The Truth is Out There
Loose Ends, Psychology July 19th, 2007“Fifty percent of the population holds some form of paranormal belief. Parapsychology research is booming and there are UK university departments studying phenomena such as psychics, séances, and telepathy.” BBC Radio 4 – its only 11 minutes!
Topics discussed: Lab testing of ESP, personality links with superstition, false memories, alien abduction, reliability of eye witnesses.
Why am I reminded of the unsound methods of Dr Venkman in the movie Ghostbusters? 
(I am not saying all parapsychologists are like that!)
July 20th, 2007 at 11:43 am
You should be
The radical end of one of my courses deals with the theory behind parapsychology. It is an extremely popular field, and thankfully for the purpose of balance very interdisciplinary.
It would be interesting to do a comparative study of what religious beliefs are held with those who have paranormal beliefs. I would hazard a guess that maybe only 1/3 of the paranormal believers hold religious beliefs, and perhaps 1/5 of religious believers vice versa.
But what is interesting is the overlay, how many who believe in the paranormal who have ‘left’ religion, or whose parents ‘left’ religion, is rather large.
I guess this brings us to the statistic problem. How would they identify themselves with regards different strength brands of religious affiliation?
July 20th, 2007 at 11:50 am
What value has parapsychology?
It is an attempt at a scientific study at reported paranormal phenomena. Some scientists reject the methods out of hand, others believe it occupies a fringe and framework that renders it a pseudoscience.
My academic field finds it valuable in one particular sense though, in an academic context parapsychological research does provide a historical narrative of various reported paranormal phenomena, which it doesn’t accept uncritically but does report the alleged phenomena in such a way.