Arkan_Wolfshade
27th February 2006, 12:41 PM
Should skeptics be more involved in woo?
By this I mean, could our efforts to educate be more effective by being involved in woo studies rather than as debunkers?
My thought comes from a show I watched a while back. I can not remember the name :( Were there was a group of skeptics that worked with the local ghost hunters and/or ghost hunters that asked for their help to ensure that the investigations were done scientifically.
It covered basic things like: even if you take a base reading with a thermometer, if you then keep the thermometer in your pocket and whip it out to read a "cold spot" of course the temperature being read will drop (as your pocket is warmer than room temp). They also assisted in things like looking for mundane sources of EM, etc.
Now, granted, this is a tenuous position, as you don't want to lend undo credibility to the research ("omfg, look, skeptics help is, we're right!"), but perhaps we would be seen as a useful part of the process, rather than adversarial. Perhaps then we will end up with more people like Susan Blackmore who come to the same conclusions we do, on their own.
*shrug* just a random thought on a gloomy Monday.
By this I mean, could our efforts to educate be more effective by being involved in woo studies rather than as debunkers?
My thought comes from a show I watched a while back. I can not remember the name :( Were there was a group of skeptics that worked with the local ghost hunters and/or ghost hunters that asked for their help to ensure that the investigations were done scientifically.
It covered basic things like: even if you take a base reading with a thermometer, if you then keep the thermometer in your pocket and whip it out to read a "cold spot" of course the temperature being read will drop (as your pocket is warmer than room temp). They also assisted in things like looking for mundane sources of EM, etc.
Now, granted, this is a tenuous position, as you don't want to lend undo credibility to the research ("omfg, look, skeptics help is, we're right!"), but perhaps we would be seen as a useful part of the process, rather than adversarial. Perhaps then we will end up with more people like Susan Blackmore who come to the same conclusions we do, on their own.
*shrug* just a random thought on a gloomy Monday.