UFO poll

Does the psi community gain more credibility by embracing the UFO contact research?


  • Total voters
    20

malf

Member
Let's have a poll! Interested in how people feel about this, with supporting comments if anyone feels so inclined...
 
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No, they don't.

Lumping all the fringe topics together (as the Journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration does) only makes it more difficult to get indexed and taken seriously. Parapsychologists are in an up-hill battle to assert that they 1) Are not pseudo-scientists, as skeptics commonly claim and 2) Have repeatable results which occur within laboratory environments. Grouping up too close to new age or UFOs just creates more low hanging fruit to use for character assassination and FUD.
 

"Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt." A common phrase around slashdot and anywhere with a Windows v. Linux community.

Essentially it means going around creating unnecessary doubt on a topic (like your competitor) so people won't want to use them, but isn't overtly slanderous as you are only generating "reasons to doubt" or "be afraid that X might happen" instead of making baseless claims.
 
I've recently enjoyed looking into the whole UFO and alien abduction thing, but it really can make you look like you've gone off the deep end ;-)
 
I'm sure if what we are talking about here is "how should psi research best present itself to an allegedly sceptical scientific community", in terms of marketing itself as "serious", then the answer should probably be "no".

On the other hand, UFOlogy has certain familiar traits.

If you sling out 90% of sightings as 'dubious' at best, there's still 10% which need explanation.....the military radar sightings, fighter plane radar fixes, fighter equipment interference etc, much of which is well documented.

With so little funding and an academic uptake of 0.03% for both sides of the coin in psi research, I think their are higher priorities.

Also, as Einstein said, "Mystery is good!" (I paraphrase.)
 
I could be wrong, but it seems like this question carries a hidden message; something to the effect of : "Publicly admitting you accept alien abduction stories as 'believable', might make you look like more of a wing-nut, than if you just admit acceptance of psi-phenomena alone. . . . " If that IS the message, then I reject it as condescending and a little disgusting. It implies that our honesty and loyalty are negotiable in relation to popular opinion. Even disregarding the many possible scenarios where Psi and UFO overlap, there is the more important notion of remaining true to your principles, regardless of the inconvenience.
 
I could be wrong, but it seems like this question carries a hidden message; something to the effect of : "Publicly admitting you accept alien abduction stories as 'believable', might make you look like more of a wing-nut, than if you just admit acceptance of psi-phenomena alone. . . . " If that IS the message, then I reject it as condescending and a little disgusting. It implies that our honesty and loyalty are negotiable in relation to popular opinion. Even disregarding the many possible scenarios where Psi and UFO overlap, there is the more important notion of remaining true to your principles, regardless of the inconvenience.

Read the question. Any hidden message is one that you have projected (perhaps influenced by some of the replies above). I was interested in how folks feel and some clearly feel the way that you describe. I can see why Alex has "gone there"; it keeps the show fresh and challenging and is in line with his position of valuing experiences. If you want to debate the opinions above we can do that but so far the poll result is quite clear. (Honestly, I was hoping for more yes votes and some discussion around that!)
 
I voted no. I don't see how I could honestly vote otherwise ? It is hardly likely to be yes given the way everything is controlled in the mainstream media ?

Credibilty among whom ? The answer is swayed .

That doesn't mean that UFO/Abduction should be avoided by the PSI community.

I get what Liberty is saying.
 
For clarity, the 4th option was added later (by the mods?)... I thought the question was clear enough to have a "yes" or "no" vote - if someone voted "no", then they could discuss that, and why it's not the point. The Poll was started after reading through the Why is paranormal research ignored? thread, and it seemed timely.
 
I have read that a number of people who are medium/psychics have their `normal´ afterdeath communication, but sometimes they get a connection that they only can describe as coming from an alien being.
The Scole Experiment had such a connection from time to time.

But as I understand it some psychics often brush this aside as something they cant relate with, and/or don't believe in, and think it is some mental construct that is made by their subconscious mind. It would be nice though to hear if any of the psychic here on the forum sensed that they had such a connection, ever.
 
The answer to this is No.... but that only just further proves the existance of a dogma and a taboo within society and moreso within Science.

A true skeptic could not possibly look at PSI, UFO, JFK, 9/11 and come to the conclusion that there was "Nothing out of the ordinary here" based on the actual evidence.

Yet when you look at the most public skeptics like Randi, Shermer, Bill Nye and countless others (and no doubt most of the Skeptics on this forum) they will all have very firm views against those things and go so far as to even write books and publically debate it (Often looking completely stupid in the process) even though in most cases they have not investigated it at all or done very little investigation.

It shows that most people that are aligning themselves towards the "skeptic" side are doing so out of what they perceive as being in the "Educated, Commonsense, I can't be fooled.. so therefore I have credibility" group... and as a result the opposite of that must be "lacking commonsense and education and can be fooled... so you have no credibility" group.

Admitting you have a belief outside of mainstream... in the minds of skeptics only confirms you will "believe anything" when that is simply not the case.

Unfortunately though... that dogma and stigma exists... so the answer is no it doesn't help.
 
The answer to this is No.... but that only just further proves the existance of a dogma and a taboo within society and moreso within Science.

A true skeptic could not possibly look at PSI, UFO, JFK, 9/11 and come to the conclusion that there was "Nothing out of the ordinary here" based on the actual evidence.

Yet when you look at the most public skeptics like Randi, Shermer, Bill Nye and countless others (and no doubt most of the Skeptics on this forum) they will all have very firm views against those things and go so far as to even write books and publically debate it (Often looking completely stupid in the process) even though in most cases they have not investigated it at all or done very little investigation.

It shows that most people that are aligning themselves towards the "skeptic" side are doing so out of what they perceive as being in the "Educated, Commonsense, I can't be fooled.. so therefore I have credibility" group... and as a result the opposite of that must be "lacking commonsense and education and can be fooled... so you have no credibility" group.

Admitting you have a belief outside of mainstream... in the minds of skeptics only confirms you will "believe anything" when that is simply not the case.

Unfortunately though... that dogma and stigma exists... so the answer is no it doesn't help.

Thanks for answering (I "liked" your response).

It's hard to know where to draw the line with conspiracy theories though, isn't it?

You can't expect all of them to be true... Without being an expert on everything you've just got to develop your own BS filter, and set the bar somewhere. (I must admit my bar shifted upwards a few years ago when Clinton couldn't cover up a **** *** in the oval office :))
 
While I can see why someone would say it's poor behavior to avoid UFOs because of the hostility towards it, I think its best to keep the two separate because the credibility is certainly not helped by it (and psi needs to be seen as empirical and valid.) Once that is all established, you can come back and combine them using empirical means. As I see it UFO fringe groups rely on anecdotes which was never enough for psi, so I don't see the point. A usefully trainable psi can vindicate UFOs if they are really happening, more UFO speculation isn't going to vindicate psi.
 
Thanks for answering (I "liked" your response).

It's hard to know where to draw the line with conspiracy theories though, isn't it?

You can't expect all of them to be true... Without being an expert on everything you've just got to develop your own BS filter, and set the bar somewhere. (I must admit my bar shifted upwards a few years ago when Clinton couldn't cover up a **** *** in the oval office :))

No definitely they can't all be true... for instance I don't really believe Elvis is still alive and working in a diner somewhere. He's more likely to be in a peanut butter factory ;)

What you say is interesting though... about setting the bar. It's not about setting the bar as much as it is about being closed off to changing your mind and using preconceived beliefs to cloud your judgement of data or a conspiracy. That's an ego thing. Just because it "sounds ridiculous" doesn't necessarily mean it is.

Remember at one time doctors believed it was absolutely ridiculous that them not washing their hands prior to delivering babies was the reason for mortality rates of new born babies being at 30%. Even though Ignaz Semmelweis tried showing them that midwives that did was their hands before delivery had only a 5% mortality... he was laughed at and ridiculed by the "scientists" because it appeared ridiculous. It took 20-30 years for them to finally realise Semmelweis was right once they discovered this thing called "germs". Up until then he was just a conspiracy theorist.

So I look at every conspiracy with an open mind and you look at every one with 2 things. You look at the MOTIVE and then you look at EVIDENCE. It's what police do whenever there is a suspicious death and why the partner of the person is always the first suspect... regardless of how ridiciulous it may sound to anyone around them. Is the death suspicious? Yes. Is there a motive for the partner to be involved? No... unlikely to be them... Yes... then it needs to be investigated further with a fine tooth comb.

Nearly all of the accepted conspiracies have 1 simple thing in common... MOTIVE. Some of the others which aren't accepted like Elvis they all had no motive as well.
 
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