At 11:25 AM 9/14/00 -0500, you wrote:
>"Extraordinary claims require extraodinary proof."
>Given that ESP (by definition) contradicts a vast body of scientific
>knowledge in both physics and biology, the onus is on the ESP investigators
>to support their claims.
Given that no one, including parapsychologists, truly understands the
mechanisms of these ostensible phenomena and that if they exist at all they are
very weak to begin with, and given that the available laboratory research is
limited in scope, and flawed according to critics, how is it possible to
determine scientifically that physical laws are being violated? Here I am
referring to psi, or ESP, as an anomalous process, not to it's individual
components (e.g., telepathy, precognition) which parapsychologists no longer
seek to study individually.
>Given the small probability that all of modern physics is false, even small
>likelihoods of error or fraud in ESP research must be given serious
>consideration.
Sorry, but I fail to see how anyone can claim that the laboratory evidence for
psi makes all or part of modern physics wrong. In addition, I think that as
scientists we have a moral obligation to first exhaust all avenues of potential
error before we go on accusing, without proper evidence, other scientists who
work in good faith, that fraud has taken place.
