Where Science Doesn't Belong

As Toronto’s lovely (ahem) winter weather swerves from the appalling to the truly abysmal, I’ve managed to carve out some blogging time.

After 28 years, Princeton University's ESP lab (official title: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory) is set to close. CBC Radio's "The Current" profiled the institute's director, who argued—if rather limply and dispassionately—that psychic phenomena are an entirely valid subject for scientific study. Of course, he didn't dare use that term, couching the P-word in a cloak of academic gobbledegook.

In the pursuit of fairness, a second expert was then summoned to give the opposing viewpoint equal time. Esteemed Scientist #2 summarily dismissed any and all metaphysical research as "voodoo science." At that point, I turned the radio off in frustration.

Why? Both these distinguished experts were completely off the mark. Probing the paranormal via the scientific method is like using performance art to learn how the stock market works. It’s doable, I suppose, but the thoughtless application of an inappropriate paradigm guarantees bizarre, if not useless, results.

Science likes to assume it’s the supreme (or only) mode of investigative inquiry. Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that when it sticks to its rightful domain, science produces useful, beneficial outcomes, such as the polio vaccine. (Or not: see Bomb, hydrogen.) However: when science, its empiricist chest all puffed out, pokes its nose into matters of the spirit, its efforts are at best amusing and at worst an insult to the human thirst for knowledge.