According to this dailymail article, skeptic Richard Wiseman argues: "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do."If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.
"But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.
"Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."
Some comments:
1)Note Wiseman's concession "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven"
This point is crucial, because it refutes the common pseudosketical opinions about psi phenomena, as being a exclusive product of fraud, delusion, wishful thinking or faulty research.
But the way, and just curious, if remote viewing is non-existent, how do you explain that it has been proven by the common scientific standards of any other area of science?
2)As Wiseman cannot refute the evidence (actually, he accepts it as correct according to the normal standards of science!), then he refuges himself in a version of the skeptical mantra that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (a clever way to move the goal posts to avoid accepting the evidence for psi. It's a way to create ad hoc, special standards of evidence for accepting the paranormal).
Thus, note that Wiseman is not disputing the validity of the scientific research on remote viewing, but rejecting or undermining its evidential or probatory value in favor of it, appealing to external considerations.
A similar rhetorical trick was employed some years ago by Ray Hyman who, like Wiseman, was forced to concede that the evidence on remote viewing was technically good: "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present."
But note Hyman's clever and smart way out: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered."
Good trick, isn't it? As has written Michael Prescott, commenting on Hyman's strategy: "So you see, any experimental result can be challenged, questioned, and doubted, even if the doubt consists of nothing more than the hand-waving objection that some unspecified and presently unknowable error might have been made. Go ahead and refute a claim like that. Prove that an unknown error didn't take place"
3)The "extraordinary claim/evidence" gambit is not used by "skeptics" as a method to find the truth, but as method to protect their beliefs against contrary evidence.
The world and its phenomena are not intrinsically ordinary or extraordinary; they're only ordinary and extraordinary regarding our background knowledge or our worldview, not in themselves. For example:
-The claim "Flu is caused by a virus" is considered ordinary for most people, because most people already accepts it as correct. But in 12th century, such claim would be considered ridiculous and extraordinary. (But note that viruses have always caused flu, regardless of whether we consider such claim, and the evidence for it, as ordinary or extraordinary!)
-The claim "Stones falls from the sky" is currently considered ordinary by people who are familiar with meteorites; but such claim was considered ridiculous, false and extraordinary many years ago.
As has explained philosopher Chris Carter: "In 1772 the prestigious French Academy of Science appointed a committee to investigate reports of what are now called meteorites. After long deliberations and examination of much evidence, the conclusion reached by the committee was that with which they started: there are no such things as hot stones that have fallen from the sky because there are no stones in the sky to fall. Reports of the phenomena must have other explanations – delusionary “visions,” stones heated after being struck by lightning, stones borne aloft by whirlwinds or volcanic eruptions, and so forth."
Note that "meteorites" were considered non-existent and the claim about their existence was seen as extraordinary and false in regard to the background knowledge of that time. But meteorites existed in that time, in the same way that they exist in current times, regardless of if we consider them ordinary or extraordinary.
As consequence, our considerations about what is ordinary and extraordinary is not sufficient to reject evidence for a phenomenon gotten by the "standards of any other area of science"(Wiseman), because it actually begs the question against the existence of the phenomenon (it assumes that our current knowledge is complete and correct and, therefore, sufficient to reject valid scientific evidence contrary to it. It's a mode of dogmatic and monolithic thinking). And more importantly, it prevents us to find, know and accept the truth (as in the case of meteorites)
4)As writer Michael Prescott, commenting on Wiseman's argument, wrote: "But why exactly is remote viewing an "outlandish claim"? I think this is what begs the question, to use Wiseman's phrase.
His argument is a variation on the old saw that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." There is some truth to this, but the trouble is, who can agree on what constitutes an extraordinary claim?
In a world where consciousness is restricted to the brain, remote viewing would indeed be extraordinary and outlandish. But in a world where consciousness can operate independent of the brain, remote viewing is exactly the kind of thing we would expect to see. We would also expect to see reports of out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, telepathy, precognition, apparitions, and after-death communication. And we do! In fact, such things have been reported for thousands of years all over the world and are taken for granted by billions of people today, just as they were by most of our ancestors.
So there may be nothing extraordinary or outlandish at all about any of these phenomena. They only appear that way to those who start with the assumption that such things just don't happen"
As Michael correctly notes, if you begin from the materialist and metaphysical naturalist assumption that the paranormal doesn't exist, then obviously a paranormal claim will be seen as "extraordinary".
5)Note that Wiseman doesn't specify what kind of "extraordinary" evidence would convince him of the reality of remote viewing and what objective scientific criteria determined such specification. He simply asserts that it's extraordinary and, therefore, ordinary scientific evidence (valid in other other field of science!) is insufficient.
This clever trick enables "skeptics" to dismiss any kind of positive evidence presented in favor of psi. As has pointed out writer Michael Goodspeed:"With his back against the ropes, he (the pseudoskeptic) will daze his opponent with a well-placed quote from Carl Sagan ("Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!")"
By the way, the person who coined the "extraordinary claims..." phrase wasn't Carl Sagan, but Marcello Truzzi (who, after watching as pseudoskeptics misapplied and abused in their favor this rule, tried to refute it due to its question-begging implications). According to this website: "I might note here that it was Marcello, not Carl Sagan, who coined the often-misattributed maxim "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." In recent years Marcello had come to conclude that the phrase was a non sequitur, meaningless and question-begging, and he intended to write a debunking of his own words." (emphasis added)
Wiseman's words above confirms the wisdom of Truzzi about the question-begging nature of the "Extraordinary claims..." gambit and its abuses by "professional skeptics". (For skeptics like Wiseman, such phrase has more epistemic power than a phenomenon admittedly proven by the conventional standards of science.)
6)Wiseman's assertion "If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me" is arguably false:
-If I want to be sure of such car, I'd look at it for myself. I won't take Wiseman's words on the existence of such car at face value (except, under some circunstances)
-If I suspect that Wiseman is lying regarding the car, or if he has some personal or professional interest in claiming such thing (or in defending a worldview inconsistent with the phenomenon being examined), then I probably won't believe in his claim, even if it's ordinary.
The reason is that ordinary claims can be false; and simply claiming something (even if such claim is ordinary) doesn't make it true.
7)It's false that extraordinary claims always require extraordinary evidence. The claim "Two planes have struck the Twin Towers in NYC" is an extraordinary claim. But the evidence for it was pretty ordinary (videos, testimonies, etc.) .
In fact, most of you (including the materialistic pseudoskeptics who are reading this) accepted the above extraordinary claim after watching videos like these:
No pseudoskeptic (even the very common irrational ones) would reject the evidential value of such videos and say "I'm rational and skeptic, videos proves nothing. I want scientific, reproducible, doble blind studies proving evidence for your extraordinary claim about planes crashing in the twin towers" or "I don't accept your evidence, because videos can be tricked!")
Note that the claim is not "planes can crash against buildings" (because it's an unspecific and general claim, not specially extraordinary from a scientific, social or any other commonly accepted point of view); the actual claim is "two planes crashed against the twin towers in NY in the same say" (a more specific and antecedently improbable claim, which is extraordinary from a social science and historical point of view: it's not an ordinary phenomenon, specially for NY citizens, that two planes destroy, the same day, two of the most important buildings in a so important city like NY).
In conclusion, the claim about two planes crashing on the twin towers is extraordinary, because it is not an ordinary fact that two planes crash against the twin towers (or any other building) in the same day in NYC. However, such facts don't challenge the ideological worldview of materialistic pseudoskeptics, and this is why they accept ordinary evidence (e.g. videos, testimonies) for such extraordinary claim.
8)From a logical point of view, "extraordinary claim/evidence" gambit is argueably wrong. As has explained this author: "this principle does not hold up to logical scrutiny, because a claim is only ordinary or extraordinary in relation to a theory. For the sake of making this point, let us assume a scenario in a hypothetical new science in which there are two pieces of evidence to be discovered, A and B, each equally credible, each one suggesting an obvious, but incorrect explanation (call them (1) and (2)). (1) and (2) are mutually incompatible, and a third, highly non obvious explanation (3) that accounts for both A and B is actually correct.
As chance would have it, one of the two pieces of evidence A,B will be discovered first. Let A be that piece of evidence, and further suppose that the scientists working in that hypothetical field all subscribe to the principle of the double standard. After the discovery of A, they will adopt explanation (1) as the accepted theory of their field. At a later time, when B is discovered, it will be dismissed because it contradicts (1), and because A and B are equally credible, but A is ordinary relative to (1) and B is extraordinary.
The end result is that our hypothetical science has failed to self-correct. The incorrect explanation (1) has been accepted, and the correct explanation (3) was never found, because B was rejected. I therefore submit that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is not suitable as a guiding principle for sound scientific research. All evidence, whether it supports accepted theories or not, should be given the same level of critical scrutiny.
Pseudoskeptics of course would argue that they simply do not have the resources to be skeptical about everything, so they have to concentrate on the obvious targets. But that doesn't get them off the hook. Pseudoskeptics apply the "extraordinary evidence" standard only selectively to controversial phenomena- namely, precisely when they fit their ideological preconceptions! When Doug Bower and David Chorley made the extraordinary claim that they had created all of the thousands of crop circles that had appeared in English fields between 1978 and 1991 (some of which had appeared on the same night in different regions of the country), there were no armies of skeptics loudly insisting that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Apparently, as long as the extraordinary claim is one that agrees with what the pseudoskeptics have "known" all along, it does not even require ordinary evidence. Bower and Chorley were never able to substantiate their claim, let alone prove it, but the "skeptical" community accepted it on faith - and without a trace of skepticism."
In conclusion, for accepting a claim (ordinary or extraordinary) you need suficient evidence (ordinary or extraordinary), not necessarily "extraordinary" evidence, because ordinary or extraordinary is not a property of real phenomena, nor an intrinsic property of claims; but a concept based in our knowledge, beliefs and, sometimes, prejudices (that is, a relative and relational property of claims, when compared with some X criterion like a background knowledge, ideology or prejudice).Pseudoskeptics and other people who WANT TO DISBELIEVE SOMETHING, use the "extraordinary claim/evidence" as a way to avoid accepting evidence that refutes and destroys their beliefs. It's a non-rational way to find the truth, and a sophisticated self-delusion method to keep consistent their own belief system when it's challenged by contrary evidence.
Links of interest:
-Article "Extraordinary Claims? move the goal posts"
-Winston Wu's comment on the "extraordinary claims/evidence" gambit.
-Professor Brian Josephson's article "Pathological Disbelief" (with several case examples of irrational rejecting of evidence by pseudoskeptics)
