IUBio

Michael Persinger reputable?

Robert Sheaffer sheaffer at netcom.com
Wed Oct 6 14:43:01 EST 1993


In article <CDxDJp.Ip3 at ccu.umanitoba.ca> rutkows at ccu.umanitoba.ca (Chris Rutkowski) writes:
>
>"reputable"? by what criteria? His methodology in using geomagnetic
>indices to correlate with psychic events leaves a lot to be desired.
>I'm surprised McGrath and Sheaffer haven't stepped in yet.  Sheaffer
>and Persinger don't see eye to eye, I'm told.

Why should *I* step in, Chris? You know far more on the subject than
I do, and you're doing a fine job of answering all of the claims that
are being made in favor of Persinger's rather shaky theories. I'm just
sitting back reading this, and enjoying it very much.

Actually, some years back I told myself "This Persinger business
sounds pretty flakey, and it's getting a lot of attention. One of these 
days I gotta do an in-depth look into it, because nobody else is."
But I never did get around to it, and now I don't *need* to......! :)

-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer at netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!


   One usually thinks of creationism as a doctrine for religious
  fundamentalists, but from a methodological point of view, belief in
  the special creation of the human species is entailed by _any refusal
  to apply evolutionary theory to man_  .... This is most
  especially true of scientists like Richard Lewontin and Steven Jay
  Gould, who take a wholly naturalistic stance toward all living
  creatures apart from man (and are prepared to use the theory of
  evolution polemically in ideological debate), yet reject all but
  the most trivial comparisons of other living creatures to man.

                       - Michael Levin, in "Feminism and Freedom"  



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