Dear Henry Nyaosi,

It is possible to scientifically research everything that is interesting for a man. However, some difficult-to-measure phenomena and processes are not easy to study, especially in the absence of appropriate, developed research methods.

Henry Nyaosi

This is an interesting topic. So far I have only heard philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend commenting on Voodoo:

https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/feyerabend-on-voodoo/

I believe that scientists should be open to all kinds of topics / procedures but should apply the same (rigorous) methods (e.g., experiments) as they do in other fields.

I suppose I am a giver of grants. Under what conditions would I treat equally a voodoo priest and a physician with controlled animal trial data.? Do we really want everything to have equal value? David Booth

David Eugene Booth

I would give the grant to the person who can demonstrate (using a rigorous research design) that he/she can produce the best results, which most likely is the physician. I just believe that is important not to ignore any "field" ex ante. In other words, I use the same reasoning as Feyerabend, who was accused of taking Voodoo seriously, but all he said was to give it a fair chance and to investigate it rigorously.

Homeopathy was in the news recently and, to the best of my knowledge, most scientifc studies have shown that its effect does not exceed the placebo effect. As a result politicians discuss whether they should fund homeopathy. This can potentially help to save a lot of money.

Serious studies about Voodoo might yield interesting ethnographic results or identify substances previously unknown to medicine. I am not a huge believer in supernatural powers but rigorous research in that area might also not hurt.

Horst Treiblmaier I agree that is why I asked for conditions rather than saying one is obviously better than the other. I would however argue that we stay within the science paradigm because we have ways to discuss whether or not a particular conclusion has support. Best wishes, David Booth

David Eugene Booth What exactly do you mean with "paradigm of science"? If you refer to the methods/procedures etc. I mostly agree. I do not fully agree since sometimes the prevailing paradigm can be so strong that it prevents new (and correct) ideas from surfacing. I like Feyerabend's "Against Method" a lot, in which he shows that Galileo was only successful because he used propaganda, and not because of his arguments. His tools (e.g., the telescope) were much too primitive to support his claims.

If the "paradigm of the science" refer to the ideas that are worthy of investigation, I am inclined to disagree. I would not exclude any topic "per se". Voodoo admittedly sounds strange, but so does relativity theory and quantum physics. I do not believe in Voodoo, but I hardly know anything about it and academic research can definitely foster our general understanding.

I also like the book "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science" from Martin Gardner, but it would have been better if he would have used rigorous methodology to debunk the "fads" he lists. I have not read the full book yet, but there is at least one snappy remark of his with which I disagree ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fads_and_Fallacies_in_the_Name_of_Science

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant the usual things that go by the names of "scientific method" and "peer review". While not always the best decisions as least we have an idea of what is involved. Best, David Booth

David Eugene Booth I guess we are talking about the same things anyway. My attitude is that we should not ridicule any opinion, theory etc. by default but give everyone a fair chance. No doubt, there are many quacks around and they need to be exposed.

For all those who are interested, please check out the work of James Randi, who is a member of the sceptics society. Here is a hilarious video in which they debunk Uri Geller:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCJDpNnHNI

Please note that I am not saying anything about Voodoo, which was the starting point for this discussion, since it is a very complex field I do not know anything about. I searched for it on RG and Academia.edu and found quite few papers which are definitely non-scientific:

https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Voodoo

Seems like a really interesting research gap.

window into historical Western document on ancient voodoo-ish insect-vector-based protective mechanisms against colonial invasion via The NewYorker:: Napoleon used it too ~ https://twitter.com/appofentry/status/1157538027956318208?s=20

David Eugene Booth and yet research grants are awarded to theologists, which haven't achieved much in scientifically supporting their dogmas during the last couple thousand years. Still, they produced valuable knowledge.

Back to something less controversial: Chiropractice. In some countries, chiropractice has the same scientific validity than voodoo. In Florida, it's covered by medical insurance and is thought in med schools.

Horst Treiblmaier voodoo and medicine are unlikely to be measured similarly, and be comparable on what produces "the best results". If I was a voodoo-physician and my patient died because of my voodoo-treatment for cancer, I would argue that there is some other voodoo expert out there whose negative vibes our outpowering mines. And I would ask for more research money to investigate that.

