Scientific investigation of unscientific topics
I was thinking about this topic while channel surfing the other day. I stumbled across “Ghost Hunters” on the SciFi channel. I have that channel programmed for the upcoming season of Battlestar Gallactica, off topic but worth mentioning. At any rate I watched some of the Ghost Hunters show and thought it interesting. I researched their site and reviewed their evidence. Apparently there’s a huge debate on the Internet if they are for real, if their stuff is faked, etc etc. I am not jumping into that one but it did occur to me that they are doing something wrong.
What is a “ghost”?
The definition according to the dictionary is “the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons.” The bigger question is, are they real? Do these things really exist? Let me say first and foremost, there is no, zero, nadda, nothing, no evidence at all for the existence of a “ghost” or the proof that life extends beyond death. It simply doesn’t exist. That is to say, the evidence does not exist. It simply isn’t or hasn’t ever been proven to be true. Does that mean that these entities do not exist? No, it means the evidence for their existence does not exist.
The Wrong Approach
Ok, now that we have that clear, what are the folks at Taps doing wrong? They are attempting to explain an unexplained event with an unproven “theory”. I say theory because the question of do humans live beyond death and can interact with this physical world is a theory. The Taps crew are attempting to explain voices, moving objects, and other things with the explanation of a “haunting”. Well, scientifically speaking, you can’t really do that.
You can’t explain X with Y if Y is itself an unproven theory. Not to mention that in this case Y is actually two separate theories. The first, that people live beyond death. The second, that in this new state of existence we are actually able to interact with the physical world we left behind. That’s two separate assumptions that ghost enthusiasts are making to explain things.
I am not saying that ghosts do not exist. I can’t say that. I have no proof of it. I am also not saying that haunting’s do not exist. Again, I can not say that, I do not have proof. This, however, is not something that is beyond the boundary of science. I have talked about this before, some things science can never address. The existence of a God, Alien life, etc. Science can never disprove that. But, it can possibly shed some light on the question of a haunting. Or rather, of a physical manifestation of something. If it is seen, heard, tasted touched or smelled, now you are in science’s ballpark. That’s science’s chief role after all, to explain the physical world.
If something is making a noise, a voice, a foot step, a light, an actual image of some kind appearing, that’s a physical occurrence. The ghost hunters are right to attempt to record it using camera’s or voice recorders. They have at times captured something that can not be explained by conventional thinking. Where they go wrong is saying that it is some sort of manifestation of a person that used to exist.
Compounding this even more is that they use EMF detectors. These devices detect EM radiation, that’s electromagnetic radiation, the stuff the sun puts out. The claim is that these things can detect a ghost, because a ghost emits EM radiation. Interesting. Also, there’s the idea of cold spots, that these entities suck up heat and use it to power themselves, or something along those lines.
That’s a good deal of interaction with the physical world. Emitting radiation, absorbing heat, which is itself one of the wavelengths of EM radiation, and chatting so that their voice can be heard. Again, there’s a lot of assumptions here. First, that ghosts exist, second that they can interact with this reality, third exactly how they interact with this reality.
The Right Approach
So, what can you do? You record something, sounds like a voice, you hit a cold spot, and your EM detector goes off. Must be a ghost right? Not so fast, we don’t have proof of those. We can say something occurred, an event. If we have it recorded, even better. Now what? You get it to do it again. You study it. Repeat it, verify it. Repeatable, verifiable evidence is your holy grail.
So, lets say we have a house and in that house we have recorded a voice. A real voice and we have solid proof that no one was there to make it. What now? Now, we build a camp around that house and fill it with as many recorders and devices that is possible to detect it again. Lets say we get a second hit. Wow. Next? More nights at the house of course. And more types of detection equipment. Having an EM detector is just silly. Further, it’s clearly not detecting light, heat, UV, so just what spectrum on the EM band is it detecting? It may be a valid point that if some type of entity that we can not normally perceive is responsible for this sound that some type of energy is being used. But a blanket ‘EM’ statement is just not good science. Get as many detectors that work on specific frequencies and see what you find. You must have specifics not generalities here.
Real Scientific Investigation
All that has gotten us here. A very long blog post and a simple idea I had from watching this show. I do believe that a real scientific investigation into paranormal occurrences is warranted in some cases. Maybe they have already happened, and if so, please someone tell me. I have heard of a recent study with heart surgery patients where doctor’s are placing something in the top of the surgery room to see if their patients have an out of body experience.
If not, lets have one. One thing that bothered me about this Ghost Hunters show is, they appeared to on one occasion get something that seemed to be unexplainable by available evidence. So why leave? Get more equipment. Move in. Get a tent. Live there. Record, record, record. The more ambiguity you introduce into this topic the less any serious investigation will ever be done. I for one would love to see an actual purely scientific study done by the methods I described. Get equipment that can pick up UV, infrared, radio waves, everything. Apply real scientific techniques and people will listen, that is if you find something of course.
Is there something really there? Who knows. It would be incredible to find out though. Happy ghost hunting!
