Scientists Have No Duty to Study All Theories, But Do Have a Duty to Study Important-Sounding Observation Reports Conflicting With Claims They Make

 A recent Forbes magazine article about scientific theories has two major examples of dead-wrong generalizations about some types of professionals. We have this very laughable claim about the work requirements of being a reporter: " Reporters are required to independently verify claims, and understand the reasoning behind expert opinion." No, there is no such requirement for being a science journalist, and no such thing is done by science journalists the vast majority of times they write about science research. Every day our science news sites are filled with articles by science journalists who did nothing to independently verify the claims in some university press release, but simply parroted the claims in such a press release, without subjecting them to any independent scrutiny.  And such science journalists usually do not understand the reasoning behind expert opinion, which is often bad reasoning based mainly on long-standing belief customs in the belief communities experts belong to. Since the science research press releases issued by universities these days are notorious for their abundant examples of hype, unfounded claims and groundless boasts, the failure of reporters to independently verify such claims (by doing work such as subjecting the relevant scientific paper to critical scrutiny) is a huge problem.

Another very laughable claim in the Forbes article comes when we read a scientist make the claim that "scientists are conditioned to keep an open mind."  No such conditioning occurs. Instead scientists are conditioned to keep a closed mind about many open questions. Scientists are conditioned to believe the long-standing belief traditions of scientist belief communities. They are conditioned to stubbornly believe in dogmas such as the dogma that biological origins are well-explained by Darwinist ideas, the dogma that minds are produced by the human brain, the dogma that life originated accidentally, and the dogma that there are no such things as spirits invisible to human eyes or paranormal human powers. Expressing an open mind about such matters will get you in great trouble if you are trying to climb up the career ladder of the modern scientist. 

The article contains several misstatements:

(1) No, Adam Riess did not make anything like a one-man discovery that the expansion of the universe was accelerating; he was merely one of three awarded people that were part of a large team of scientists that claimed to have discovered such a thing. And such a claimed discovery did not provide evidence for dark energy (something never observed), but merely documented an effect that might be explained by dark energy.

(2) No, the US Space Command did not confirm Avi Loeb's claim that a meteor was of interstellar origin. Instead someone at that command merely mentioned that Loeb had made such a claim.

(3) No, after dredging up some tiny spherules in the ocean, Loeb did not determine that "a small percentage of the materials recovered are neither human-made, nor materials known to be from our solar system." Instead only materials with a "nothing very special" composition were found. 

The main focus of the article seems to be whether scientists have any obligation to evaluate all the offbeat theories that are floating about. The article seems to suggest that they do not. We have an example of a scientist who gets lots of emails trying to sell strange theories. The scientist rather seems to tell us: I don't have time to analyze all these strange theories I am being told about. 

It is true that no scientist has a duty to study every science-related theory.  Theories of mind and matter and life and the universe arise in numbers too high for anyone to keep up with them all. Such theories are produced in very high numbers by people such as philosophers, physicists, neuroscientists, laymen and evolutionary biologists. One reason why no one could ever keep up with the majority of such theories is that nowadays theories are stated in long documents filled with very specialized jargon that few people understand. 

Another reason why no one could ever keep up with the majority of such theories is that nowadays scientific theories are often stated using the most abstruse and hard-to-follow mathematics. Many theoretical physicists and theoretical biologists like to use a technique I call "math spraying." The technique involves adorning speculations with hard-to-follow mathematics, to make the speculations look more weighty.  Many a theorist lacking evidence for his theory will try to pad his paper with obscure equations, to make it look like his "castles in the air" speculations are something intellectually weighty.  No one could ever follow all the obscure math being grinded out in such speculative papers. 

It is true that no scientist has a duty to study every theory relevant to claims he may make, nor does a scientist have a duty to even study most such theories, which exist in such huge numbers. But a scientist does have a duty to study observations, particularly observation reports that conflict with claims the scientist may often make. An intelligent rule is: the more observation reports there are that conflict with some claim a scientist makes, the greater the duty the scientist has to study such reports. 

To give an example of such a principle in action, suppose you are a scientist claiming that some medical treatment is safe. You may hear some report that seems to defy your claim. For example, someone may report his wife died on the day she had such a medical treatment. If such reports are very few, you may have no obligation to study them. But the greater the number of such reports, the greater your duty is to seriously study such reports.  If, for example, you are claiming that medicine XYZ is safe, and it is not merely a handful of people but hundreds or thousands of people who reported that their relative died on the day they used medicine XYZ, then you have the most solemn duty to study such reports.  

The principle is: a scientist has a duty to study important-sounding reports conflicting with any claims he makes; and the greater the number of such reports, the greater such an obligation is. In this regard today's scientists are guilty of the most appalling dereliction of duty.  This is because there occurs the most massive number of reports defying the claims that such scientists make; but most scientists refuse to seriously study such reports. 

Below is just a small fraction of the reports of this type that have been documented:

• The accounts of very many thousands of reliable witnesses who had near-death experiences, often reporting the most vivid and life-changing experiences at a time when their heart had stopped and their brain waves had shut down, something that should have prevented any experience according to "brains make minds" dogmas. 
• The accounts of very many people reporting out-of-body experiences in which they observed their own bodies from a position meters away (discussed here, here, and here). 
• The many cases in which medical personnel who did not have such experiences verified the medical resuscitation details recalled by people who had near-death experiences, who recalled medical details that occurred when such people should have been completely unconscious because their hearts had stopped.
• Abundant cases of dying people who reported seeing dead relatives.
• Very many cases of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know had died, with the witness soon learning the person did die at about the time the apparition was seen (discussed in the 18 posts here). 
• Very many cases when multiple witnesses reported seeing the same apparition (discussed in my series of posts here). 
• A great abundance of reports in the nineteenth century of spiritual manifestations such as mysterious raps that spelled out messages, tables moving when no one touched them, tables half-levitating when no one touched them, and tables fully levitating when no  one touched them (discussed in the series of posts here).  
• Spectacular cases in the history of mediums, with paranormal phenomena often being carefully documented by observing scientists, as in the cases of Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Palladino, Leonora Piper, and Indridi Indridason.

