I started this article with a pretty big open mind. I didn’t know who Randi was (I’d heard the name) and I’m very sympathetic to the idea that people often use “skepticism” as a name for their arrogance and mean-spiritedness.
But lamenting that major universities won’t fund research into mind reading?
Major universities also don’t fund research into the raisin bun model of the atom. It’s not that research shouldn’t be conducting in such things. It’s that is has been conducted. It’s a settled matter.
There probably is plenty more room for research into the workings of what skilled mind readers really do. There are a set of techniques that magicians and mentalists use to create the impression that they are reading people’s minds. Some of those practices (which are obviously very reproduceable since they reproduce them in front of crowds) are very interesting and probably still contain untapped insights into how our minds actually work.
But studying actual psychic claims is studying the cover story that people use to convert real, teachable skills into scams to take people’s money.
If a person says:
“Pick a random person. I’ll be able to, within the span or a minute or two, figure out a relative of theirs who has died, gather enough biographical information about that relative to convince that person I knew them, and discern from their character a message from that dead relative that will be strongly emotionally affecting. All the while this person will not realize they’ve given me this information.”
That says something about us, that we aren’t the way we think we are. It’s interesting, maybe there is something worth studying there (though I’m sure lots of people have already done so).
But if the same person says, “Hey, I can talk to ghosts!” then why on earth would you study that claim?
