Thursday, July 22, 2010

Exploding The Naturalistic Box

"He [David Hume] is merely appealing to what everyone knows: the frequent reports of the extraordinary we hear from UFO abductees, Loch Ness Monster fans, people who see ghosts or claim psychic powers, always seem to turn out to be bunk upon examination. Ask Joe Nickell. Ask James Randi. Ask the evangelical stage magician Andre Kole, who exposed Filipino 'psychic surgeons.'" (Robert Price, in John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 277)

"Nevertheless, with his usual bluster, [James] Randi accepted a $10,000 challenge (a considerable sum in those days) to duplicate the Serios phenomena and make good on his claim. Of course, confidence is easy to feign, and Randi does it routinely in his role as magician. He also cleverly takes advantage of the occasional high-profile case he successfully exposes as fraudulent, by publicizing those successes and creating the impression that he's a generally reliable guide when it comes to the paranormal. So Randi's dismissal of the Serios case was all it took for those already disposed to believe that Serios was a fake, and it was probably enough even for those sympathetic to parapsychology but unaware of Randi's dishonesty....What the TV audience never learned was that when the show was over and Randi was pressed to make good on his wager, he simply weaseled out of it. To keep that side of the story under wraps, Randi prohibited publication of his correspondence on the matter. That was undoubtedly a shrewd move, because the letters show clearly how Randi backed down from his empty challenge. However, Randi's original letters now reside in the library at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and researchers, finally, can easily confirm this for themselves. When Serios's principal investigator, Jule Eisenbud, died, I was assigned the task of going through his papers. I collected all the material relevant to the Serios case and deposited it in the Special Collections section of the UMBC library. (This includes correspondence, the original photos and film, and signed affidavits from witnesses.)...But there's no documentary evidence of Randi having even attempted to duplicate the Serios phenomena under anything like the conditions in which Serios succeeded, much less evidence of his having actually pulled it off....In fact, the history of parapsychology chronicles some remarkable examples of dishonest testimony and other reprehensible behavior on the part of skeptics....Skepticism is just as glib and dishonest now as it was in 1882 when the British SPR was founded. In fact, despite sensible and careful dismantling of the traditional skeptical objections, the same tired arguments surface again and again. And those arguments all too easily mislead those who haven't yet heard the other side of the story or examined the evidence for themselves." (Stephen Braude, The Gold Leaf Lady [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2007], pp. 22, 34, 126)

See Steve Hays' discussion here. And see the sources discussed by Michael Sudduth in the thread here, including the comments section. See, also, Sudduth's material here.

9 comments:

  1. Wiki seems to think this claim has been busted:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Serios#Criticism

    What do you think?

    Here's the New Scientist link:

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325961.800-interview-the-chance-of-a-lifetime.html

    But you have to be subscribed to read the whole thing.

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  2. WAR_ON_ERROR,

    I'll discuss the Ted Serios case below. First, though, I want to note that my focus above wasn't on that case, but rather on Braude's comments regarding skeptics of the paranormal. That's why I quoted his comments on skeptics related to the Serios case and other cases, but didn't quote his discussion of the evidence pertaining to Serios.

    I haven't studied the Serios case much myself. I lean in the direction of thinking that the phenomena in that case were at least partly genuine, but I can't claim to be highly confident about it.

    I've read the Wikipedia article. (I read it before I started this thread.) But I haven't read the New Scientist article. I've seen a relevant portion of it quoted elsewhere, and what I saw quoted there is vague. In an email, Stephen Braude told me that Persi Diaconis hasn't provided details for his claim. He refers to Diaconis' charge as "another unsubstantiated allegation from someone with an agenda". Keep in mind that even if Diaconis' claim about the marble is true, it would only account for a portion of what Serios did.

    It may be helpful to think in terms of an analogy involving a baseball player, for example. If a man demonstrates his skill at baseball under circumstances in which use of performance-enhancing drugs is unlikely, but is caught using such drugs later, can the earlier evidence for his skills apart from those drugs be dismissed on the basis of what happened later? His later use of drugs might have been intended to enhance a skill he already had or to ensure that he would perform well under particular circumstances in which he wanted to decrease his risk of failure. A true ability to do something is often accompanied by cheating.

    In his book cited above, Braude discusses the case of the medium Eusapia Palladino, who admitted cheating and was sometimes caught cheating, yet also sometimes performed well under strict controls. I agree with the principle Braude puts forward in that context:

    "The crucial issue is not whether there are instances in which the medium cheated, but whether there are instances in which the evidence is strong that no cheating occurred." (p. 47)

    If Serios did sometimes cheat, the best explanation might be that he was similar to Palladino. He sometimes cheated, but he did have a genuine paranormal ability. I suspect that he did have some sort of paranormal ability, from what little I know of the case.

