It's All Science

I read a lot of skeptics' websites because I mostly agree with them and I think they provide a good service by presenting a more materialistic viewpoint. Where my views diverge from some of theirs is, for one, I've seen evidence of ghosts so I can't deny their existence and two, I try to take an agnostic view toward most of the woo stuff.

This causes some confusion for people because (I think) they assume that believing in ghosts means I believe in afterlife as expressed by religions or that I support some of the other beliefs espoused by proponents of channeling and mediumship et al. What I'm really saying is that I've experienced something that I can't explain, but I think it is a phenomenon that others could also experience and I think it deserves more study. If the results of the studies indicated that temperal lobe epilepsy can be caused by visiting Gettysburg, so be it, but I still want to know what's really going on.

I also believe that other psychic claims should be tested and the results should be treated with the same respect as any other psychological study. There is so much we can learn about brain function, perception and cognition, especially with all the tools we now have to track the workings of the brain, that I think refusing to pursue such experiments or not treating the results with respect, is a wasted opportunity.

I realize that the way attitudes are right now, a scientist who even expresses an interest in psychic research could cost him his career, so there may be many people out there right now who would love to be involved in such research but dare not mention it for fear of being marginalized. There are many others, however, who have decided that psy is all bunk and any research, no matter how well done, deserves no concideration. These last mentioned people remind me too much of fundies. They have decided what does exist and what doesn't and no amount of evidence will sway them from their opinion. Anyone who decides before the experiment is done, what is or is not true and/or refuses to accept the results of an experiment because it doesn't match their preconceptions, is irrational, biased and a poor scientist. Results are all that matters. If some one does an experiment with good controls and that can be repeated which proves that under certain stimuli monkeys will fly out of a person's butt, no one has the right to say it isn't true, especially if they haven't even tried to reproduce the experiment.

Unfortunately there are way too many people in the skeptical community that have made up their minds before the fact and sneer at anyone who disagrees with their views. Insisting that psy experiments are useless and their results are invalid isn't very different from creationists insisting that the study of evolution is useless and the results invalid. Any hypothesis has a right to be tested and the proof that comes from it deserves to be accepted, whether you like it or not. Anything short of that is the suppression of knowledge and the intentional perpetuation of ignorance.

The Ghost Experiment

Yesterday I was looking for an online video or transcript from the National Geographic Channel show "Is It Real? Ghosts" because it included an interview with Richard Wiseman about a study he did in Mary King's Close in Edinburgh, Scotland. It took a long time to find the video and in the process, I looked at a lot of other videos purporting to be genuine evidence of ghosts. First of all, every aspiring special effects cinematographer over the age of five makes a video that they post on YouTube as real ghost video. Some are really awful, most are obviously faked, but a very small percentage look very real and I couldn't figure out how they could be faked. None of the videos had enough context to give them any real credibility, though, so they were just fun to watch. Considering all the attempts to fool viewers, it would be almost impossible to present any evidence that could convince a skeptic that ghosts are real with anything less than a face to face introduction.

Eventually I got around to watching the show with Richard Wiseman. In case you don't know who he is, He's a noted psychologist, author, magician and skeptic with a really fun blog. On the "Is It Real" episode he was talking about an experiment he did in the reportedly haunted underground chambers of Mary King's Close. His interview didn't really give enough information so I had to do some googling for more information. Wiseman took pictures of four rooms; two are said to have lots of ghostly activity, and two, not so much. The pictures were posted on the internet, so people could vote on which locations looked most scary. The rooms supposed to be more haunted were picked by the internet voters as more scary.

the next step was to place volunteers in the rooms and have them report on the number and type of ghostly experiences they had. Once again, those in the rooms with the reputations reported the most sensations of haunting. Richard Wiseman concluded that a location that is perceived as scary causes people to feel a heightened sense of being haunted (that was my understanding of the experiment in the Cliff Notes version. Sorry, Richard if I got it all wrong.)

The video alone is less detailed and almost sounds like Richard Wiseman was saying that he put volunteers in rooms where ghosts are reportedly seen and the volunteers saw the ghosts, so that proves that ghosts are imaginary. Isn't that clear as mud?

What I would like to have seen as part of the experiment, that I didn't find in my internet search, would be a control group. If volunteers were placed in locations that had similar physical characteristics to the rooms in Mary King's Close, but had no reports of haunting, it would reenforce the results if the control group reported similar experiences. I don't think the experiment as I understood it would convince many people. Those that support the assertion that the Close is haunted would merely say that the participants experienced more ghostly phenomena in the scary rooms because those rooms are more haunted.

Ghosts Can’t Exist, Because I Said So

One area where my views are at odds with most of the other atheist bloggers and forum participants whose writings I have read is on the subject of ghosts. Atheists tend to be skeptical and only believe in things for which they see evidence, and that pretty much describes me too. But where I diverge from the majority is that I have seen the evidence of ghosts. That being said, I have no way of presenting evidence of what I believe to be true.
As you are probably aware, my belief in ghosts actually put me at odds with lots and lots of theists also. There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about this subject; the paucity of evidence, the persuasive arguments of doubters, the long history of charlatans in the paranormal field, and fear of the unknown. The only people I have a problem with are those who flatly refuse to consider the possibility that ghosts are real.
Among atheists it is fairly common to believe that if there is no deity and religion is invalid, then there is no afterlife. Obviously, if there is no afterlife, the spirits of dead people can’t be running around. Then there are some Christians who believe that all people go to heaven or hell, so anyone still hanging around must be demons (personally, I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest that ghosts are demons). Other people have never seen evidence, have always associated paranormal claims with side-shows, hippies and magic acts and can’t believe anyone could take such things seriously, and lots of people have lots of other reasons that I either don’t remember or never heard. The thing is all the people who refuse to consider the possibility of ghosts could summarize their attitude as: Ghosts don’t exist because I say so.
What the heck, I can’t even convince some people that sushi is good so I can’t be surprised that I can’t sway them about ghosts, but I’m frustrated that the those insistent that ghosts don’t exist shut down all conversation on the subject. What I really want is to start a dialog with other open minded skeptics about possible explanations for this phenomenon that may lead to a greater understanding of nature, but refusal to consider the possibility pretty much kills that discussion.