In my general psychology class today, I was teaching about the sensory systems. At the end of the section, I talk briefly about ESP and basically crush all of their delusions telling them that there is no empirical evidence supporting extrasensory perception. The students asked a few of the typical questions like, "What about twins? Do they have any ESP?" Okay, fine. I understand those types of questions.
But then a student asked, "What about epilepsy?"
Me: "What about epilepsy?"
Student: "I don't know. Just epilepsy."
Me: "You mean is epilepsy related to ESP?"
Student: "Yes."
Me: "No."
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7 comments:
But it starts with "e", and has an "s" and TWO "p's" in it! How can you say they're not related?
If you go to PubMed and search for "extrasensory perception" you will find 863 articles. Some of them report positive empirical findings and meta-analyses. To tell your class that there is "no evidence" is quite simply wrong.
I totally had a feeling that someone was going to say something like that. Whoa... does that count as empirical evidence? Creepy.
Are you serious? I looked through some of your 863 PubMed citations and saw a lot of titles that included things like demonic possession, magic, UFOs, paranormal expriences, and religious miracles - you can't possibly be suggesting that any or all of these are backed by "scientific evidence" too, can you?? Not to mention you're including in your count the citations for such scienceworthy "journals" as Newsweek...
How many of the 863 articles provide evidence *against* ESP?
dr.f: a lot
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