    You can read about some of the arguments for and against that conclusion in the thread here. One of the most important points to take away from that thread is the fact that Serios performed under a wide range of circumstances, sometimes with highly strict controls, involving a lot of people. I have yet to see any fraud theory that even comes close to covering all of the data. Braude discusses the case in the book I've cited. The book contains an account of a later meeting Braude had with Serios, along with some photographs that came from that meeting.

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  3. You don't suppose that someone who spends a great deal of time on their own perfecting a scam might just be able to do a whole lot better under diverse circumstances than skeptics who come along and try to replicate it? I'd have to read the specifics to see what you are talking about (and I'll do that here in a second), but this sounds dubious. Obviously it is logically possible for someone with real magic powers to also resort to cheating, but if that's not a bad preliminary sign, then what is? Can we at least agree maybe the post should be called, "Rattling the Cage of Naturalism a Bit"? At best?

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  4. WAR_ON_ERROR,

    We don't just have "a bad preliminary sign" to go by. Serios was involved in years of testing, involving many people and many contexts, including controls he didn't know about ahead of time and/or couldn't plausibly manipulate. You aren't addressing the baseball and Palladino analogies I mentioned. And skeptics like James Randi have been aware of the Serios case for decades, were offered a large amount of money to duplicate the phenomena, etc. Even if you assume that Serios had more time than his critics, why think that time difference is sufficiently significant? Randi has had more than forty years now since hearing of Serios. That's about as much time as Serios had been alive when his phenomena were at their height. And what about other factors, such as the fact that the skeptics far outnumber Serios, have had a wider diversity of experiences, etc.? If you read about Serios' background, he doesn't come across as somebody who should have been able to outthink so many people over such a long period of time.

    And it's not as though the Serios case is all that's relevant here. Braude discusses other cases in his book. Steve Hays and Michael Sudduth do as well, in their material that I cited. Are you suggesting that your citation of a vague accusation by Persi Diaconis in a Wikipedia article is sufficient to render everything I've cited "rattling the cage of naturalism a bit...at best"?

    I quoted Robert Price's citation of James Randi. I also linked to a thread in which a skeptic cites Randi in response to Michael Sudduth. Randi is a popular source among skeptics. Do you think the behavior of Randi that Braude describes is a significant problem for his credibility? Naturalism doesn't depend on Randi, but I was including skeptical use of such sources as part of the naturalistic box that's been constructed, which is why I opened my post with Price's comments followed by Braude's.

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  5. Jason,

    I think it is all too easy for atheists and Christians (and humans in general) to attack the on balance decisions of those we are ideologically opposed to in order to portray them as dubious.

    Christian 1 tells themselves they don't have to read atheist book x, because they've read atheist books a, b, and c and have found them wanting.

    Skeptic 1 doesn't feel compelled to go the extra mile on magic man y because magic person d, e, and f have clearly failed to demonstrate their powers.

    Christian 2 notes skeptic 1 didn't test magic man y and cries foul,

    just like skeptic 2 cries foul at Christian 1 for passing on atheist book x.

    The point: this is not a clear test case for Randi. If Randi has investigated thousands of cases, it will be easy to find some that are not as clear cut as others. Doesn't mean he's not being dubious, but it doesn't mean he necessarily is either.

    "You aren't addressing the baseball and Palladino analogies I mentioned."

    I did actually when I said: "it is logically possible for someone with real magic powers to also resort to cheating"

    If we were both going to the Hogwarts school of magic, then your analogies might matter. We would never dismiss everything we'd learned just because some students were finding ways to cheat (because maybe performing some spells is too difficult, or whatever). But in this world, finding ways to accomodate cheating when trying to justify worldviews is clearly insufficient. It only makes sense if you already believe in the supernatural.

    My magician friends tell me they know how to do most all their tricks in several different ways and that every good magician does. So that when someone comes up to them and tells them they've seen that trick and know how it's done (because they googled it or something) my magician friends can easily provide contrary evidence to undermine their confidence (for fun, of course). That's the world we live in.

    Has Randi known about it for years? So what. Has he CARED for that long? Does it keep him up at night? It's not like this is the only claim he is up against. Has any particular skeptic cared for that long to try to unravel every iteration of a possible charlatan? If there is at least some cheating on Serios' part in all likelihood most skeptics are going to think the same way I have here and blow him off. It will just never be a priority unless there's some amazingly obvious magic going on.

    We've both not investigated in detail, so we're stuck with general rules of thumb here. But there's some merit in discussing that. I hope you agree.

    Ben

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  6. WAR_ON_ERROR wrote:

    "The point: this is not a clear test case for Randi. If Randi has investigated thousands of cases, it will be easy to find some that are not as clear cut as others. Doesn't mean he's not being dubious, but it doesn't mean he necessarily is either."

