Pseudoskepticism, anecdotal evidence and testimonies. More evidence of materialist pseudoskeptic's irrationality and dishonesty

Pseudoskeptics often say that "anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything", "testimonies are worthless because people can be deluded, prejudiced or simply be lying" or another nonsense like that. The reasons why pseudoskeptics doesn't take into account anecdotal evidence are:

1)Pseudoskeptics are materialists and followers of scientism (= scientism is the belief that only the methods of natural sciences are reliable to get knowledge). It's true that natural science methods are the most realiable ones, but not the only ones (e.g. you can know the existence of this blog without need of scientific evidence published in peer-review journal; reading my blog and relying in your memory is enough).

2)Much paranormal evidence comes in the form of testimonies and anecdotal evidence (e.g. experiences of people who has had some psi-like events). This kind of evidence is prone to error or misrepresentation, but they're far of being "worthless"; and they count as evidence for the people experiencing them. However, it's reasonable to rely more in scientific laboratory evidence for psi (see Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe for experimental scientific evidence for psi)

However, in this post, I'll show how pseudoskeptics use a double standard regarding anecdotal evidence and testimonies. They consider anecdotal evidence unreliable only if it supports the paranormal; but if the evidence support the materialist pseudoskeptic's anti-paranormal beliefs, then they uncritcally accept it and quote it as evidence against the paranormal.

Let's see concrete examples:

1)In the entry "Sai Baba" at the online peudoskeptic dictionary you can read, above, a link titled "Witnesses" and other links titled "Conny Larsson's story" and "charges of Sai Baba with many counts of molesting boys"

If witnesses are unreliable and personal stories (like that of Conny Larsson) too, why the pseudoskeptic dictionary uses them against Sai Baba?

For the record, for me, Sai Baba is not an spiritual master...

2)Pseudoskeptics use the testimony of Richard Feynmann as proof that he "debunked" or "exposed" Uri Geller. But in close reading, Feynmann experience with Geller was an informal, anecdotal account of his personal experiences with Geller, not a laboratory scientific test published in peer-review scientific journals and replicated by independent scientists.

I'm not defending Geller; in fact, I consider he's a good magician. My point here is show the pseudoskeptic's irrationality, dishonesty, and use of double standards.

3)Pseudoskeptic and CSICOP/CSI fellow Joe Nickel used the testimony of Michael O'Neill as part of his case against John Edwards. In Nickel's article you can read: "An article in Time magazine suggested John Edward may have used just such chicanery. One subject, a marketing manager named Michael O'Neill had received apparent messages from his dead grandfather but, when his segment aired, he noted that it had been improved through editing"

If testimonies are worthless, then O'Neill's testimony is wortheless too (making superfluous any reference to them). But given pseudoskeptic's ideological bias and prejudices against the paranormal, they can't spot the double standard (or they use it intentionally?), because they want to believe that O'Neill's testimony is correct (since such testimony support the pseudoskeptical materialist prejudices that real mediums don't and can't possibly exist).

As has asked writer Michael Goodspeed: "Skeptics, do you accept as truth this anecdotal testimony of one person? Is it not your position that uncorrobrated eye witness testimony is consistently unreliable and not to be trusted? Out of all the thousands of people who have participated in Edward's show...do you believe that Michael O'Neill was the only one with sufficient wits and guile to glean what was "really" going on? If Edward is so blatantly cheating, why have we not heard more complaints of a similar vane?"

But such questions would be of interest only for honest and rational inquirers concerned about logical consistency, not bigoted and ideology-driven individuals who, instead of search the truth and apply critical thinking to their own anti-paranormal assumptions too, seek to rationalize an uncritically justify their own prejudices with double standards, rhetorical sleights-of-hand, sophistry and other fallacies. According to my experience debating to and examining the pseudoskeptical mind, most of such irrational individuals "can't realize" (literally) their own contradictions and double standars, and if they accidently realize them, they would dismiss them as unimportant or intentionally use such fallacies to attempt win the argument (since their interest is not logical consistency and seeking of the truth, but to debunk and refute any data, evidence, facts or research that challenge, undermine or refute their cherished anti-paranormal materialistic beliefs. They "know" in advance, and want to believe, that such paranormal things don't exist, so the work of a "skeptic" is essentially to debunk them).

4)Another pseudoskeptic, Matt Nisbet, also uncritically accepted as valid and correct the testimony of Jaroff and O'Neill, when he wrote: " In support of his assertions of Edward's possible hot readings, Jaroff detailed the experience of Michael O'Neill, a past audience member on Crossing Over who had been the subject of a reading by Edward. According to O'Neill's account, producers of the show had spliced into the final program clips of O'Neill nodding yes into the videotape after statements by Edward with which he remembers disagreeing. In addition, according to O'Neill, most of Edward's "misses," both in relation to him and other audience members, had been edited out of the final tape. O'Neill also claimed that before the show, assistants to the producers had gathered information about audience members, including their names and family histories. O'Neill also told Jaroff that most of the conversations among the audience while they were seated in the stands waiting the start of the show were about dead loved ones, information that could have been picked up by microphones strategically placed about the amphitheater"

Note that Nisbet uses the testimony of Jaroff about the personal experience of O'Neill with John Edwards. A second hand testimony!

