Talk:Ghost/Workpage

Proposed improvements

The following section is currently tagged and needs improvement. I would like to make the following changes:

1. It covers different subjects which are blended and therefore needs to be divided. I'd like to place a section heading in the middle of it as shown below in bold caps.

2. The "new" second section needs more sourcing with accompanied tweaks.

3. The Weinstein, Todd, and Nickell quotes will be moved to the first section, thus gathering like with like.

4. The LEAD will need to mention these sections in an appropriate manner, and the word "pseudoscience" should be used. I'll let others propose such wordings.

I will identify my additions in bold italics.

Please do NOT edit this. There is a section for comments below. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

CURRENT VERSION:

Scientific explanations

Some researchers, such as Professor Michael Persinger (Laurentian University, Canada), have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. This theory has been tested in various ways. Some scientists have examined the relationship between the time of onset of unusual phenomena in allegedly haunted locations and any sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity. Others have investigated whether the location of alleged hauntings is associated with certain types of magnetic activity. Finally, a third strand of work has involved laboratory studies in which stimulation of the temporal lobe with magnetic fields has elicited subjective experiences that strongly parallel phenomena associated with hauntings. All of this work is controversial; it has attracted a large amount of debate and disagreement. Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Frequencies lower than 20 hertz are called infrasound and are normally inaudible, but scientists Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was recognized as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921.

Ghosts, hauntings, and related paranormal concepts have been characterized as pseudoscientific by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a position endorsed by the National Science Foundation. Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead. Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for such sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing car are reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell:

...peripheral vision is very sensitive and can easily mislead, especially late at night, when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds.

Nickell also states that a person's belief that a location is haunted may cause them to interpret mundane events as confirmations of a haunting:

Once the idea of a ghost appears in a household . . . no longer is an object merely mislaid. . . . There gets to be a dynamic in a place where the idea that it's haunted takes on a life of its own. One-of-a-kind quirks that could never be repeated all become further evidence of the haunting.

PROPOSED VERSIONs

Scientific explanations

Some researchers, such as Professor Michael Persinger (Laurentian University, Canada), have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. This theory has been tested in various ways. Some scientists have examined the relationship between the time of onset of unusual phenomena in allegedly haunted locations and any sudden increases in global geomagnetic activity. Others have investigated whether the location of alleged hauntings is associated with certain types of magnetic activity. Finally, a third strand of work has involved laboratory studies in which stimulation of the temporal lobe with magnetic fields has elicited subjective experiences that strongly parallel phenomena associated with hauntings. All of this work is controversial; it has attracted a large amount of debate and disagreement. Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Frequencies lower than 20 hertz are called infrasound and are normally inaudible, but scientists Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was recognized as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921.

Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for such sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing car are reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have seen ghosts. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell:

"...peripheral vision is very sensitive and can easily mislead, especially late at night, when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds."

Nickell also states that a person's belief that a location is haunted may cause them to interpret mundane events as confirmations of a haunting:

"Once the idea of a ghost appears in a household . . . no longer is an object merely mislaid. . . . There gets to be a dynamic in a place where the idea that it's haunted takes on a life of its own. One-of-a-kind quirks that could never be repeated all become further evidence of the haunting."

Scientific skepticism

The scientific consensus, as expressed by the National Science Foundation, considers the claimed ability of people to communicate with the dead, as well as belief in ghosts and spirits, to be pseudoscientific beliefs. They have included them in a list of ten items:

From Note 29: "[29] Those 10 items were extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body."

Ghosts, hauntings, and related paranormal concepts have been characterized as pseudoscientific by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a position endorsed by the National Science Foundation. Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead.

Pseudoscientific explanations

Further information: Ectoplasm (paranormal), Ghost hunting, and Paranormal

Some authors, beginning in the 19th century, have sought to explain hauntings scientifically. Authors such as Michael Persinger have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Other explanations suggest the effect of infrasound, or carbon monoxide poisoning,

Scientific interpretations of ghosts, hauntings, and related paranormal concepts have been characterized as pseudoscience by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a position endorsed by the National Science Foundation.

Comments

I suppose you want comments here. all in all, this seems to be an improvement. however, I have two issues with it:

1. The first paragraph strikes me as oddly similar to fringe research for something that's supposed to be skeptical. I mean... the effect on human temporal lobes of minute changes in geomagnetic fields??? That's one baby step away from saying that people are get crazy under a full moon. I don't mind including this if it's all reputable research, but cant we rephrase it so it doesn't sound quite so... odd?
2. I like the second paragraph. no problems.
3. The CSI is not the NSF. Again, the sources I have seen seem to indicate that the CSI is an offshoot of the NSF designed to advocate for scientific reasoning and science education, but you cannot import the full weight of the NSF into this statement when the given source only refers to the CSI. I also have concerns about the weighting of this para - it seems awfully detailed for what it's trying to say, but once the sourcing issue is cleared up we can discuss that. --Ludwigs2 06:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The first paragraph is not my creation, but is current content. Has someone claimed that the CSI is the NSF? Not that I know of. The NSF quotes them approvingly since they share the same POV. It's that simple, and let's keep it that way. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

ok, then we can revise the first paragraph to be something less silly.

