Greyson is a Cartesian dualist of the old-fashioned kind, and like most defenders of Cartesian dualism seems to operate largely in blissful unawareness of the devastating problems with and 350-year history of refutations of that idea. Cartesian dualism is e.g. the point of departure for his book Irreducible Mind (2007), which he co-edited with Alan Gauld and a gaggle of other parapsychologists. Although Irreducible Mind purports to be a kind of psychology book, it is in fact a ridiculous pseudoscience tome filled with anecdotes that are supposed to promote paranormal claims. Serious psychologists were largely unimpressed and/or embarrassed by the book and its attempt to promote substantial (and silly) claims without empirical evidence.
Diagnosis: You’d perhaps be excused for thinking that this is hardly among the most serious challenges humanity is facing at present. However, this kind of pseudoscience is, in fact, rather insidious: It is carried out by people with genuine credentials and presented with a sheen of scientific respectability – to very many people, the work of Greyson and his ilk might unfortunately be rather difficult to distinguish from real science. As such, it will certainly be ammunition for those who seek to discredit real science (‘look how silly those scientists are’), and there are quite a lot of those these days.
Hat-tip: Rationalwiki
I'd like to propose a candidate, but can't find any organized way of doing that. But, here's a Harvard professor, the following courtesy of Phil Plait, of the Bad Astronomy Newsletter.
ReplyDeleteYou may have heard claims that 3I/ATLAS is not a comet at all, but an alien spacecraft. You can imagine how I feel about that, and I am boggled that people would seriously email me asking me what I think of this crackpottery. I mean, come on. It’s not like there isn’t an extensive and long-term serious of articles (and books and TV appearances) of me debunking UFO/alien visitation baloney.
“But these claims come from Avi Loeb, a Harvard professor!” some people say. That is actually true, but a pedigree doesn’t mean a person’s not a crackpot. I wrote about this for Scientific American a little while back, in fact. My colleague Jason Wright has written several blog posts about Loeb’s goofy claims, patiently debunking them (without the vitriol I can barely restrain, myself), and it’s not hard to find more debunkenings on line. I could write a 5,000 word essay on Loeb’s shenanigans — from his massive conflicts of interest (he started his own company to look for evidence of alien visits and makes bank on it), to his ignoring actual experts on comet science, arrogance about SETI, and shoddy scientific practices — but it would only serve to increase my blood pressure and likely not make an impact to the greater picture.
It’s frustrating that such an amazing scientific discovery is run through the mud by conspiracy theorists and opportunists. I love science and astronomy, and I get a genuine thrill, even after all these decades, when something new and wondrous appears in our skies. I want people to appreciate these events for the amazing moments they are, so keeps your eyes open for more real news about 3I/ATLAS, and remember that the vast majority of us out there are keen to learn about the Universe, and appreciate it for what it actually is.
I've encountered the name before. Sounds like someone I need to look further into.
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