|
4. The Variety of Members in the Parapsychological
Community
There
are other interesting aspects of the profession besides its low numbers of
members. In what follows I focus on
PA parapsychologists, but we should keep in
mind that there are many individuals that are involved in parapsychological
research that do not belong to our Association.
We may refer to some individuals in our community as public workers; that is,
they dare to publicly defend the field or identify themselves with research. In
comparison, there are those individuals who, while helpful privately on
occasion, are not willing to take a stand in public due to such consequences as
losing prestige, jobs, and funding. One wonders what would be the effect of
having those silent allies speak up and more actively defend the field. Support
from formerly silent groups has traditionally been valuable in fights for social
causes and it should not be an exception here. If at least they were willing to
argue for the importance of further research I believe they would make a
difference and would provide a significant help to those of us who have dared
(sometimes paying the price) to identify ourselves with parapsychology. While we
can understand the reasons for a lack of public involvement, there is certainly
little to admire in such individuals, considering the courage and sacrifices
continuously shown by many more public parapsychologists.[2]
[2]
In my experience this lack of involvement sometimes is accompanied by a tendency
to offer liberal advice and criticism in private.
We may also talk about those few whose main intellectual identity is in
parapsychology and those whose identity lies in other fields.[3] The former
includes such figures as past PA presidents
John Palmer and
Richard Broughton
and the latter such individuals as
Daryl Bem and Etzel Cardena. As I see it,
both types of workers are important to keep the field going. Research is not
necessarily better because it comes from one group or the other. Important
contributions may come from either group. Still, we need to recognize the
strength of each group. To maintain a professional field we need the first
group. These are the individuals who present research yearly at PA conventions,
a smaller number of whom make the administration of the PA possible and who edit
the journals of the field. The second group I refer to is usually in a good
position to help us reach the wider scientific world because of their political
connections and prestige. This was evident in the publication of the initial Bem
and Honorton (1994) ganzfeld paper in the Psychological Bulletin and in the
recent book Varieties of Anomalous Experience published by the American
Psychological Association and edited by Cardena and others (Cardena, Lynn &
Krippner, 2000).
[3]
There is, of course, another group of individuals that have mixed identities.
Half of their time they are psychologists, psychiatrists, physicists, or other
professions, and the other half they are parapsychologists.
Another interesting and sometimes discussed distinction is made between
professionally trained and amateur workers.
J. B. Rhine (1953a) drew that
distinction and argued for the importance of amateurs. Certainly we have to be
careful to avoid the arrogant position that claims only those persons with
specific formal university training can contribute to parapsychology. I would
prefer the sagacity, talent and experience of some field investigators who
research hauntings and mediumship claims (e.g., Cornell,
2001) over the opinion
of many other workers who hold graduate degrees from universities but have no
experience in the field. Having specific training and degrees are no guarantee
of common sense or creativity, particularly in such a difficult discipline as
our own. At the same time, we also need to use the best techniques and
approaches of science in order to understand better our phenomena. In today's
modern world it is difficult to make sense of something like ESP or PK without
drawing on the accumulated knowledge of the sciences and their research
techniques, efforts which require formal training. Sometimes this creates
problems when some individuals argue that research is too technical, full of
methods, techniques, and terms that are not understood by the uninitiated. Part
of the problem here may be that, as Emilio Servadio (1966) once said,
parapsychology attracts people who do not have scientific training and who may
not care about the requirements of science. Servadio complained about amateurs
performing "experiments" that in reality "have as much in common with science as
a child's scrawl with an architect's carefully studied blueprint" (p. 68).
Sometimes these issues arise in the context of understanding the importance of
conducting research that teaches us something about a phenomenon as opposed to
research done only to document dramatic performances or the mere existence of a
phenomenon (Alvarado,
1996d). In any case, amateurs may still exist in our field
more than they do in other such fields such as psychology and physics because
these other fields have had the acceptance of society and, consequently, the
possibility and the means of becoming a professional discipline. The lack of professsionalization in parapsychology sets us apart from those other
disciplines. This leads us to the topic of the next section, the problem of
education and training.
Next part: 5. Education and
Training in Parapsychology
|