re: "Has someone claimed that the CSI is the NSF?": has someone claimed that they are? still waiting on a source here... --Ludwigs2 08:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

my main concern is WP:DUE. It is perfectly possible to reference all sorts of confused pseudoscience, and then go into great detail of people debunking it as pseudoscience, but how relevant is this to the main Ghost article? It would be far more important to get a decent coverage of, say, the Jungian understanding. Any section on geomagnetics, infrasound and what have you that is in greater or even similar detail to the discussion of the Jungian point of view is way overblown. The proposed section is fair enough in term of content, but it is way too long and detailed. condense it into one or at most two very brief paragraphs with the gist "Pseudoscientfic explanations have been proposed. They have been debunked. The end." --dab (𒁳) 11:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I have condensed the paragraph into another proposal above. This is the very maximum of what I believe to be adequate. Any further detail will need to go to Paranormal articles. --dab (𒁳) 11:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi dab. I'm not trying to be a smart aleck, but the main Ghost article departs from its purely philosophical discussion of ghosts to address the investigation of or reality of ghosts in several sections, and in "great detail".

Examples spread throughout article.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In 1848, the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York claimed to have communication with the disembodied spirits of the dead and launched the Spiritualist movement, which claimed many adherents in the nineteenth century.[42] The rise of Spiritualism saw an increase in popular interest in the supernatural. Books on the supernatural were published for the growing middle class, such as 1852’s Mysteries, by Charles Elliott, which contains “sketches of spirits and spiritual things”, including accounts of the Salem witch trials, the Cock Lane Ghost, and the Rochester Rappings.[43] The Night Side of Nature, by Catherine Crowe, published in 1853, provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgangers, apparitions and haunted houses.[44] Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as the London Spiritualist Alliance, which published a newspaper called The Light, featuring articles such as “Evenings at Home in Spiritual Séance”, “Ghosts in Africa” and “Chronicles of Spirit Photography”, advertisements for "mesmerists” and patent medicines, and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts.[45] Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and haunting as they would any other news story. An account in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1891, "sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste", tells of a house believed haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims seeking revenge against their killer’s son, who was eventually driven insane. Many families, “having no faith in ghosts”, thereafter moved into the house, but all soon moved out again.[46] The claims of spiritualists and others as to the reality of ghosts were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882. The Society set up a Committee on Haunted Houses and a Literary Committee which looked at the literature on the subject.[42] Apparitions of the recently deceased, at the moment of their death, to their friends and relations, were very commonly reported.[47] One celebrated example was the strange appearance of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, walking through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London, looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 whilst he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Squadron, manoeuvering off the coast of Syria. Subsequently it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, the HMS Victoria, that very same night, after it had collided with the HMS Camperdown following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.[48] Such crisis apparitions have received serious study by parapsychologists with various explanations given to account for them, including telepathy, as well as the traditional view that they represent disembodied spirits.[49][50] In the 19th century, spiritism resurrected "belief in ghosts" as the object of systematic inquiry, and popular opinion in Western culture remains divided.[53] Professional parapsychologists and “ghosts hunters”, such as Harry Price and Peter Underwood, published accounts of their experiences with ostensibly true ghost stories such as The Most Haunted House in England, and Ghosts of Borley. The ghost hunting theme has been featured in reality television series, such as Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Ghost Lab, Most Haunted, and A Haunting. It is also represented in children's television by such programs as The Ghost Hunter and Ghost Trackers. Ghost hunting also gave rise to multiple guidebooks to haunted locations, and ghost hunting “how-to” manuals.

In my opinion, that's a lot of WP:WEIGHT that needs to be balanced by a mainstream view, and I agree that the section containing this view need be succinct, but I would avoid trying to make it "as short as possible". LuckyLouie (talk) 15:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, half of that isn't really scientific investigation (the first two paragraphs you cite are really just groups interested in sightings; it doesn't get pseudoscientific until the 'Society for Psychical Research' section). however, I do see your point. I'm tempted to suggest that we take the 'scientific perspectives' section and work it in with the material above, the way we would a 'criticism' section of other articles. give me a bit and I'll draft a proposed version. --Ludwigs2 16:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I mostly agree, and I also share the view that the Persinger/infrasonic stuff is somewhat cringe-worthy and doesn't really represent the mainstream view on the subject, so I'd be interested to see what you can come up with. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to try my first proposal to at least divide the existing section into its parts by adding a heading, separating the blended elements into their respective subjects, and strengthening the new second section. I'd like to try that and see how it looks. Then we can continue with other proposals which may well tweak or alter it. Please consider it an attempt to improve the existing content. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I have implemented the changes and added mention in the lead. Now each section can be dealt with individually. Since it was a confused blend, it should be easier to tweak now. Note that I'm well aware that my version is no doubt a temporary improvement. Since what existed was such a mess, an improvement should at least be respected as such, and not reverted back to the mess. Now it is open to further improvements, which will make the article even better. The mainstream POV still needs further development. Improvements are welcomed! -- Brangifer (talk) 05:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)