Dario Bonaretti Good point. But isn't that exactly the same for traditional medicine? How many companies are out there which try to cover up the fact that their treatment might be useless or even dangerous? What about supplements, for example? You can always blame some external effects...

Please note that I am not promoting Voodoo, but I believe that experimental designs can be used for both alternative and traditional medicine. Serious research might be useful to debunk myths or to discover real effects.

Horst Treiblmaier "Bad" pharmaceutical companies still pretend to follow rigorous methodological principles. For instance, the "hype" for CBD is based on evidence that is "yet to come", a feeling sometimes peppered with conspiracy theories, but still: they want to show that CBD treatments are scientifically valid.

Homeopathic treatments have been debunked based on scientific principles and standard methods. Sure, someone may claim that a homeopathic treatment doesn't work because it's interacting with traditional drugs that the patient took before. But we know how to control (statistically) for those effects. While not an expert in homeopathy, my understanding is that its epistemology and ontology would be similar to traditional medicine. I would argue the two approaches are commensurable.

Voodoo and medicine (or homeopathy) seems neither comparable, nor commensurable. Of course one may claim that incommensurability and incomparability affect even two distinct experiments. I don't know enough to discuss that in detail. However, I feel that voodoo takes us to the next level.

To investigate voodoo means to switch to a completely different ontological level, one that - for instance - contemplates supernatural phenomena. Homeopathy does not contemplate supernatural. Quite the opposite, it seeks legitimation by the standards of traditional medicine.

Therefore, vodoo poses new methodological problems (e.g., how do we measure supernatural phenomena?) that haven't surfaced yet in the homeopathy-vs-traditional medicine debate.

The practical implication is that I would allocate $0 to a voodoo approach for treating cancer, while I may -theoretically - give a little chance to homeopathy.

Dario Bonaretti

Good points, but my line of argumention is a little bit different. Have you seen the Youtube video, which I linked above? In it James Randi debunks Uri Geller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCJDpNnHNI

Similarly, I suggest to treat any alleged effect as a black box in the first place. In other words, in the first step we are only interested if there exists a causality at all and we are not interested in understanding it. So it does not matter if the effect is supernatural or not, it only matters if it exists. I am quite skeptical when it comes to supernatural effects, but I do not claim that I can prove that they do not exist. In that manner it might be fairly easy to come up with experimental designs in which proponents of Voodoo show some inexplicable results. If they pass this first hurdle, then we can go one step further which might be really tricky. However, if they fail to produce these effects in controlled environments then we do not even need to speculate about ontologies. To provide another example, if one claims that he can levitate, he should show me the proof and then we can let physicists do their work. To the best of my knowledge, noone so far has proven this and therefore there is no need to waste human brainpower.

And, yes, you are right about faked or wrong results. I am sure that this is very common, but this is a completely different topic.

Horst Treiblmaier

I am not sure how the video "debunks" Uri Geller, unless we move from the assumption that Uri's position is ridiculous because it ignores the scientific method which is the only one acceptable - something that I would do, but a true anarchist wouldn't. If we have to take him seriously, then I agree with him: a TV show doesn't look like a "controlled" environment. For instance, he claimed that "negative energy" affected his performance. How did they measure and control for it? And if they didn't, how could we argue he got a "fair chance"?

The problem is that both Uri and any "voodoo scientists" hold unique notions of "existence" and "controlled environment" that cannot be challenged meaningfully with the scientific method.

Dario Bonaretti As far as I am concerned, this video more or less falsifies the claim of Uri's supernatural powers. Of course, one experiment might not be enough, so they should replicate it in different places and under different conditions. There is always the probability of a type I or type II error (to speak in terms of traditional statistics) but if one claims that (s)he has some power and cannot (repeatedly) prove it, to me it seems that (s)he does not possess the power. After all, in his shows it always seems to work. Simply extending the "model" (e.g., by adding "negative energy" as a covariate) is pretty lame. But isn't it interesting how similiar this is to what a lot of "serious" researchers do? It is so hard to publish falsified hypotheses so a lot of tools and tricks are available to cover that up. P-value hacking is one and the ex post modification of models another common one. There seems to be a lot of "negative energy" in modern research ;-)