Ideas Worth Suppressing: Psi Wars and TED's Worst Nightmare

 

>So when Dossey says, "Craig Weiler's voice in this book is restrained, clear, and factual. After reading it, you will be in a good position to decide whether TED is about "ideas worth spreading" or "ideas worth censoring'" his is a voice worth listening to.



I'm appreciative that Craig Weiler has agreed to an interview with OEN.

Meryl Ann Butler: Thanks, Craig for making time to answer some of our questions. Your book, Psi Wars , is 270 pages, but can you give us a shorter summary of what this war with TED is about?

Craig Weiler: Thank you for interviewing me! The main story in my book is about the TED controversy, but in order to tell that story I had to put it into perspective and provide a huge amount of background information so that readers would understand the context.  Otherwise it can be hard to understand why this controversy ignites such passion in people.  So I had to tell the story of parapsychology and why people take it seriously and that included showing what happens when skeptics address the real evidence, not their imagined version of it.  It's all there in the scientific papers.
 
And I had to tell the story of the skeptics and their organizations.  I refer to this type of skeptic as an ideologue, since most people can understand what that means.  Most people don't know that organizations like the James Randi Educational Foundation and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry are actually atheist advocacy organizations that have nothing to do with real science.  Atheism has its fundamentalists, just like all the religions do.  And in about the same percentages.  Over the years these activist atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of science, but in reality they're defending their belief system.  They use all the standard tactics: bullying, ridicule and harassment combined with a win-at-any-cost mentality.
 
These organizations have the ear of the mainstream media, which is why alternative views get so little press. And where you really see the full out attack by these ideologues is on Wikipedia, where they have a stranglehold on all the alternative topics.
 
The TED controversy was a perfect example of the irrational side of skepticism because the mentality at TED and the way they handled the controversy was pretty typical of what happens.
 
While many writers have tackled the subject of psi, no one had addressed the cultural aspect of it and and telling the TED story while providing the necessary background was the perfect way to deal with it.
 
I also talked at some length about why this change is happening.

MAB: Thanks for that fascinating background, Craig. And ok, I'll bite: why IS this change happening?

CW: That's a good question because this running battle between parapsychological research and mainstream resistance has been going on for a lo-o-o-ong time.  The first scientific investigations into the paranormal began with the formation of the Society for Psychical Research -- in 1882, the car hadn't even been invented yet, and and already parapsychological research was under attack.
 
For over a century, the mainstream scientific community has successfully suppressed this research largely by denying it funding, discouraging students from doing research in this field, not publishing research in prominent journals and basically blackballing anyone who shows an interest in the subject.  I don't know why this taboo is so strong, I don't get it at all, but it's there.  Most of the parapsychology researchers have stories about their work getting suppressed, but the real kicker here is that the Parapsychological Association itself discourages people from entering that field!
 
What's different now is that the normal scientific channels, which have been used to marginalize this research, are being bypassed.  This is because of the Internet.  The same technology that gives us unlimited access to cute babies, and funny videos of cats has also created a way for the research to reach a much wider audience. As soon as the skeptical scientific community lost its chokehold on the information, change was coming.  It was inevitable.

I should add here that while skepticism rules science in academia, the majority of scientists are not skeptical.  They just go along with it because they have to.
 
The game has already changed a great deal.  When I first started blogging about six years ago, it  was common for skeptics to make a number of assertions that were blatantly false, such as "there is no evidence for psi."  It's easy nowadays to disprove this with a single link: http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm
 
The skeptics are being challenged all the time now when they make these kinds of statements in public forums.  A lot more people are informed.
 
This is the situation that TED stepped into, a turning point in history where the existing scientific paradigm was beginning to be challenged by informed, intellectual people.  And by doing what they did, TED became the focal point for all the outrage that had been building up over the years.  They deserve it frankly.  They behaved badly. 

MAB: Hearing this background and perspective really helps in understanding what the hullabaloo is about.  Can you give us a synopsis of what happened with the Los Angeles TEDx, and why it's important?

CW: The controversy first started because TED removed a video by Rupert Sheldrake from its main page and stuck it in an obscure blog post where it would not be searchable on the main site. This caused an uproar. In the video Sheldrake talked about questioning materialism, the mainstream philosophical approach to science.  Next, TED removed a video by Graham Hancock, which was along the same lines, in that he was also questioning materialism, but his approach was not a scientific one.

The uproar, combined with the persistent efforts of skeptic Jerry Coyne, undoubtedly affected TED's approach to TEDxWestHollywood, an independently produced TED program organized and produced by Suzanne Taylor that was scheduled for April 14th, 2013.  They probably would have left it alone were it not for the growing controversy.  The event had been in development for a year after all and Suzanne and TED had basically come to terms.  But out of nowhere TED started bearing down on the the WestHollywood program and eventually they decided to withdraw her TEDx license with only two weeks to go before the show.

Two things:  first, TED focused their attention on the two speakers on the TEDxWestHollywood roster who were scientists explicitly talking about psychic ability.  This left very little doubt as to TED's motives.  They weren't just "in favor of science" as they claimed, they were pushing a very specific atheism-based ideological agenda.  You can approach any subject scientifically.  Many people felt that they were effectively trying to censor a certain class of scientific experiments because they produced positive results, which went against TED's ideology.   TED never gave Suzanne any good reasons for doing what they did.  Nor could they.  Scientifically, their actions were indefensible.

Second, Suzanne Taylor was harmed by what TED did.  While Sheldrake and Hancock came out relatively unscathed from the experience -- and perhaps gained in popularity -- Suzanne was left without a venue or financial backing just two weeks prior to the date of the big event! She put up, by her estimate, $40,000 to cover the show, get a new venue and livestream it.

However in the last minute rush, she didn't change her livestream account to remove the TEDx name. TED had it cancelled for copyright infringement two days before the show.  Then Livestream would not provide her with a link from the old web address to the new one.  It was all very petty.

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