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Running Your Own Ghost Investigation?
Quirkz writes "I am a skeptic, but have friends and family who swear by their ghost stories. I have access to a supposedly haunted house and been tempted to run a proper scientific investigation. My first question is what sorts of tools or measurements would make for sensible metrics to test during a hunt? Temperature change seems to be a common one, but the other devices you'll see ghost hunters use seem pretty random. The second question is what kinds of results would it take to be 'interesting'? Baseline readings at several presumably non-haunted locations seem to be obvious requirements for comparison. Once you have those, what kinds of results would it take to convince a skeptic there's something unusual going on, or demonstrate that there's not? I don't have much hope of changing the minds of those who believe, but it would be satisfying to at least be scientific about it."
It seems like a mistake to go to some place and look for the absence of an anomaly. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. You will never prove that ghosts don't exists in a house. Maybe they will be there tomorrow when you aren't around. Maybe you don't have the proper equipment to detect one.
...an objectively testable prediction. If you can't get them to make such a prediction quit wasting your time.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
not much of a skeptic are you.
I forgot that these days, skeptic means "don't ever investigate anything and for bonus points, display contempt for those who do".
The summary is a good example of what real, healthy skepticism is. It boils down to "I don't think I will find anything, but I don't actually know that until I look, so here is the experiment I want to conduct." Is it the lack of presumption and arrogance that offends you? Does the presence of open-minded people willing to look for evidence, even of things they don't actually believe in, make you feel uncomfortable with your narrow-minded worldview? I'm guessing that's where the contempt comes from.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
well, there's actually a really easy way to tell if your house is haunted:
it isn't.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Well the true skeptic will doubt the disbelievers too.
Being willing to consider evidence which doesn't fit your world view is good.
Putting unusual effort and resource into investigating something that you have very good reason to suspect is complete nonsense, is not good.
In a perfect world, a skeptic would be free to test absolutely everything, from the existence of ghosts, to periodically making sure that newtonian mechanics and basic chemistry still remain valid, and that science hasn't all changed over night. Out here in the real world, we have to prioritise our time onto things that have a better chance of being valid.
Do you investigate the flat Earth theory? Do you investigate the geocentric theory? Do you investigate spontaneous generation? Do you investigate alchemy? ARROGANCE!
Ah, another person tries for the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps my response will demonstrate why this is what you are doing.
First I'll say that the word "ghost" isn't a terribly great word. It implies that any strange phenomena are caused by dead people who still retain some kind of non-corporeal existence. The actual cause of such phenomena could very well be some not-yet-discovered natural force that has nothing to do with people at all, living or dead. What I personally believe is that strange things do happen that we do not (yet) know how to explain and as such, we have no idea what might be causing them. Using loaded words like "ghost" is therefore inappropriate, not to mention it's fodder for belligerent narrow-minded people who just want to demagogue something instead of contributing anything useful because they knee-jerk upon hearing a loaded word.
Moving along... Do I personally investigate those things you mentioned? No. The first three have been thoroughly falsified. Regarding alchemy, if you conducted a scientifically-sound experiment that claims to have produced conclusive evidence, I'd be willing to entertain that evidence so long as it's understood that the burden of proof is entirely on you and your methodology needs to be both sound and available for examination. If you can meet those conditions then I say go for it.
This is the part you seem to have a hard time with. I have seen abundant evidence that the Earth is spherical. That's why I see no point in investigating a flat-Earth theory. It is falsified by the knowledge that the Earth is spherical combined with the knowledge that spheres are not flat. I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Your mistake is that you think the two ideas are on equal ground. You cannot recognize and appreciate the difference between a thoroughly falsified notion and the truly unknown. That's why what you call "skepticism" is just narrow-minded arrogance, not unlike religious zealotry. It makes a mockery of the healthy kind of skepticism that says "show me the evidence".
You can cower behind that narrow-mindedness if it helps you protect your worldview from the terrible (to you) risk of being altered to accept new possibilities if that pleases you. Just understand that others like me are perfectly comfortable saying "I really, truly don't know, therefore it doesn't make sense to form a passionate belief about this subject."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I wish I had such gullible friends and family. Tell them you can find the ghost but only once they provide you with the hardware components for your ghost detector: . Then just sort of attach them randomly together, wander around the house for a while and say you didn't find any ghosts. It's a win-win situation.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I had noticed that reason and critical thinking were fading in the world of late, but I never thought that the rot would get so bad that the foremost geek site on the internet would be giving credence to this sort of rubbish. What the hell were the editors thinking? What should I even have to say that ghosts don't exist and that this "investigation" may as well be looking for invisible green unicorns?
