Science and Psychic Phenomena Quotes

“But there is also some empirical evidence that sheds light on the relationship between quantum principles and consciousness. Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff claims to have found evidence that anesthesia arrests consciousness by hindering the motion of electrons in microtubules, minute tunnels of protein that serve as a kind of skeleton for cells. Hameroff speculates that microtubules could be a possible site for quantum effects in the brain,17 and his speculations have led mathematical physicist Roger Penrose to endorse the hypothesis.18 Attempts to develop models of consciousness based on quantum mechanics have also been made by neuroscientist John Eccles, and physicists Henry Stapp and Evan Harris Walker.o Walker and the experimental physicist Helmut Schmidt (the latter responsible for many of the micro-PK experiments described earlier) have also proposed mathematical theories of psi based on quantum mechanics.19 These theories rest upon two propositions that are now supported by experimental evidence: that mind can influence random quantum events, and that influence can occur instantaneously at a distance.p”
― Christopher David Carter, Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics

“Former member of CSICOP Marcello Truzzi summed up the history of laboratory parapsychology: As proponents of anomalies produce stronger evidence, critics have sometimes moved the goal posts further away. . . . To convince scientists of what had merely been supported by widespread but weak anecdotal evidence, parapsychologists moved psychical research into the laboratory. When experimental results were presented, designs were criticized. When protocols were improved, a “fraud proof” or “critical experiment” was demanded. When those were put forward, replications were demanded. When those were produced, critics argued that new forms of error might be the cause (such as the “file drawer” error that could result from unpublished negative studies). When meta-analyses were presented to counter that issue, these were discounted as controversial, and ESP was reduced to being some present but unspecified “error some place” in the form of what Ray Hyman called the “dirty test tube argument” (claiming dirt was in the tube making the seeming psi result a mere artifact). And in one instance, when the scoffer found no counter-explanations, he described the result as a “mere anomaly” not to be taken seriously so just belonging on a puzzle page. The goal posts have now been moved into a zone where some critics hold unfalsifiable positions.30”
― Christopher David Carter, Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics

“Popper demonstrated that science can proceed in a truly deductive manner through a process of conjectures and refutations. As long as we concede that all our scientific theories are held tentatively, not as “truths” but as conjectures that may only be approximations to the truth, then Hume’s dilemma is resolved. They may be falsified by a deductive procedure but never verified in any logically valid manner. In other words, scientific theories are not verified by observations consistent with them; rather, they are corroborated by unsuccessful attempts at refutation.”
― Christopher David Carter, Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics

“Quantum systems exhibit an unexpected degree of togetherness. Mere spatial separation does not divide them from each other. It is a particularly surprising conclusion for so reductionist a subject as physics. After all, elementary particle physics is always trying to split things up into smaller and smaller constituents with a view to treating them independently of each other. I do not think we have yet succeeded in taking in fully what quantum mechanical nonlocality implies about the nature of the world. J. C. POLKINGHORNE”
― Christopher David Carter, Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics