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Controversy and the problems of parapsychology
Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 2002 by Nancy L. Zingrone
One can imagine that the perceived violation of Merton's norms can lead to controversies. In my experience in parapsychology, there have been fairly public controversies over the refusal to share data (e.g., Blackmore, 1987; Sargent, 1987) or over the perceived misuse of shared data in the eyes of the scientists who collected it (e.g., Berger, 1989; Blackmore, 1984; Markwick, 1990; Spinelli, 1989). Controversies have erupted when it seems that personal criteria have heavily influenced the evaluation of knowledge claims (e.g., Beloff, 1968; Eysenck, 1968; Hansel, 1961a, 1961b, 1966, 1968; Honorton, 1967; Medhurst, 1968; Pratt & Woodruff, 1961; Rhine & Pratt, 1961; Shapiro, 1968; Slater, 1968; Stevenson, 1967, 1968; West, 1968) and when barriers have been raised for women or minority scientists (Keller, 1983; Rossiter, 1982), for scientists from laboratories outside the Anglo-American world (Shrum & Shenhav, 1995), or for scientists who are perceived to be of low status. (1) Controversies have erupted when ther e is obvious self-interest in the methodology set up to test a scientific question or in the interpretation of research results (Bem, Palmer, & Broughton, 2001; Milton & Wiseman, 1999, 2001; Storm & Ertel, 2001). Controversies have erupted over "scientific pronouncements," that is, when there is dogmatic acceptance or rejection of any phenomena or finding, or when announcements of results are couched in statements that are not properly open ended and not properly cautious in terms of what is or can be known at that point in our scientific development. Controversies have also erupted when scientific judgments have been made prematurely, and when the rules of evidence and argument have been purposely distorted in the service of politics and power rather than in the service of science.
Gieryn (1995, p. 398) noted that norms are endowed with a moral authority, and the prose of those who describe the breaking of norms often does so with a sense of moral indignation. As parapsychologists, we have frequently been on the receiving end of such moral indignation, (2) and we are painfully aware that the determination of whether a norm has, in fact, been broken, or should, when broken, be ignored or acted on is a socially motivated process. We know that a double standard frequently exists where we are concerned; that there are times when scientific norms are wielded like clubs against us, in service of goals that seem to us to have little or nothing to do with the overarching effectiveness of science as one of society's primary methods of knowledge gathering and knowledge work.
When norms are wielded for political and social purposes, it is often to do boundary work (Gieryn, 1995, p. 400), to establish a hierarchy of disciplines, and to separate scientists from the nonscientists, the powerful from the powerless. It is also in boundary work that what have been called antinorms come into play (Mitroff, 1974). Organized dogmaticism is one of the antinorms of which parapsychology has seen entirely too much in its history. Organized dogmaticism is the antithesis of organized skepticism: If organized skepticism is the institutionalization of doubt, organized dogmatism is the institutionalization of belief. While the discourse of the hardened skeptical community reveals that they assume they are acting in the best tradition of organized skepticism (see, e.g., Kurtz, 1978a, especially pp. 16, 21, 27, 29; Kurtz, 1978b), skeptics' publications also reveal a reified belief system, a hotly defended dogmatism (e.g., Al-cock, 1979, p. 40; Kurtz, 1978a, p. 14) that amounts to faith in a particular mechanistic, reductionistic, compartmentalized worldview. By defending its worldview, the hardened skeptical community situates itself, building a group identity as valued gatekeepers at the boundaries between mainstream and marginal science.
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