    What do you mean when you say that the Serios case isn't "as clear cut as others" for Randi? Either Randi claimed that he could duplicate the phenomena or he didn't. Either he did duplicate the phenomena or he didn't. Either he prohibited the publication of his correspondence or he didn't. Etc. I linked you to a thread at Michael Prescott's blog. He's read Randi's correspondence on the issue, and he gives another example of how misleading Randi's handling of the case has been. (See his 9:45 A.M. post from December 19, 2009 and his 12:05 P.M. post on December 20, 2009.) See, also, Prescott's discussion of other problems with Randi's handling of the case here. What do you think is unclear about whether Randi has handled the case appropriately?

    You asked how long Randi has cared about the Serios case. See the examples Prescott cites regarding how often Randi has discussed the subject. He didn't just respond to the case when it was prominent in the 1960s. He also wrote about it and commented on it later.

    In our recent ebook, The Infidel Delusion, Steve Hays cited another case Randi mishandled.

    I would say that the evidence we have for Randi's dishonesty and carelessness is better than the vague assertion you cited from Persi Diaconis in a Wikipedia article, concerning Serios' credibility.

    You write:

    "But in this world, finding ways to accomodate cheating when trying to justify worldviews is clearly insufficient. It only makes sense if you already believe in the supernatural."

    Believing in the baseball skills of a player who cheated would make sense if you have convincing evidence for his skills independent of cheating. As I explained earlier, we don't just have evidence of cheating on Serios' part to go by, such as the allegation of Diaconis. We also have evidence for his performance of the phenomena in contexts in which cheating was unlikely. Why is that "clearly insufficient"?

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  7. In two of his books, Braude systematically discusses objections to detecting/verifying paranormal events. As a highly trained scientist, Sheldrake also has various protocols for minimizing fraud.

    Raises hypothetical cases involving parlor tricks just doesn't cut it. You need to grapple with the specifics.

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  8. What do you mean when you say that the Serios case isn't "as clear cut as others" for Randi?

    Like I already said, in a long career of debunking, not every incident will be as picture perfect as the next and will be easy to misrepresent by an ideological opposition. This happens either way. I'm sure skeptics who are familiar with Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin could rattle off a number of supposedly dubious incidents which "proves" something or another. The life and times of many skeptics and believers are complicated and I extend everyone the same latitude. I feel comfortable enough "explaining away" Rhandi's behavior in the examples given. Atheists often call creationists liars and I've been quick to defend creationists as well. If I can put a positive construction on people's behavior, and it doesn't matter, I let it go.

    Ultimately I don't rely on individuals. Perhaps Randi really has had experiences that should be convincing and yet he resists. I don't know. There are plenty of scientists out there who believe in God and are Christians so it is difficult to imagine a serious conspiracy to hold back a consensus on various supernatural claims. One would at least think there would be a hardy scientific debate rather than it apparently being relegated to the fringes. As an individual who has not personally seen anything magical, I don't think I can do better than the scientific community even with its biases and bad apples.

    I don't know enough about the Serios situation to comment further beyond speculation. I'm collecting links that get into details. There are some interesting videos on youtube of Serios that I've been watching. And I'm looking around for more elaborate examination of the case. Randi's answer on his site isn't terribly detailed. Seems like he just didn't know how to replicate everything and fell back on his presuppositions. Not very helpful, obviously.

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  9. WAR_ON_ERROR,

    You aren’t addressing the details I’ve cited regarding James Randi’s behavior. Instead, you’re speaking in generalities.

    And whether you "rely on individuals" doesn’t change the fact that others, like Robert Price (as I cited him above), have appealed to individuals. And you defended Randi earlier in this thread.

    You wrote:

    "I'm sure skeptics who are familiar with Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin could rattle off a number of supposedly dubious incidents which 'proves' something or another."

    I haven’t made claims about Sheldrake or Radin comparable to Robert Price’s claims about men like James Randi. I haven’t cited Radin. And your telling us that you’re "sure" skeptics could cite something against Sheldrake doesn’t give me any reason to believe that he’s behaved in a manner comparable to or worse than Randi’s behavior.

    You write:

    "There are plenty of scientists out there who believe in God and are Christians so it is difficult to imagine a serious conspiracy to hold back a consensus on various supernatural claims."

    I didn’t suggest that there’s a conspiracy. And the fact that a scientist believes in God or is a Christian doesn’t suggest that he’s studied the evidence pertaining to cases like those discussed by somebody like Stephen Braude or Rupert Sheldrake. Why should we expect a chemist or biologist to have studied something like the Daniel Home case or the case of Ted Serios?

    The evidence is what matters most. What’s unheard of or a minority position in one generation often becomes a majority position in another generation. As an atheist, you think a large majority of people have been wrong for a long time.

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