Posts Tagged "skeptic"
Holier than thou?
I have just finished watching another excellent episode of Derren Brown investigates that focussed upon a chap called Lou Gentile and his beliefs in ghosts, possesions and demons.
He worked with exorcists and referred to himself and a demonologist and truly believed he had proof that ghosts existed in the form of filmed posessions (more likely to have been pseudoseizures known to be brought on by stress), Electronic voice recordings (more likely to be recognisable as answers or words due to audio pareidolia and a will to believe), and ghost photography that to me appeared to consist of lots of illusions.
It made him seem silly, and it made me want to laugh and a year ago I would have and I would have said he was stupid. However I wouldn’t say such a thing now because in the last year my involvement with the Righteous Indignation podcast has taught me one very important lesson that I will take to the grave with me, and that is that nobody is safe from fallacial thinking and leaps of logic. Nobody.
I came away from watching the episode with three pages of notes I had made that proved to me that in the last five years as a researcher I have developed my ability to think rationally about what I am presented with.
I called the autogain circuit, the pseudoseizures, the priming before it was even mentioned on the show because I’ve allowed myself to open my mind up to the bigger picture of what is actually happening around me, rather than what I would like to be happening around me.
However, in 2005, Hayley Stevens was a very different person who would have taken Lou’s side against Derren. It’s incredible how we, as people, can learn and adapt if we put our minds to it.
It’s difficult though when you have so much invested in your beliefs being right, to just drop them. Which is why when I hear of a pseudoscientific paranormal researcher making really outlandish claims I think about how easy it is for anyone to make leaps of logic because they’re desperate for their beliefs to be validated and I usually don’t mock them (unless they’ve proven themselves to be ignorant.)
Perhaps Lou Gentile was ignorant despite having the facts placed in front of him. Perhaps he was just misguided and hopeful.
I’ve been pretty disgusted to see some comments posted by people I respected as paranormal researchers that are extremely disrespectful of Lou’s position and beliefs.
If we were to take away the fact it was Lou they were talking about and were to place their comments with anyone out there who believes EVP are ghost voices, or that posessions really are demons it crosses the line from being an ethical, respectful investigator to being someone who comes across as having a “holier than thou” attitude.
That’s not an attractive attitude for a skeptic to have. It’s not proactive in any sense and achieves nothing.
Sure, I know I regularly make sarcastic comments on Righteous Indignation about people and the claims that they make, but I’m always willing to see things from their perspective because I’ve been the believer who had nonsense ideas.
We interview some people on the show whose theories and ideas are completely out there but we never mock them for it unless they prove themselves to be truly ignorant because we know that anyone can mess up with their way of thinking rationally at any moment.
We wouldn’t like to be mocked, in fact we’d probably become instantly defensive of the illogical position we took and wouldn’t listen to a word that people who were skeptical of our beliefs said.
So for people I respected as researchers to openly mock Lou for his beliefs despite the fact that at the end of the show it comments that he sadly passed away between filming and broadcasting the show has really made me lose my respect.
Sorry, but if you call yourself skeptical and yet your actions lose you the chance to explain your stance to people who aren’t as rational then you’re doing more damage than good.
How greaseproof paper will fool the hell out of a ghost, and other things…
Did you know that all it takes to confuse a ghost is a piece of greaseproof paper?
Well, if you were at my talk in Bristol on June 30th you will already know this because you were in the very wonderful audience that I gave the tip to but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read on.
Actually, firstly I should take a moment to say thank you to the Bristol Skeptics and everyone who attended my talk for such a wonderful time. It was really, really fun to do the talk and you all laughed in the right places (Henry VIII anyone?)
Back to the ghosts and how greaseproof paper is their nemesis…
As many of you may know, a lot of ghost groups who claim to investigate the paranormal conduct very odd, old and debunked methods to “communicate” with the ghost that is supposed to be haunting the location they’re visiting.
These methods include table tipping, glass divination and ouija board sessions,
There are, of course, lots of other odd methods used, like scrying and seances but I have focussed on the first list because the methods all have two things in common.
1) They all require people to touch something, this something being the thing that will be “moved by the spirit” to communicate.
2) All of the mentioned methods will not work when you introduce greaseproof paper to the equation.
“Greaseproof paper?” I hear you ask, “what the hell is she on about?”
The greaseproof paper acts as a control and to be fair, it doesn’t just have to be greaseproof paper because a great control to use with ouija boards or glass divination (where the people involved place one finger on a glass or planchette) is a round piece of playdoh putty covering top of the glass or planchette.
The putty should be at least a centimeter deep (you can roll some out and use the glass or planchette to cut the perfect piece out by pressing it down on the putty!)
The people then place their finger on the putty and if they’re doing anything more than just resting their finger lightly, there will be a lovely finger imprint to show that they were pushing hard on the glass.
A good and fun control to put in place when people are conducting a ouija board session is to blindfold them and turn the ouija board around so the letters are in different places, or put a square board where a round board was. As you can imagine, the planchette travels to the place that a certain letter, or the yes or no answer used to be, even though it’s not there anymore.
You can watch this happen at about three minutes in to this video from Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! programme on ouija boards.
The greaseproof paper is better when used with table tipping, you simply take a large piece of greaseproof paper, or tracing paper and you cut it to size so that the top of the table you are using is covered to the edges with the paper.
The paper has to be a light, crinkly paper – not writing paper, or heavy-duty wrapping paper – which is why I suggest greaseproof paper, tracing paper, or even cooking foil which can all be bought cheaply at your local supermarket.
Once the paper is in place, the people taking part in the session place their 
fingers upon the paper and go about the table tipping session as normal. IF anyone pushes the table surface more than they should be then the paper will scrunch up and reveal that pressure is being added that shouldn’t be.
These simple controls rule out two things:
1) people around the glass/table/board purposely faking movement
2) people around the glass/table/board accidentally moving the table
It is very well-known that sometimes when people conduct things like glass divination, ouija sessions, dowsing or table tipping they can influence the movement of the object in use without realising it. This is called the ideomotor effect or the ideomotor response. By introducing the simple controls that I have mentioned above, if somebody accidentally moves the object being touched they’ll be aware of it, and be aware that they’re moving it which will stop them from doing so without realising it.
That is how greaseproof paper fools the hell out of a ghost.
P.s. Many people who use these methods will say that the people have to be touching the table or the glass or the planchette so that their energy fields can be transferred for the spirit to use.
This is a flawed logic and shows a huge misunderstanding of how energy works.
Now, ghost hunters, go and have fun with your greaseproof paper.
I support…
