From January 2008 item in the UK’s The Daily Mail:
In 1995, the US Congress asked two independent scientists to assess whether the $20 million that the government had spent on psychic research had produced anything of value. And the conclusions proved to be somewhat unexpected.
Professor Jessica Utts, a statistician from the University of California, discovered that remote viewers were correct 34 per cent of the time, a figure way beyond what chance guessing would allow.
She says: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, you have to conclude that certain psychic phenomena, such as remote viewing, have been well established.
“The results are not due to chance or flaws in the experiments.”
Of course, this doesn’t wash with sceptical scientists.
Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, refuses to believe in remote viewing.
He says: “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.”
[Emphasis added]
What Professor Wiseman has just admitted in his own words is that, “by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven”. It literally passes the rigorous tests all other fields of science go through.
However, I have the suspicion that he doesn’t want to believe in it. So rather than accepting facts as facts, he’s arguing that we should move the goal-post; setting a standard that wouldn’t apply to any other scientific branch. Thereby creating a double-standard. If it sounds unjust, thats because it is.
He does this by throwing out a red-herring. By making a comparison to UFO’s, he can make remote viewing seem ridiculous to the public eye, all the while protecting his own paradigm.
Because we’d need a lot more evidence for a UFO than we would for a red car, right?
Wrong.
Indeed, if I was a skeptic, and someone told me there was a red car in my drive way, I might say: “I don’t know, is there a red car in my drive way? Why should I believe you? Lets go find out!” Then we would go and look and see if its there. That’s a skeptical attitude: not taking peoples word for granted and finding out yourself.
The same process for verifying the existence of a red car is the same you would use to verify the existence of a UFO. A UFO is by definition an ‘Unidentified Flying Object’. If you had analyzed it with the same standards you did a red car, you would have an Identified that flying object. Boom. Its no longer a mystery.
Remote Viewing is not a UFO. We’ve put remote viewing in the lab, and verified that its real with the same methods we verify other phenomena. This psychologist admits this, and by that merit, its a scientifically verifiable reality. No longer “paranormal”- but demonstrably normal and repeatable. Meaning you don’t have to take his or anyone’s word on it.
Sadly, this psychologist is not immune to confirmation bias, logical fallacies, or propaganda (ironic, I know). He has a narrow view of materialism that doesn’t account for Psi, and wants to keep it that way. But at this point, his attitude is no longer scientific, its dogmatic. If you wanted to jest, perhaps you could say he has fundamentalist attitudes about reality that science can’t change his mind about.