• Two hundred years of evidence for clairvoyance in which people could observe things far away or observe things when they were blindfolded or observe things in closed containers such as locked boxes. 
• Abundant photographic evidence for mysterious orbs, including 800 photos of mysterious striped orbs, orbs appearing with dramatically repeating patterns, and orbs appearing with dramatically repeating patterns while falling water was being photographed. 
• Abundant reports of mysterious orbs being seen with the naked eye, described in the 120+ posts here.
• A great abundance of anecdotal evidence for telepathy, with large fractions of the human population reporting telepathic experiences. 
• More than a century of solid laboratory evidence for telepathy, including cases discussed here, here, and here.  
• A great abundance of evidence for a phenomenon of materialization, involving the mysterious appearance of tangible human forms. 
• Extremely numerous cases in which living people report hard-to-explain events and synchronicity suggesting interaction with survivors of death.

 Reports such as these defy the claims that typical scientists make over and over again, such as claims that the origin of humans is well-understood, claims that the laws of nature are well-understood, claims that the human mind is merely the product of the brain (or the same thing as the brain), and claims that reality is well-understood by today's scientists. And reports such as these occur in the most massive numbers. For example:

• In Arcangel's study of 827 people, 596 (72%)  responded that they had had an "afterlife encounter." We read, "69% of respondents listed some form of visual encounter (Question 4), 19% were Visual only, 13% were a combination of Visual/Auditory, 8% Visual/Sense of Presence and 8% Visual/Auditory/Sense of Presence."
• Erlendur Haraldsson surveyed 902 people in Iceland in 1974, finding that 31% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person.  He did another survey in Iceland  in 2007 with a similar sample size, finding that 42% reported seeing an apparition or having an encounter with a dead person, with 21% reporting a "visual experience of a dead person,"  along with 21% reporting an out-of-body experience. 
• A large survey included some questions about paranormal experience, such as asking whether they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died."  According to Table 1 of the paper here, the number answering "Yes" to this question was 24% in France, 34% in Italy, 30% in the United States, and 25% in Europe overall. 54% of those in the US reported having an experience with telepathy. 
• A 1973 survey of 434 persons in Los Angeles, USA ("Phenomenological Reality and Post-Death  Contact" by Richard Kalish and David Reynolds) found that 44% reported encounters with the deceased, and that 25% of those 44% (in other words, 11% of the 434) said that a dead person "actually visited or was seen at a seance."
• As reported in the 1894 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume X, Part XXVI), an 1890's "Census of Hallucinations" conducted by the Society for Psychical Research asked, "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"  As reported in Table 1 here (page 39), the number answering "Yes" was about 10%.  Because the question did not specifically refer to the dead, ghosts or apparitions, the wording of the question may have greatly reduced the number of "yes" answers from people experiencing what seemed to be an apparition of the dead or a sense of the presence of the dead. 
• In the March-April 1948 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, page 187, there appeared the result of a survey asking the same question asked in 1894: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice ; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"  According to page 191, 217 out of 1519 answered "Yes." This was a 14% "yes" rate higher than the rate of about 10% reported in 1894. 
• A 1980 telephone survey of 368 participants found that 29% reported "post-death communication." 
• The British Medical Journal published in 1971 a study by Rees that involved almost 300 subjects, one entitled "The Hallucinations of Widowhood."  Rees reported that 39% in his survey reported a sense of presence from a deceased person and 14% reported seeing the deceased, along with 13% hearing the deceased.
• A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Americans said they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost, and that 29% said that they've felt in touch with someone who died. 
• A Groupon survey of 2000 people found that more than 60% claim to have seen a ghost.
• A 1976 survey of 1467 people in the US asked people if they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died?" 27% answered "Yes."  
  
• In their paper "Phenomenological Reality and Post-Death  Contact," Richard Kalish and David Reynolds surveyed 434 respondents in the Los Angeles area, and found that 44% claimed to have had encounters with the dead, and  that over 25% claimed "the dead person actually visited or was seen at a seance."

So clearly there very massively occur reports defying the claims often made by typical scientists. Such scientists have a duty to study such reports. But acting like bad scientists, most scientists refuse to act in accordance with such a duty. 

On page 5 of the document here, which has very much evidence in support of some of the reports above, Dr. Paul Joire commented on the willful blindness of most scientists in regard to studying such reports:

"If a man should say : ' I only occupy myself with astronomy or botany, I have not the time to study psychical phenomena, I do not know anything about them and cannot adjudicate upon them';  there is nothing to be said against this : such an attitude is serious and correct-it does not depart from the scientific spirit. 

But it must be recognised that the language of the majority of men, and even of scientists, is quite different from this. They despise psychical phenomena, not because they cannot study them, but because they do not believe in their existence, and declare them impossible, without having studied or even seriously examined them. Now this negation, a priori, is altogether contrary to the scientific spirit."

Yes, very sadly, that is how the majority of the most well-known scientists act these days: in a matter very contrary to the scientific spirit. Our universities did not train them according to some principle of "let observations reign as king."  Our universities trained them to be warriors for an outdated belief system mostly put in place in the nineteenth century.  Our universities trained them according to a rule of "throw away all observations that offend your most cherished dogmas."