Sean Manning writes:
As I re-read your post on “Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science” from 2020, I think you might get something out of Sharon A. Hill’s book, “Scientifical Americans: The Culture of Amateur Paranormal Research.” She was involved in the skeptic movement until around 2010.
I [Manning] think there is a related phenomenon where movements in the 20th century tried to make the eliptonic rational and scientific to make it respectable (psi not mystical powers, cryptozoology not monsters, aliens in flying saucers not angels in chariots). But the connections to the weird stuff never went away, and as the scientific veneer got harder and harder to maintain, believers started saying out loud “maybe Bigfoot phases in and out of another dimension and that is why nobody can find hair or scat.”
My reply: This overlap is interesting. My above-linked post was about the gentrification of junk science, from the carny circuit to the Ivy League. Hill’s book seems to be about ordinary folks such as “ghost hunters” who I guess you could say are the base of the pyramid of paranormal research. I’m reminded of the surveys that say that 30% of Americans believe in ghosts. I guess that would include some of the readers of this blog. Believing in ghosts is one thing; ghost hunting is another. I’d think that ghost hunting would be a super-frustrating job, given that ghosts don’t actually exist! And at least one leader of the “skeptic movement” itself is kinda superstitious. Nothing worse than what would get published in the Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, though.
P.S. When you go to the Amazon page for that book about paranormal researchers, you get some hilarious books on the “Customers who bought this item also bought” and “Products related to this item” lists:
>I’d think that ghost hunting would be a super-frustrating job, given that ghosts don’t actually exist!
I wonder how much of research falls into this category as well – searching very hard for something that doesn’t exist because it simply must.
Jd:
Yes, that describes a lot of research, maybe most research! But that’s ok; chasing down leads that don’t work is part of researcher too. The important thing is to sometimes throw in the towel and admit that you haven’t found anything.
Another approach when there is only equivocal evidence of ghosts is to thrown in the towel – or sheet in this case – on the research and just declare they must exist. Hey! That’s like the “inherent” bias in ML loan applications! We can’t prove ghosts exist, therefore they must!
Chipmunk:
I’m no ghostologist so this is just speculation . . . My impression is that there are four reasons people believe in ghosts:
1. It’s sad to think that we’re gone when we die and it’s sad to think that our dead loved ones are no longer around. If ghosts existed that would solve these two problems.
2. It’s easy to imagine ghosts, in the same way that it’s easy to imagine ESP, unicorns, flying saucers, etc. If something is easy to imagine, that makes it easier to believe that it’s true.
3. Relatedly, the general theory of ghosts (everybody has a soul, which can attach to other physical entities) has some appeal, in the same way that mind-body dualism has an appeal. In some way, it feels like we have souls that exist independent of our bodies.
4. It’s impossible for there to ever be conclusive evidence against the existence of ghosts.
You mention reason #4. I think 1, 2, and 3 exist too. Also, as you point out, some beliefs are appealing for political reasons. I don’t thing ghosts have any political valence in our culture right now, but I guess it would just take one tweet by those Q people to put ghost-belief firmly into the “left” or “right” category, and then you’d start to see all sorts of people believing or disbelieving in ghosts for all sorts of bad reasons.
I think that one of Hill’s arguments is that many amateur paranormal researchers want to contribute to knowledge or have their opinions listened to and respected, but feel excluded from mainstream academe, journalism, and party politics. If they find community and do things together, or get respect within their community, its not so important that their results rarely convince outsiders. They never had a respectful audience to lose before they got interested in UFOs, and they never felt like they were adding to human knowledge or uncovering a mystery until they got excited about bigfoot.
One reason why people in these spaces who like “scientific” theories fight the people in these spaces who like “mystical” theories is that science gets much more mainstream respect in the USA than mysticism.
Much paranormal research is published by the Society for Scientific Exploration in its Journal of Scientific Exploration, of which a convenient dense list of past articles through 2015 can be found here, with links to the PDFs. Just scan the list to get a feel for it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150318030748/http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html
My favorite is in issue 21:2, “An Empirical Study of Some Astrological Factors in Relation to Dog Behaviour Differences by Statistical Analysis and Compared with Human Characteristics”
http://web.archive.org/web/20150424120723/http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_21_2_braesch.pdf
Issue 19:2 has an interesting collection:
Crop Circles: actually a good debunk by folks in the Italian version of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
Myanmar children who may be reincarnated Japanese soldiers
A lament by author who can’t get UFO papers published in serious journals
PEAR researchers decalre victory and quit
Review of Crichton’s State of Fear saying it shows how to do science (this one got quoted often by climate deniers)
Here’s the current webpage:
https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal
The https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal-library has the more recent issues, but you have to click on each issue to see the articles, unlike the concise list above.