Positive Liberty

Why why why? This is from The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations:

I was seated across a table from a woman, no more than three feet away. And while we were talking, a small piece of gold-colored foil appeared suddenly on her face. I knew that her hands were nowhere near her face when this happened. In fact, I was certain they were in full view on the table the entire time. I knew also that if her husband, seated next to her, had placed the material on her face, I would have seen it clearly. But nobody’s hands had been anywhere near her face. So I knew that the material hadn’t been placed there; it appeared there, evidently without normal assistance.

This was one of several similar incidents that occurred during my most fascinating paranormal investigation: the case of a woman much of whose body—not just parts of her face—would break out in what looked like gold leaf…

Materializations (assuming they really occur) are cases where objects seem to be produced out of nothing. Apportations (sometimes called “teleportations”), on the other hand, would be cases where already existing objects disappear from one location and reappear (usually suddenly) in another location.

Many confuse these two phenomena, and it’s easy to see why. For one thing, depending on how we explain the process of apportation, it might be thought to involve materialization. According to one theory, an agent (living or dead) performs a feat similar to a Star Trek transporter, disintegrating an object into micro-level components and then reassembling the object at another location. That last stage, of course, might count as a kind of materialization (or rematerialization) of the object. Another reason some confuse materializations and apports is that objects show up unexpectedly in both, without the usual transitions or intermediate stages we perceive when things move from one place to another.

But despite these similarities, materializations and apports still differ in important respects. For example, although objects appear unexpectedly in both and seem to come from nowhere, only in the case of apports do objects actually change location. By contrast, materialized objects seem to be produced de novo; they are evidently created, not moved. According to reports, these new objects take many different forms, including full human figures, parts of human figures (e.g., hands that end at the wrist), nondescript knobby objects, and flat, two-dimensional pictures. They also include extensive and flexible projections or pseudopods emanating from a person’s mouth, navel, or vagina. Observers claim these projections travel away from the person, sometimes to move nearby objects and sometimes to transform themselves into familiar shapes (e.g., a human hand). Sometimes these novel objects appear fully formed, and other times witnesses observe them in the process of formation. In fact, sometimes the newly formed objects emerge so slowly and gradually that observers have been able to describe their evolution in considerable detail. But at other times the objects seem to appear nearly instantaneously.

I know nonsense sells. University presses, however, have certain responsibilities, including above all scientific rigor.

Contrary to what one reviewer of this book wrote, science isn’t a myth. It’s a set of techniques that allow us to understand the world around us. Science is ultimately not a set of truths, but a set of methods for describing things. And that’s why the following critique of mainstream science — in favor of parapsychology — is wrong from start to finish:

What classical (that is, pre-quantum) physics had to offer was algorithms for calculating the effects of given causes, not mechanisms by which causes produce their effect. What quantum physics offers instead is algorithms for calculating the probabilities of possible measurement outcomes on the basis of actual outcomes. And that’s it; the rest is embroidery. Worse, the “classical” sleight of hand, which consisted in transmogrifying computational tools into bona fide physical entities, no longer works. So how can we hope to understand the action of mind on matter — be it the “normal” PK studied by psychologists (volition) or the anomalous PK studied by parapsychologists — if we don’t even understand how matter acts on matter!

Science is a set of methods. These methods include various experimental protocols, standards for communicating results, standards for replicating experiments, standards of ethics and informed consent, and an agreed-on notion of what science can and cannot accomplish: A good scientist seeks, for example, to be value-neutral, to study replicable phenomena, to share data in a timely and responsible manner, and to invite rigorous review and testing of conclusions, all of which are potentially open to review — given sufficient evidence.

The algorithms of both classical and quantum physics are the results of scientific inquiry. They are not mechanisms, but they are not supposed to be. They are descriptions of properties. That’s what science does: It attempts to describe properties. (It’s worth pointing out, by the way, that mechanism is conspicuously absent in most accounts of parapsychological phenomena, too. In its place we get not the modest silence of the scientific method, but a noisy insistence that no one can possibly explain these things. Which itself is an unscientific attitude.)

This is just pure boneheadedness:

In any case, there’s another reason to doubt that the foil is exuded through Katie’s skin. Several different analyses of many samples reveal that the gold-colored foil is actually brass, roughly 80 percent copper and 20 percent zinc. Considering the quantity of foil removed from Katie’s body, for Katie to have “sweated” the foil through the pores of her skin would have required lethal amounts of the metals in her system. Besides, blood work on Katie has never turned up the abnormalities one would expect if Katie had been “manufacturing” the brass from substances already inside her.

I’ve had Katie’s foil analyzed at several labs, and none have found anything obviously remarkable about it. We looked at it under scanning electron microscopes at two University of Maryland campuses, and analytical chemists on my campus also began work on a careful study. I’ve also had the foil scrutinized at Denver University, Johns Hopkins University (JHU), and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). My experience with the Johns Hopkins Department of Materials Science and Engineering is especially noteworthy.

At first, department chair Bob Green and his colleagues were intrigued when I introduced them to the details of the case, including the strong reasons for thinking that the foil manifestations were not fraudulent. They graciously agreed to see whether anything in the foil’s underlying structure distinguished it from commercially available samples of brass leaf, usually called “Dutch metal” or “composition leaf.” Their analysis determined that Katie’s foil had the same granular structure as ordinary pressed or rolled leaf, like that of the commercial samples.

That was an important piece of information, because it ruled out one skeptical hypothesis as to how Katie might have fraudulently caused the foil to appear as witnesses looked on at close range. According to that hypothesis, Katie could have dissolved brass in a solution which she applied to her skin prior to test sessions. Then, the solution would evaporate, apparently miraculously leaving behind areas of brass. But as the JHU scientists pointed out, any brass evaporated out of a liquid applied to Katie’s body would have a crystalline structure, not a pressed or rolled structure.

How does brass foil get a pressed or rolled structure? It is pressed or rolled. And then it’s applied through sleight of hand.

Or maybe it’s extruded from tiny metal presses (which are totally undetectable), from inside a woman’s face, while leaving little or no damage behind, and while failing to poison her. Miraculously, it cannot be distinguished from ordinary rolled brass foil. (This just makes it all the more mysterious and wonderful!)

It is vastly easier to believe that observers’ minds play tricks on them, and that a woman performs some pretty clever sleight of hand, than it is to believe that this woman’s skin is vigorously pressing away tiny sheets of brass foil that are identical in structure to those produced on a modern metal press. It does not matter that we can’t explain every step in her sleight of hand. What matters is that, until better evidence convinces us otherwise, we must go with the simplest explanation. That’s what science does.

Of course, if you’re willing to believe anything, then you can also explain anything away:

Regrettably (but not really inscrutably), the JHU team lost interest in Katie at this point. They apparently made the tacit, but unwarranted, assumption that if the foil had been produced paranormally, its structure would be unusual in some flagrant way. But of course, that’s a non sequitur. As far as we know, paranormally produced substances might mimic the structure of normal substances. Similarly, anomalously structured foil would not establish the paranormal origin of the material; it might simply indicate an unusual mode of production. Still, I can understand why the JHU scientists found Katie’s foil less intriguing after their analysis. After all, they’re materials scientists, and they found that there was nothing special about Katie’s foil, considered simply as a sample of brass.

Thank goodness for the scientists at my alma mater. And shame on the University of Chicago Press. They are usually much better than this!

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