When Science Rejects Science to Defend Science
When Science Rejects Science to Defend Science
Skeptics, the CSICOP case, and what it can teach us about our institutions
If I were to invent a word for the so-called “skeptics” and their organizations, it would have to be some mix between “professional haters” and “the inquisition’s foot soldiers.”
Seriously, these guys.
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One of the oldest such organizations in today’s world is CSICOP (pronounced “sigh-cop”—joke’s on you), founded in 1976. To spell out the acronym is to know what they are about: Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.1
Except that they don’t do any research. And this despite their membership having included such illustrious names as B. F. Skinner, Francis Crick, and Richard Dawkins.
To understand their real agenda, and the sheer silliness of it, we need to look at an interview that its then-Executive Director Lee Nisbet gave to Science magazine in the early days of the organization. He said:
“[Belief in the paranormal is] a very dangerous phenomenon, dangerous to science, dangerous to the basic fabric of society. We feel it is the duty of the scientific community to show that these beliefs are utterly screwball.”
In other words, it is not about the truth, or about potential harm caused by falsehoods, but about protecting the power of the scientific institutions.
Why should belief in the paranormal be “dangerous to science” if it is simply wrong, and science can prove it? After all, people believe all kinds of nonsense, without “science” feeling the need to establish and lavishly fund organizations to debunk any of it. As for the “fabric of society,” surely this is just another way of saying “the current power structure, where we are at the top dogs.” Or what does a belief in, say, telepathy have to do with the “fabric of society,” for God’s sake?
The issue here is not whether claims to the paranormal are true or false; the issue is that a belief in the paranormal undermines the authority of the scientific establishment: its pretentious claim to be the sole and undisputable authority in all matters of truth and interpretation of reality. For to hold even one paranormal belief is to laugh the high priests of Science in the face.2
Noooo, We Don’t Do Research!!1!
But it gets worse. You see, our CSI-Cops are not amused when people do, well, scientific research. Believe it or not, they have an official policy against doing any such thing! You see, it would only get in the way of the PR work the cops are so good at, and an organization should always focus on its core strengths, wouldn’t you agree?
It wasn’t, however, some dodgy business coach that got CSICOP on that track. It was astrology.
In 1975, Paul Kurtz, who became the founder and über-chairman of CSICOP, produced a manifesto against astrology. We should, of course, thank him for that because clearly, astrology is the greatest threat to mankind since the invention of organized religion. (And homeopathy. Never forget homeopathy.)
But Kurtz soon had a problem. One Michel Gauquelin published some findings that seemed to show a correlation between the position of Mars at birth and later sports ability of the person, which might be interpreted as giving astrology some scientific credit. Under public pressure to defend his position, Kurtz accepted the challenge and agreed to undertake a scientific study to confirm or dispute these findings.
And so, data were collected and analyzed. And bingo—they confirmed the correlation! Oh no! The cops couldn't allow that. Another member of CSICOP, Dennis Rawlins, who had been involved in the project, would later say that CSICOP researchers had used incorrect statistics, faulty science, and outright falsification in an attempt to debunk Gauquelin's claims.3 He still didn't believe in astrology, but to his credit, he told Kurtz at the time that they should publish and admit their findings in the spirit of transparency. But Kurtz would have none of it. A big fall-out ensued, Rawlins was chased out of the organization, and went on to write an exposé about the whole affair.
How do you solve the problem of incompetence at research, and/or producing results in favor of the so-called paranormal? Simple: you adopt a policy that you don’t do any research! And this is precisely what CSICOP did the same month that Rawlins published his exposé. Case closed.
A Warning Against Trusting Authorities
Now, CSICOP is not a scientific institution, strictly speaking. It is a club of self-appointed attack dogs defending the power structure of science.
However, the way it operates could have told us a lot about the institution of science, long before COVID and other recent controversies.
This power structure isn’t protected by science, but by institutions around science. They are educational institutions, committees, NGOs, editors, science journalists, funding organizations, and so on. They take care that science doesn’t have to investigate, think about, or otherwise deal with things that would threaten its power and pretentious claims. A good indication that something like this is going on is when these institutions go on an all-out attack mode that seems wildly disproportionate.
So: turns out those “leftist” sociologists who have always warned that the process of science is not as objective as we would like it because social factors, world views, and interpretation play a role as well, did have a point, after all.
A good move, then, would be to look at the website of the Sigh-COPS (rebranded Committee For Skeptical Inquiry) and their fellows. This gives a good indication of the sociological structure of this power clique. Keep that in mind next time you listen to one of those. Some of them might be good scientists in their fields, but chances are that if they are talking about anything not directly related to hard data they produced, they are speaking not as researchers, but high priests of the Church of Scientism, protecting their prestige, riches, and unchecked power to proclaim gospel truth to serve their and their friends’ interests.
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Most of the following is based on George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal, Xlibris, 2001, p. 148 ff.
The horror: a large majority in the US and the UK across education levels believe in the paranormal. See my essay, The Coming Age of Weird
From Wikipedia, Committee For Skeptical Inquiry
These clowns at CSICOP, and the rest of the so-called skeptic community, have been giving science and skepticism a bad name. Their skepticism only ever goes in one direction - it's never turned on the claims of institutional science, for example - and is really just a very dishonest way of defending one, very narrow ideological interpretation of "science". Why should science not be able to investigate the so-called paranormal, and follow the data wherever logic may lead? Instead certain conclusions are ruled out a priori, regardless of what the data says, which is not at all scientific.
The paranormal is the only legitimate field for scientific enquiry. Consider what happens when science investigates the normal. All people have built in generations of experience dealing with the normal, a subtly nuanced, context sensitive, way of dealing with the normal, called common sense Scientific investigation of the normal discovers that the previous understanding of some part of the normal was not understood in sufficient detail, or with enough rigor and attempts the ham-fisted, child with his first color crayon, top down interventions from outside which we all have way too much experience with. The common-sense no longer works because the context in which it was evolved has been sexually assaulted in its eye socket. Neither does the scientific solution work because it came from the outside, knew nothing about the context, was not sensitive to any of the details, assuming of course that it wasn't corrupt and bought and paid for to produce some result regardless of what data said. So, Science isn't a delicate enough tool, or a trustworthy enough tool to ever fiddle with things that ordinary people know about and deal with in their daily lives.
The only legitimate areas for science then are: the unusual, the uncanny, the abnormal. Science's legitimate business is to take the paranormal and normalize it. To lay out in broad strokes an undiscovered country, not to remain forever the fiefdom of science but that ordinary people might be able to build houses and homes there. Science is only legitimate as a rough and ready pioneer as an engineer of domesticity it is a nightmare. As a boss 9-5 science is the worst. Science is ideal for going to the moon. Science is miserably inept at going to the grocery store. If Science would make us a rough map of how hauntings work that would be truly useful but for trying to fix the details of my interactions with my next door neighbor Science is a pest, rather a pestilence. If Science wants to tell us what kind of mask to wear in Challenger Deep we should humbly listen. But if Science tells us what kind of mask to wear to visit our grandmother we should kick the bums to the curb. **obviously written in my facsimile of the style of Chesterton and with the greatest love and respect for the same