective gathering and application of scientific information. However, pseudoscience provides a valuable guide to gaps in public scientific education.     

The imperative for inclusion: A gender analysis of genetics

It has now been more than thirty years since Joan Wallach Scott (1986) argued that gender is a legitimate and necessary category of historical analysis that applies to all fields, including genetics. In the intervening years, a substantial body of work has appeared that adds women to the historiography of genetics. While this is a necessary component for including gender as a category of analysis in genetics, it is not sufficient. Gender analysis involves the broader goal of integrating gender into the interrogation of how social factors within research practices and institutional organization influence scientific work and knowledge production in genetics. This article argues for the imperative for inclusion—including both women and gender analysis—which, taken together, not only provide a more equitable and informative picture of the discipline's development, but also yield a historiography that more faithfully reflects the activity of doing science.     

The experimenters' regress reconsidered: Replication,tacit knowledge,and the dynamics of knowledge generation

This paper revisits the debate between Harry Collins and Allan Franklin, concerning the experimenters' regress. Focusing my attention on a case study from recent psychology (regarding experimental evidence for the existence of a Mozart Effect), I argue that Franklin is right to highlight the role of epistemological strategies in scientific practice, but that his account does not sufficiently appreciate Collins's point about the importance of tacit knowledge in experimental practice. In turn, Collins rightly highlights the epistemic uncertainty (and skepticism) surrounding much experimental research. However, I will argue that his analysis of tacit knowledge fails to elucidate the reasons why scientists often are (and should be) skeptical of other researchers' experimental results. I will present an analysis of tacit knowledge in experimental research that not only answers to this desideratum, but also shows how such skepticism can in fact be a vital enabling factor for the dynamic processes of experimental knowledge generation.     

Holism,entrenchment, and the future of climate model pluralism

In this paper, we explore the extent to which issues of simulation model validation take on novel characteristics when the models in question become particularly complex. Our central claim is that complex simulation models in general, and global models of climate in particular, face a form of confirmation holism. This holism, moreover, makes analytic understanding of complex models of climate either extremely difficult or even impossible. We argue that this supports a position we call convergence skepticism: the belief that the existence of a plurality of different models making a plurality of different forecasts of future climate is likely to be a persistent feature of global climate science.     

Relativism in Feyerabend's later writings

This paper reconstructs, and distinguishes between, Feyerabend's different forms of relativism in his later writings. Science in a Free Society remains close to familiar forms of relativism, while, at the same time, developing an original but under-argued form of political relativism, and rejecting “conversion” models of cultural exchange. Farewell to Reason moves away from common renderings of relativism, and develops a range of different new forms. Central here are links between relativism, skepticism and infallibilism. In the last six years of his life, Feyerabend often criticizes a peculiar radical form of relativism that arguably no-one has ever proposed or defended. In the same context, Feyerabend sketches an “ontological” form of relativism. It combines “Kantian humility”, metaphysical pluralism and constructivism.     

Does democracy require value-neutral science? Analyzing the legitimacy of scientific information in the political sphere

Philosophers now commonly reject the value free ideal for science by arguing that non-epistemic values, including personal or social values, are permissible within the core of scientific research. However, little attention has been paid to the normative political consequences of this position. This paper explores these consequences and shows how political theory is fruitful for proceeding in a world without value-neutral science. I draw attention to an oft-overlooked argument employed by proponents of the value free ideal I dub the “political legitimacy argument.” This argument claims that the value-free ideal follows directly from the foundational principles of liberal democracy. If so, then the use of value-laden scientific information within democratic decision making would be illegitimate on purely political grounds. Despite highlighting this unaddressed and important argument, I show how it can be rejected. By appealing to deliberative democratic theory, I demonstrate scientific information can be value-laden and politically legitimate. The deliberative democratic account I develop is well suited for capturing the intuitions of many opponents of the value free ideal and points to a new set of questions for those interested in values in science.     

Unwarranted assumptions: Claude Bernard and the growth of the vera causa standard

The physiologist Claude Bernard was an important nineteenth-century methodologist of the life sciences. Here I place his thought in the context of the history of the vera causa standard, arguably the dominant epistemology of science in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its proponents held that in order for a cause to be legitimately invoked in a scientific explanation, the cause must be shown by direct evidence to exist and to be competent to produce the effects ascribed to it. Historians of scientific method have argued that in the course of the nineteenth century the vera causa standard was superseded by a more powerful consequentialist epistemology, which also admitted indirect evidence for the existence and competence of causes. The prime example of this is the luminiferous ether, which was widely accepted, in the absence of direct evidence, because it entailed verified observational consequences and, in particular, successful novel predictions. According to the received view, the vera causa standard's demand for direct evidence of existence and competence came to be seen as an impracticable and needless restriction on the scope of legitimate inquiry into the fine structure of nature. The Mill-Whewell debate has been taken to exemplify this shift in scientific epistemology, with Whewell's consequentialism prevailing over Mill's defense of the older standard. However, Bernard's reflections on biological practice challenge the received view. His methodology marked a significant extension of the vera causa standard that made it both powerful and practicable. In particular, Bernard emphasized the importance of detection procedures in establishing the existence of unobservable entities. Moreover, his sophisticated notion of controlled experimentation permitted inferences about competence even in complex biological systems. In the life sciences, the vera causa standard began to flourish precisely around the time of its alleged abandonment.     

Searching for “signal 2”: costimulation requirements of γδ T cells

T cell activation requires the integration of signals that arise from various types of receptors. Although TCR triggering is a necessary condition, it is often not sufficient to induce full T-cell activation, as reflected in cell proliferation and cytokine secretion. This has been firmly demonstrated for conventional αβ T cells, for which a large panel of costimulatory receptors has been identified. By contrast, the area remains more obscure for unconventional, innate-like γδ T cells, as the literature has been scarce and at times contradictory. Here we review the current state of the art on the costimulatory requirements of γδ T cell activation. We highlight the roles of members of the immunoglobulin (like CD28 or JAML) or tumour necrosis factor receptor (like CD27) superfamilies of coreceptors, but also of more atypical costimulatory molecules, such as NKG2D or CD46. Finally, we identify various areas where our knowledge is still markedly insufficient, hoping to provoke future research on γδ T cell costimulation.     

Expansion of amino acid homo-sequences in proteins: Insights into the role of amino acid homo-polymers and of the protein context in aggregation

Expansion of amino acid homo-sequences, such as polyglutamines or polyalanines, in proteins has been directly implicated in various degenerative diseases through a mechanism of protein misfolding and aggregation. However, it is still unclear how the nature of the expansion and the protein context influence the tendency of a protein to aggregate. Here, we have addressed these questions using spinocerebellar ataxia type-3 (ATX3) protein, the best characterised of the polyglutamine proteins, chosen as a model system. Using a transfected mammalian cell line, we demonstrate that ATX3 aggregation is noticeably reduced by deletion or replacement of regions other than the polyglutamine tract. The nature of the amino acid homo-sequences also has a strong influence on aggregation. From our studies, we draw general conclusions on the effect of the protein architecture and of the amino acid homo-sequence on pathology. Received 3 March 2006; received after revision 19 April 2006; accepted 22 May 2006