Quote:Deanna,
Other famous mediums like Leonore Piper channeled just as convincingly. But it was later proven that their spirit guides had never existed. Richard Hodgson's investigation of this delusion is the most famous example. He contacted several deceased friends who seemed to "prove" their identities with lots of verifications.
the sitter did not know. Those cases are far more impressive.
Don
Hi don ,
What you have to take into account is Hodgson's famous skeptical view of this subject. The following extract is from Victor Zammit's website on Piper:
"Clearly, Hodgson's objections were not technically valid. Writers on psychic phenomena, even contemporary writers, have been too enthusiastic to write favorably about what Hodgson claimed about mediums. But these writers repeatedly,
• failed to show that he was not technically professionally qualified to investigate psychic phenomena,
• failed to show that he was not technically competent,
• failed to show that he was under a great deal of pressure from the leadership of the SPR to find against mediums.
• failed to show that, Hodgson's presumption of fraud was a deliberately uncontrolled extraneous negative and intervening variable,
• failed to show that the onus shifted onto Hodgson to technically rebut the evidence produced by Mrs Piper about the afterlife,
• failed to criticize Hodgson for not using science to reject the afterlife,
• failed to show that he was not sensitive to nor did he have the essential psychic knowledge to properly administer validity and reliability tests,
In his initial objections, Hodgson himself failed to show that:
• his claim about telepathy was a valid claim,
• Mrs Piper had the competence to read other people's minds,
• Mrs Piper, while unconscious at a seance, could read minds,
• Mrs Piper's telepathy extended to those who were hundreds of miles away from the seance while she was unconscious,
• the accurate information was not coming from intelligences from the afterlife,
• the information was being transmitted directly from a split mind,
There is no escaping the issue of who had the technical burden of proof. The onus clearly was on Hodgson to prove that his objections were valid. But he did not prove anything. He just said words to the effect, '... I can't prove anything at all ... I can't prove fraud, I can't prove cheating, I can't prove trickery against Mrs Piper but ... trust me ... do not believe anybody else except me ... just believe me because only I have the truth about these things but no one else has ..'
That kind of personal, intentionally prejudicial, unsubstantiated dogmatic claim was not the professional way to present rebuttals then, nor is it to-day."
Now is it just me, or is Hodgson a complete fool who is constantly contradicting his OWN claims????