5)In his book "Flim-Flam", pseudoskeptic James Randi used the testimony of an individuals to cast doubts and debunk a psi research by Targ and Puthoff. As wrote writer Michael Prescott in his critical review of Randi's book: "It might be worth adding that critics of paranormal phenomena, like Randi, are forever decrying any reliance on "anecdotal evidence," which is precisely what the bulk of Randi's argument consists of.

Randi does produce two individuals willing to go on the record – Charles Rebert and Leon Otis, both of whom were SRI psychologists. Rebert and Otis apparently disagreed with the Targ-Puthoff conclusions; indeed, Randi tells us that "a horrified Rebert also heard that Targ and Puthoff were going to proclaim these erroneous findings before Stanford University's psychology department, and he forbade such a blunder. The talk was canceled." But this only tells us that there was a dispute among the scientists at SRI. Rebert and Otis ran some unsuccessful tests with Geller and decided that he was a fraud. Targ and Puthoff ran what they regarded as successful tests and decided that, in some areas at least, Geller had legitimate psychic powers. Nothing in Randi's text establishes which conclusion was correct"

Note that the point here is not if the research by Puthoff and Targ is correct or not; the point is Randi's use of testimonies and anecdotal evidence to support some of his conclusions.

As you can see, pseudoskeptics use a double standard to judge anecdotal evidence and testimonies: If the evidence support anti-paranormal materialist prejudices, then the evidence is good and deserves to be quoted as valid evidence. If the evidence is in support of the paranormal, then the evidence is worthless, unreliable and false.

Organized pseudoskepticism's intellectual dishonesty, hypocricy and irrationality and the clever use of double standards is essential to the success of the atheistic materialistic agenda, since that is only through the use of such methods that they can keep internally consistent the materialistic worldview. Obviously, such inconstencies and fallacies would be uncritically accepted and convincing only for their uncritical followers (pseudoskeptics). But no rational person would swallow their fallacies, lies and misrepresentations, and any real seeker after the truth would spot the uses double standard to favor the materialistic bias against the paranormal.

Bear in mind that pseudoskeptics want to believe that paranormal events don't exist, so they uncritically dismiss any evidence (anecdotal or empirical) in favor of psi. It's the only way to keep the materialistic worldview inmune to empirical refutation.

Even the evidence gotten in their own tests (like seen in the following video) would be considered worthless IF the result supports the paranormal claim (but the same or similar test, if the result is negative, would be considered as a conclusive refutation of the claim):

Essentially, they're fooling themselves (in the name of "reason" and "science") by ideological and, possibly, by emotional reasons too. For a pseudoskeptic, only evidence against the paranormal counts (any piece of evidence in support of a paranormal claim is interpreted by them in a way that supports the pseudoskeptical anti-paranormal belief; you can test this assertion showing to a pseudoskeptic the above video and examining carefully and critically their reactions; they will be hyper-critical of the test, consider it faulty, invent speculative ad hoc "explanations" but without giving any evidence of them; some of them will attack Shermer with ad hominem fallacies, and dismiss that test as absolutely worthless. You won't see in them any DOUBT, nor any serious interest to find the truth; prejudices, congnitive dissonance and jumping to anti-paranormal conclusions is everything you'll see since that their minds are already made up against the paranormal and no piece of evidence can change, or make to doubt, so psychologically strong materialistic pseudoskeptical belief. Rationally discussing such topics with them is a waste of time; except, if you want to see by yourself the pseudoskeptical prejudices, dishonesty, irrationality and mindset in action.)

Links of interest:

-Article on the 7 signs of bogus skepticism (pseudoskepticism)

-Episode of Skeptiko entitled "What I've learned from Skeptics" (Alex Tsakiris)

-An example of pseudoskeptical dishonesty exposed in court (an example silenced or undervalued by most pseudoskeptics, in another confirmation of their intellectual dishonesty and double standard).

-Marxist-Stalisnist origin of the organized pseudoskeptical movement.

-My post "How to debunk any claim you want to disbelieve"

-Metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism as the ideological basis of pseudoskeptical dishonesty, hypocrecy and irrationality (such destructive ideology includes the idea of the non-existence of free will and, therefore, demolishes any actual, positive and useful concept of moral responsability what explains part of the behaviour and attitudes of pseudoskeptics)