There was a decades-long set of experiments in this direction at my university, the results were controversial and not generally reproducible, and the experiments had some serious methodology issues.Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
"Even casual comparison of the agent and percipient narratives produced in this body of experiments reveals striking correspondences in both their general and specific aspects, indicative of some anomalous channel of information acquisition, well beyond any chance expectation."
This is such important research. We don't know or understand more than a fraction of what makes this universe so fascinating!
To be fair, my department (Statistics) used that group's work as cautionary tales...
I certainly am no scientist. I didn't even get into some of the higher math classes in school and was turned off of several science classes by some of the teachers (chemistry teacher made Steven Wright seem lively and animated by comparison). In some ways I have learned more after school, where I can seek my interests at my own pace, while controlling my own surroundings. Science helps us understand things, but it by itself, would not be enough based on how we seem to progress. We need visionaries and inventors to go with that. A good old tv example of that would be the show Connections by James Burke (remember that? good example from that is the carburetor). Some scientists can and do make the connections to how useful things can be, and move in that direction, while others are more just research type. A good example of a connections type is Richard Feynman. After the bomb, he tells a story about some uses for nuclear energy, for which the government then goes patenting and puts his name on the patents. He mentions sub propulsion (and the patent person says that is taken), and then plane propulsion (which he gets) and is later offered a job based on that patent.
Then you have visionaries or inventors who use the science in a way to solve a need. Some are inventors by taking things and combining them (going back to the carburetor) and others are visionaries and trying to solve a local need (William Kamkwamba, trying to understand a book in a foreign language, to build a windmill to provide power for a well and for powering a light or cell phone charger in a house).
All of these involve an open mind, and a belief that one can be wrong.
Their opponents tend to just believe they are wrong, without having an open mind to view the reasoning or how they got there.
Because sometimes accepting something as true means you have to change your current mental paradigm, or your behavior, or both and people find that very threatening. It's incredibly difficult to get people to release beliefs they hold dear, even in the face of "proof" and "data" and "smart people saying so."
I remember my daughter learning that in her early days of being a vegetarian. She was in high school at the time and for a school presentation project she decided to make a video of all the horrific conditions in factory farming. She truly believed that all she would have to do to convince her classmates not to eat meat would be to show them how cruel the meat industry is. She was really surprised when, not only did no one in the class change their minds or habits around meat-eating--but the teacher yelled at her and told her to stop playing the video because it was upsetting people.
If I had time to do some pro bono market research work (which I don't) I would definitely do some market research on how to reach non-believers. What hits our buttons doesn't automatically hit the buttons of those who feel differently. And I bet it will take "them" just as long to change their minds as it would take "us" to change ours.
"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
www.silententry.wordpress.com
One of my students complained to our director that I had ruined marshmallows for her for life. The director asked "how did she do that?" And the student said "she told me how they are made." And the director said "ok."
Believing in the process of science does not mean that you necessarily believe in all the results. The remote seeing thing is interesting, I think we have taken out of our cultures some kind of respect for those extra sensitive individuals who may 'know' things, and instead only respected the ones that went to years of school. I tend to be blessed/cursed with some of this, I think it is the high sensitivity to everything around me that notices things that others don't. Not remote seeing however, just noticing tiny details and trends all the time. Not winning the lottery however!
I also think that understanding the process of science is very important, and that it is a series of educated guesses that are proven wrong or not proven wrong yet. When we do science with older elementary kids who have started to get into the mental blocks of not wanting to try something that may not work I explain science that way. That scientists try something, fail a few times, and learn a lot in the process. The ways of testing, the ways of reporting and analyzing data, and the number of times the experiment can be repeated with similar results are all essential. That means that a lot of scientists are just testing out things that have been done before, and that is not as cool as inventing new things. I know that we have a data guy now in our department and available to other organizations. He helps us choose really good questions to get at specific things we want to know, and how to collect, get more results and analyze. Choosing a good, clear question is really important.
Also I am seeing that with the ability of googling everything under the sun people think that you do not need to be an expert on anything. So the lack of respect for those who have spent years studying is affected. If it is climate change I listen to my friend who has been to the arctic as a climate scientist. However not everyone understands the developmental stages of children and their learning process. My staff person who did not work out this year didn't have any interest in learning more about this, and therefore did not grow at all in the job.
I have to ask, what was it about the marshmallow manufacturing process that bothered them?
I listened to too much late night radio a few years ago that had guests from the government remote viewing project. I don't remember the exact time period when the program was developed, but think it was a time related to the cold war. The story was that Russia was investing millions into psychic espionage and there was a little bit of an espionage race. They eventually decided it was not worthwhile and was discontinued. I actually tried to learn to do remote viewing from some web site training programs and honestly think there may be a little bit to it.
As goofy as it might seem, it was a good example of the scientific method and exploring the unknown, where you formulate a hypothesis, design tests, collect information and analyze the results. In this case it didn't appear to be worth pursuing, but what if there was something there but no one ever tested it. People has scoffed at other things that might have seemed just as ridiculous in their day.
The history of science is one of consensus vs. open minds. Semmelweiss and his hand-washing being only one example--he was rewarded for his life-saving work by being essentially killed in an asylum. Consensus has its place, but open minds are a necessary treasure. More Noakes: “The reality is no great scientific advance has ever been made, but that it was once considered “unconventional”.... ...
All of these involve an open mind, and a belief that one can be wrong.
Their opponents tend to just believe they are wrong, without having an open mind to view the reasoning or how they got there.
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