Dr Susan Blackmore Changed Her Mind About The Paranormal

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Caterpillar
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Dr Susan Blackmore Changed Her Mind About The Paranormal

Unread post by Caterpillar »

Dr Susan Blackmore has a PhD in parapsychology but she no longer works on the paranormal. She has become a skeptic.

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/whoami.htm

2008 World Question Center

Susan Blackmore

Psychologist and Skeptic; Author, Consciousness: An Introduction

?What Have You Changed Your Mind About??

The Paranormal

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_13.html


Imagine me, if you will, in the Oxford of 1970; a new undergraduate, thrilled by the intellectual atmosphere, the hippy clothes, joss-stick filled rooms, late nights, early morning lectures, and mind-opening cannabis.

I joined the Society for Psychical Research and became fascinated with occultism, mediumship and the paranormal ? ideas that clashed tantalisingly with the physiology and psychology I was studying. Then late one night something very strange happened. I was sitting around with friends, smoking, listening to music, and enjoying the vivid imagery of rushing down a dark tunnel towards a bright light, when my friend spoke. I couldn't reply.

"Where are you Sue?" he asked, and suddenly I seemed to be on the ceiling looking down.

"Astral projection!" I thought and then I (or some imagined flying "I") set off across Oxford, over the country, and way beyond. For more than two hours I fell through strange scenes and mystical states, losing space and time, and ultimately my self. It was an extraordinary and life-changing experience. Everything seemed brighter, more real, and more meaningful than anything in ordinary life, and I longed to understand it.

But I jumped to all the wrong conclusions. Perhaps understandably, I assumed that my spirit had left my body and that this proved all manner of things ? life after death, telepathy, clairvoyance, and much, much more. I decided, with splendid, youthful over-confidence, to become a parapsychologist and prove all my closed-minded science lecturers wrong. I found a PhD place, funded myself by teaching, and began to test my memory theory of ESP. And this is where my change of mind ? and heart, and everything else ? came about.

I did the experiments. I tested telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance; I got only chance results. I trained fellow students in imagery techniques and tested them again; chance results. I tested twins in pairs; chance results. I worked in play groups and nursery schools with very young children (their naturally telepathic minds are not yet warped by education, you see); chance results. I trained as a Tarot reader and tested the readings; chance results.

Occasionally I got a significant result. Oh the excitement! I responded as I think any scientist should, by checking for errors, recalculating the statistics, and repeating the experiments. But every time I either found the error responsible, or failed to repeat the results. When my enthusiasm waned, or I began to doubt my original beliefs, there was always another corner to turn ? always someone saying "But you must try xxx". It was probably three or four years before I ran out of xxxs.

I remember the very moment when something snapped (or should I say "I seem to ?" in case it's a false flash-bulb memory). I was lying in the bath trying to fit my latest null results into paranormal theory, when it occurred to me for the very first time that I might have been completely wrong, and my tutors right. Perhaps there were no paranormal phenomena at all.

As far as I can remember, this scary thought took some time to sink in. I did more experiments, and got more chance results. Parapsychologists called me a "psi-inhibitory experimenter", meaning that I didn't get paranormal results because I didn't believe strongly enough. I studied other people's results and found more errors and even outright fraud. By the time my PhD was completed, I had become a sceptic.

Until then, my whole identity had been bound up with the paranormal. I had shunned a sensible PhD place, and ruined my chances of a career in academia (as my tutor at Oxford liked to say). I had hunted ghosts and poltergeists, trained as a witch, attended spiritualist churches, and stared into crystal balls. But all of that had to go.

Once the decision was made it was actually quite easy. Like many big changes in life this one was terrifying in prospect but easy in retrospect. I soon became "rentasceptic", appearing on TV shows to explain how the illusions work, why there is no telepathy, and how to explain near-death experiences by events in the brain.

What remains now is a kind of openness to evidence. However firmly I believe in some theory (on consciousness, memes or whatever); however closely I might be identified with some position or claim, I know that the world won't fall apart if I have to change my mind.
joe sz
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women and skeptics

Unread post by joe sz »

I heard Blackmore lecture a couple of times at Skeptics conferences. She was one of the rare females to speak or attend these conferences that I estimate as 85% or more male dominated.
Another interesting factoid is that most New Thought, New Age, psychic and occult religion participants and leaders are women.
Mormons and JWs are male dominated as are most mainstream Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.
I think there is growth of female involvement in skeptical movements due to so many more female scientists in the past half century.
There might be some cultural and biolgical reason for this other than the stereotypical nonsense that women are "more emotional" therefore mor irrational.

joe
Another Dimension60
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Unread post by Another Dimension60 »

Joe - isn't it not so much about women being more emotional - rather - women's brains function more wholistically - i.e. left brain/right brain connecting/communicating/functioning more 'together' than the male brain. I know i haven't stated that very well -- but I thought there's actually been some scientific evidence now that women's brains function differently. ?

I also wonder if we're dealing more with labels and left brain need for 'proof' when talking about 'psychic phenomena'. For instance - what is it when you think of someone and the phone rings and it's that person? or a person has a 'vision'/knowing of a disaster? ... Or is it an issue that what is not material/visable is put into a category of yaya/psychic rather than recognizing that there is a multiplicity of dimensions on which we function (scientists/mathematicians have idententified 11 dimensions so far).

just wondering 'out loud' here - not to argue for a particular perspective -- just not wanting to throw another 'baby' out with the bathwater of fakes and charlatans.
joe sz
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Unread post by joe sz »

there may be "11 dimensions"...who knows. String theory, eg, in physics that attempts to tap into other dimensions is yet in its infancy and may be scrapped by science someday anyway for something more coherent.

Skepticism is at the root of all philosophy which exists to refine questions about knowledge, conduct and governance in its pursuit of a more coherent truth. All the old Greek schools were dominated by men--of course there was Hypatia as an exception.

One school of thought in ancient Judaism was that men had to study and struggle for the "knowledge" or Torah that women already had by nature.
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