Controversy and the problems of parapsychology

Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 2002 by Nancy L. Zingrone

But even 20 years ago, after a decade of fieldwork among the hard sciences by such sociologists of science as Harry Collins (1974, 1975), Laudan (1983) and others were despairing of finding epistemic invariants in the sciences. In their examinations of science and scientific controversy, they uncovered instead an "epistemic heterogeneity of the activities and beliefs customarily classified as scientific" (p. 28) that made the Popperian notion of "demarcation" in science moot. It became obvious to Laudan and others that the variation of method, practice, interpretation, and theory within individual sciences and across the whole of the scientific enterprise made essentialist views of science obsolete. Different answers existed in different disciplines to the questions of what was relevant in terms of instrumentation, what was an acceptable level of predictability, what was an acceptable range of values in measurement, when it was appropriate to engage in ad hoc hypothesizing and when not, and so on.

Having expressed doubts about the presence of Popperian epistemic invariants in science, Laudan (1983) did not deny, however, that there were "crucial epistemic and methodological questions to be raised about knowledge claims" (p. 29), nor did he deemphasize the importance of arguing "that a certain piece of science is epistemically warranted and that a certain piece of pseudo-science is not" (p. 29). But such determinations of what counted as science and what did not had to be done on a more finely grained, more subtle, more sophisticated level, discipline by discipline, or even, as the work of Collins and his colleagues shows, laboratory by laboratory.

Since then, controversies have been characterized in a variety of ways. For Thomas Gieryn (1995), they are boundary disputes, negotiations over the territories of phenomena, method, training, and funding, as well as over what constitutes a "fact," who is qualified to make that determination, and at what point along the way. Gieryn regarded the complex landscape of point and counterpoint as an exercise in the cultural cartography of science, the drawing and redrawing of existing "maps," the moving of boundaries, the modification of features, and the reification (however temporarily) of research programs and disciplines into scalable features of the scientific landscape, unchanging enough to act as reference points and to become identifiable "repertoires of characteristics" available for the next cartographer in line (pp. 405-407).

If the Popperian and even the Kuhnian notion of science were "essentialist" (Gieryn, 1995, p. 407), in the less essentialist view of science, controversy is everywhere. At each of the myriad stages in scientific practice, there is room for dissent, for varying worldviews based on what seemed to be, at first glance, unproblematic truths about the natural world. Add in the profound influence of such nonepistemic variables as historical, political, social, and psychological factors, and controversy can easily arise. Once established, controversies twist and turn toward resolution in exceedingly complex ways. Among the specific, complicating nonepistemic determinants of controversy that have been identified are the influence of disciplinary socialization; the political status of disputants; the power and pervasiveness of networks of advocates and counteradvocates; personal motivations that have little to do with the work at hand and more to do with the constraining impact of everyday life, whether it be everyday life in the laboratory, the department, the university, the corporation, or at home; and, of course, personal differences in intellect, temperament, and experience. Nonepistemic confounds and epistemic arguments can be expanded and unpacked indefinitely. They can erupt, extinguish, intertwine, or fly away in opposite directions, pulling apart communities of scientists and derailing progress and prediction. The hope is, of course, that controversy will lead to improvement in practice, theory, and prediction, but the trajectory toward that goal is seldom direct.