Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

Obsessed with Reality
stranger things are routinely incorporated into the corpus of
science.
The question, as always, is how good is the evidence? The
burden of proof surely rests on the shoulders of those who
advance such claims. Revealingly, some proponents hold that
scepticism is a liability, that true science is inquiry without
scepticism. They are perhaps halfway there. But halfway doesn't
do it.
Parapsychologist Susan Blackmore describes one of the steps in
her transformation to a more sceptical attitude on 'psychic'
phenomena:
A mother and daughter from Scotland asserted they could
pick up images from each other's minds. They chose to use
playing cards for the tests because that is what they used at
home. I let them choose the room in which they would be
tested and insured that there was no normal way for the
'receiver' to see the cards. They failed. They could not get
more right than chance predicted and they were terribly
disappointed. They had honestly believed they could do it
and I began to see how easy it was to be fooled by your own
desire to believe.
I had similar experiences with several dowsers, children
who claimed they could move objects psychokinetically, and
several who said they had telepathic powers. They all failed.
Even now I have a five-digit number, a word, and a small
object in my kitchen at home. The place and items were
chosen by a young man who intends to 'see' them while
travelling out of his body. They have been there (though
regularly changed) for three years. So far, though, he has had
no success.
'Telepathy' literally means to feel at a distance, just as 'telephone'
is to hear at a distance and 'television' is to see at a distance. The
word suggests the communication not of thoughts but of feelings,
emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they've
experienced something like telepathy. People who know each
other very well, who live together, who are practised in one
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