NYTimes: It’s ba-a-a-ack. ESP in real journals – this times it’s causation flowing backwards in time, yawn.
back to the future, again
More than 35 years ago as a newspaper reporter without the clout or wit to tell editors no way buddy, I had to cover a couple of guys at SRI International in Palo Alto, named Targ and Puthoff, who studied remote viewing. They reported that some people could tell you what’s happening some place far away and even draw pictures of an accuracy that defied all rational odds. The Russians reportedly were studying such stuff, it was the cold war, the Pentagon put some money in it, and oh my was it a bore. So stupid, a tedious and disheartening waste of my time when there was real or at least plausible stuff, to report, like black holes nobody could see or fully explain either.
To be sure, such outbursts of irrationality and what seems like irrationality are news. It’s important that somebody debunk the stuff or, who knows, find out that there really is solid evidence of weird currents of causation flowing in the cosmos inexplicable by known physics or logic. But some of us – well, me – just cannot get stirred up to spontaneously combust with interest.
But in the name of tracking science and what science journalist journalize about, on the front page just below the fold of today’s NY Times the respected reporter Benedict Carey dutifully and with due diligence reports shock in scientific circles that a reputable journal of psychology is publishing a paper that, and don’tcha just love this, concludes that some evidence implies persuasively that if one studies up on something, the knowledge may “reach back in time” to make a difference in your cognition even before you hit the books, or whatever and gimme a break.
Hmm. I suppose speculation among physicists that time can flow backwards, that somehow in some frame even quantum entanglement or something like that may time-reverse causation, is legit. But I do doubt mightily that psychology is up to the task of revealing such things at the scale of things we perceive in daily life. I mean, if such things are routine if you look for them, and as they’d have huge survival advantage, you’d think spectacularly clairvoyant animals would have evolved long ago. O wait – some people say horses can sense earthquakes coming and run off before there is any way that should happen. Hmmm and hmmm again.
There will be more coverage of this. My heart goes out to journalists with absolutely no interest in raking these dead, sodden leaves but must pile them up anyway to meet their editors’ demands. And, admiration to those who willingly leap into the fray, fighting against superstition and for truth, justice, and…. uh, truth again.
- Charlie Petit
