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6. How Does it Feel to be a Parapsychologist?
If
you can identify with the language barrier faced by Latin American
parapsychologists you will have an idea of the frustrations some members of that
community feel as they attempt to stay current with the literature of the field.
But there are many other aspects to our experiences as parapsychologists.
Many of us, myself included, feel that we are working in an area full of great
potential. In fact, some may even feel that they are pioneers because they are
exploring areas that have great implications for humankind. While S. David Kahn
(1976, p. 213) has suggested that with better replication rates
parapsychologists will lose the romance of being lonely workers in an
unrecognized field, I believe that most of us will not miss his so-called
romance. One of the worst aspects of being a parapsychologist is, in fact,
working in a field where one gets little respect from science and society at
large. Let me illustrate with some personal experiences.
Soon after I returned to Puerto Rico in 1997 after having acquired a Ph.D. in
psychology at the University of Edinburgh for work on a parapsychological topic,
a member of my family handed me a newspaper clipping about local
"parapsychologists" who had recently been convicted and sent to jail. The
clipping in question described how some charlatans had obtained money from some
people under the promise of helping them to use some occult procedures (Cordero,
1997). How would you feel when you find the profession described in such a way
in the press? I felt that I had come home to be identified with charlatans.
In Great Britain, obtaining a Ph.D. in psychology with Robert Morris nets you a
conventional academic job in psychology with the prospects of a conventional
career unfolding before you. In Puerto Rico my degree branded me as a
parapsychologist with little to offer to psychology. I sent my CV to a
university well-known for their federally funded science programs through a
family friend who had contacts at the university only to have the CV returned
almost immediately. From the comments of the family friend, it was obvious that
the university wanted nothing to do with a parapsychologist. In another
institution I was able to teach a graduate level parapsychology course a few
times but it was eventually canceled for lack of students because someone in the
registrar's office who found parapsychology distasteful had told the students
that the course had been closed when it was still open. While others in the
field have had much worse experiences than mine (see Hess,
1992), the ones I had
made my life difficult, especially financially. Even more, such rejections made
me feel marginal in society, and I found myself needing to bolster my spirits by
reminding myself of my belief in the importance of parapsychology.
Another problem we sometimes encounter as parapsychologists is that some
individuals we have contact with want to tell us about our subject matter. As
Charles Richet (n.d./ca 1928) said in the 1920s, when dealing with psychical
research "everybody regards himself as qualified to utter negative or
affirmative opinions which have no more value than if, without being a chemist,
one were to speak to a chemist of the derivations of pyridine, or to a
physicist, of the waves of radium, or to an astronomer, of the heat of the
stars" (p. 28).
You may encounter issues of this sort especially if, as a parapsychologist, you
have contact with the public, many of whom do not like the way in which we study
psychic phenomena. Common objections to us are the overuse of statistical
analyses and the lack of studies with special subjects. Some of those who come
from spiritism, to give a particular example in my experience, are adamant that
we need to go back to the phenomena of mediumship as well as to the ideas of
Allan Kardec,
Gustave Geley, and others. When we take a look at the other pole,
that is, at the critics, we find all kind of skeptical attitudes equally
critical of out work, but in different ways, with emphases on methodological
flaws and logical inconsistencies. The end result is that we feel that we are
stuck in the middle of a battlefield, being attacked on all sides, from New
Agers and spiritists, from well-meaning members of the general public, from an
increasingly hostile mainstream scientific community, and from organized
skepticism. We are in a situation that is far from being pleasant or
comfortable, particularly when it is realized that, with very few exceptions, we
are the only group that takes an empirical approach to the problem by conducting
research.[6]
[6] I
am aware that the members of the other communities also claim similar problems
and disadvantages (Hess, 1993).
Perhaps the worst parts of being a parapsychologist are the accusations of
fraud. The classic case in modern times is that of George R. Price (1955), who
accused parapsychologists of fraud in the pages of Science. We still find
accusations of fraud directed at researchers who have particularly good results
in the laboratory but more recently such accusations are not published where
they can be refuted. They are merely disseminated through gossip, through
correspondence, or in on-line chat rooms. These accusations are particularly
distressing because they often question someone's integrity without any
evidence. Such accusations are irresponsible and libelous. But the problem is
that once the rumor is out reputations are damaged beyond repair, particularly
outside the field. Price (1972) publicly recanted over 20 years later. But who
remembers that? The damage had been done.
Parapsychologists have cited frequently
Henry Sidgwick's (1882) statement: "We
have done all we can when the critic has nothing left to allege except that the
investigator is in the trick" (p. 12). But wearing this as a badge of honor does
not nullify the negative effects such views can have on our profession. In fact,
incidents of this sort are demoralizing because they remind us how vulnerable we
are to the tactics of irresponsible and unethical critics.
Next part: 7. Why are we in
Parapsychology?
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