My hero

[ed_h]

1 hour ago, PeterC said:

What we have is a huge body of observations that science ignores. That is backward thinking by scientists.

Peter

Agreed, Peter, we do have a huge body of observation, and observation is of course crucial to any inquiry.  But taken by itself, observation is a relatively weak tool for finding truth.  Observation alone is error prone and open to misperception and misinterpretation. 

I personally don't think that science intentionally ignores observations, but I think they do largely ignore interpretations that are not testable.

Ed

[PeterC]

3 hours ago, ed_h said:

Agreed, Peter, we do have a huge body of observation, and observation is of course crucial to any inquiry.  But taken by itself, observation is a relatively weak tool for finding truth.  Observation alone is error prone and open to misperception and misinterpretation. 

I personally don't think that science intentionally ignores observations, but I think they do largely ignore interpretations that are not testable.

Ed

Ed, In a relatively short immersion in the classic UFO literature ( a few years) I have come across several simple observations of anomalous time-flows, which are devoid of relativistic consequences. Overall there is a ca 1 million-fold range of time flows.  Time as the fourth diemnsion in Minkowski's continuum cannot be the sole explanation of "time".  IF physicists had been keeeping up with the UFO observations  thay may well by now be concernced that seeking a Dark Matter particle is a fool's errand. The galactic velocity anomalies that DM attmepts ot explain is ca 5-fold. I suspect that might reflect a time-flow anomaly, and am desigining expts to measure anomalous time-flows in accessible high strangeness events. The "scientific method" lives on ! 

Peter

[PeterC]

5 hours ago, JohnD said:

Indeed, a HUGE body of observations,  generating theories that, in your words, they are due to an "unknown intelligence".    It is the weakest of arguments for those who believe the theories to say that there is "no use asking most scientists to suggest a testable hypothesis".    We have techniques to investigate intelligence, as used in the Corvid Cognition Laboratory at Cambridge and other avian and mammal labs around the world.         It is for those who have and have studied the data to theorise from it, and to use those and other techniques to test the emerging theories.    The paranormal community have a duty to work out a theory, one that is not a black box of "little green men" but one that offers testable predictions.

The Scientific  Method that has been so successful in other fields, demands this process.     It is the lack of a testable theory, so that no experiment is possible, that has lost the confidence of main stream science in paranormal investigation.

John

John, Not in my experience, mainstream science has not the foggiest notion of the richness of the observations pointing to a non-human intelligence, and I am not talking ET, the evidence is mcuh more complex than pan galactic space travellers ! By ignoring high strangness observations across amny fields (UFOs, NDEs, mediums, crop formations and so forth) thhe scientifc study of "intelligence" has limited itself in the ways you describe. It may be that what appears to be non-human intelligence is human but in dimensions we dont know about. Vallee has long suspected that for UFOs the intelligence is extra-dimnesional not ET: https://www.academia.edu/36788970/Incommensurability_Orthodoxy_and_the_Physics_of_High_Strangeness_A_six_layer_model_for_Anomalous_Phenomena

Bernard Carr posits hyperspace as important for consciousness seen from his psychical perspective. Hawking was his PhD supervisor:

https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/33/jse_33_4_Carr.pdf

However these scientists are overwhelmed by the ignorance of UFOs, psy etc by the vast majority of their colleagues.

Peter

[ed_h]

2 hours ago, PeterC said:

The "scientific method" lives on !

Well, bravo to that.

My comments on this thread have been pretty strictly confined to the topic of individual supernatural powers--Powers that should be able to be demonstrated if real.

I guess I'm more neutral on the topic of UFOs, not having studied them much at all.

Ed