As a society, we're reverting back to superstition and ignorance. We've even given up on even imagining a better future.
The only question I ask is: where did it all go wrong? When did the world abandon progress?
May the Maths Be with you!
He wanted to be scientific in his investigations of ghosts.
All the randomly wired together equipment in the world won't help him prove a negative.
Evidence of Absence is only possible when the subject and the location and the time window are well defined (zero marbles in the glass jar at this instant).
But since he can't pin down the definition of a ghost (let alone measure it), there is no point in worrying about the location (plane of existence?), or time frame. Nothing he could produce would satisfy his septics.
So he arrives here asking what he can measure to be "scientific about it", to which we can only ask:
Be scientific about WHAT?
Any random forked stick should do until he answers the above.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What makes you think they are delusions?
Seriously, I mean the scientific approach wouldn't be that they are delusional, it would be that no evidence has been presented to you. Unless you can scientifically explain away whatever they presented as evidence for their beliefs, the best you have is that you aren't convinced. Not that they are delusional.
The concept of a haunting has been around for quite some time. Some of it probably is misinterpreting facts and a mind running creatively wild, or purposeful lies designed to influence behavior of some sort. But you can't say all or every single claimed instance is because you simply do no know the facts or have the ability to test them. And as we all know, the lack of evidence does not mean it's impossible, it only means it hasn't been proven yet.
Well, what this really is a chance for him not to so much apply the scientific method but rather to teach the scientific method. He already has a hypothesis: his family is full of crap. What he needs is for his family to come up with the testable hypothesis. Have them do the work to prove the ghosts. Set up controls, double blinds, etc., etc. The goal is not to prove the non-existance of ghosts, but to make the family shut up about it. And it's totally possible to work with them in such a way that it sucks all the fun out of the make believe and teaches them that, really, they cannot prove their claims even to themselves. He, however, should stick to trying to help them prove what they believe. But they have to be able to articulate what they believe in some way. But that is their problem, not his.
Parent++.
I don't see how playing into your families delusions helps them or you? Why not hunt for the Easter Bunny with them, or Santa... or setup a trap for the tooth fairy.
Slightly funny anecdote, but childrens' belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy is entirely scientific. Every time, they conduct a falsifiable experiment (put out a cookie / tooth that might not be consumed / taken) and every time they come back with a positive result. They even do peer review, asking their fellow peers (children) what their results were (what they got from Santa), and even validate the experiment with respected and more experienced experimenters of the past (their parents, who swear blind that the results are genuine). They are only thwarted because there really is a grand world-wide ongoing conspiracy to interfere with their experiments and falsify their results.
While I personally agree with you, that line of reasoning will not convince believing friends and family that the house isn't haunted.
That's okay, though. Because a thorough scientific investigation will not convince believers either. The slightest wobble in any of your readings will be read as a haunting. Lack of wobble in the readings will be read as a haunting. A complete failure to find any evidence of ghosts will be taken as evidence that the ghosts do not want to be found.
And then there's a good chance that your work and or words will be taken out of context in a way that seems to support ghosts, but will be worded in such a way that a FORMER SKEPTIC now BELIEVES!
Basically, don't do it.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Part of the scientific method is to give up after a while.
Where, exactly, in "observations, hypotheses, predictions, and experiments" does it say "give up"? Until a phenomena is explained, you aren't following the method if you give up.
There has not once, ever, been a scientifically valid positive result from a single test for ghosts. Further research in the area, after this much overwhelming evidence, is useless.
See, this is where you don't understand "scientific method". The hypothesis in this case comes from the poster's family:
This was based on observations. What the poster wants to do now is predict and experiment. The iteration of these processes is called "the scientific method".
There may or may not be anything supernatural happening in the house, but without following the steps, no one will ever know exactly what is happening in the house (if anything). In particular, if the observers are not delusional, then something is happening in the house. Whether it is supernatural or not can only be determined by (drumroll, please)...the scientific method.
To be more accurate, you both *remember* seeing the same thing at the same time.