www.skepticalinvestigations.org/guide/field_guide.htm -
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Published on: 5/1/2007
Last Visited: 5/1/2007
First, the two principal evaluators of psi research for the NRC Committee, psychologists Ray Hyman and James Alcock, both had long histories of skeptical publications accusing parapsychology of not even being a legitimate science.
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Child next reviewed a 1981 book by York University psychologist James Alcock.Alcock's basic theme in this and later publications is his belief that parapsychologists are driven by religious urges, a secular "search for the soul."With this theme driving much of his writings, Alcock considered any psi experiments with positive outcomes to be flawed due to religious motivations.One of Alcock's main criticisms of the Maimonides experiments was the assertion that they did not include a control group.For example, Alcock wrote that "a control group, for which no sender or no target was used, would appear essential."
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Alcock ...experiments was based on controls exactly parallel to those used by innumerable psychologists in other research with similar logical structure ...
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Skeptical psychologist James Alcock has suggested that one motivation for this "affliction" is that psi researchers are really motivated by hidden desires to justify some form of spiritual belief.This belief, according to Alcock, has biased psi research to such an extent that he believes there must be something wrong with it.But Alcock's belief about hidden spiritual motivations have produced an equally strong counter-bias.This is clear in a lengthy background report that Alcock prepared for the NRC Committee mentioned earlier.
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In dismissing the mystery, Alcock missed the forest for the trees.It is true that any one or two experiments can be explained away as being due to chance or poor design, but the entire body of evidence, as discussed in Chapter 9, cannot be dismissed so easily.And in contrast to Alcock's belief about what motivates psi researchers, parapsychology was formally recognized by the mainstream as a legitimate scientific discipline in 1969 when the Parapsychological Association, an international scientific society, was elected an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).Religious sects, New Age societies, and skeptical advocacy groups are not affiliates of the AAAS. We may now turn the tables on Alcock and ask what motivates skeptics to spend so much time trying to dismiss the results of another scientific discipline.For Alcock, it seems that his feelings towards organized religion and his fears about genuine psi are motivations.For example, Alcock has written,
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