TMI Journal 2011-1&2 (Winter/Spring)

[in parapsychology] fitted together,” she recalls. “So getting the opportunity to go to The Rhine was just amazing. It was 2 months of intense training in parapsychology. You lived, breathed, and slept parapsychology. You met researchers and philosophers and skeptics and physicists and you were able to talk with those people about their ideas and the students about parapsychology. So that’s how I first got to The Rhine. [It was] sort of a pathway through my own interests—hypnogogia and realizing that parapsychology was alive.” After returning to the UK to finish her Ph.D., Simmonds-Moore took a teaching position at Liverpool Hope University, where, as luck would have it, there happened to be a position open for a parapsychology teacher. During that time, she returned to The Rhine Research Center twice, for a 2003 and a 2009 sabbatical. After 10 years teaching at Liverpool Hope, Simmonds-Moore left the UK to take the position of Senior Research Fellow at The Rhine Research Center. During our conversation, we spoke about the differences in how the fields of parapsychology and consciousness Next Page 13 TMI JOURNAL Winter/Spring 2011 studies are approached and supported in our two continents; the recent uproar about Bem’s upcoming article on ESP research to be published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; The Rhine Center’s research focus; and, finally, her vision for a more integrated consciousness-parapsychology future. Hillary Webb: Something I’m curious about is how parapsychology is approached, treated, and supported—or not supported—in the United Kingdom as opposed to the United States. Based on your experiences, what do you see as the differences and similarities? Christine Simmonds-Moore: The biggest difference is that, in the U.S., places that are studying parapsychology are generally separated from universities. I think there’s one unit left—the [Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia]—that is still part of a university, but I don’t think there are many others. There’s Saybrook University. At Saybrook you can do some parapsychology, and there certainly was a parapsychology course at the University of West Georgia. On the other hand, in the UK—I think in Europe too, but in the UK in particular—there is a model that parapsychology is part of psychology, and so there are about 16 universities in the UK where you can study parapsychology or something equivalent as part of an undergraduate psychology degree.1 A lot of that is [due to] the work of Bob Morris. He was an American—he passed away in 2004—who was the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at Edinburgh. His philosophy was to try to get parapsychology into the mainstream. The way that he taught all of us was that you should always have an area of expertise in normal [psychology] and then look at paranormal and see if you can find some links, [building] a bridge between the two. [That way] you can get a job in a normal psychology department and you can be an integral member of that department, but you can also do the stuff that makes you happy. That was his philosophy. A lot of the universities in the UK where you can study parapsychology, the faculty members are graduates of the Edinburgh program or are the [academic] grandchildren of Bob Morris. So, people have tried to become experts in other areas, too. Mine is looking at personality and differences between healthy and less healthy people who score high on the positive schizotypy dimension. And also in research methods. Parapsychologists have to be really good at research methods, and so a lot of people have gone on to teach research methods in mainstream psychology departments. [That model] isn’t always an easy ride, but it’s there, and, when it works, it can work quite well. But [even in the UK] you do still have a lot of resistance, and people are not always aware of what parapsychology is or what consciousness studies is until they talk to you. That’s the same between the countries. I think if people realize what you are doing and what your approaches are, then they soften, but the bias is there in both countries. I think somewhere there is the realization that if someone can do a job, then maybe it’s ok if they do this other stuff as well. And people are realizing that there is value in studying unusual experiences, whatever your interpretation. In the last year [in the UK], there has been the introduction of anomalistic psychology into the A-level programs. The A-level is the exam you do at the age of 18, and the A-level now includes a course on anomalistic psychology. This is a great shift as well, because there are going to be a lot of students now who finish school aware of this thing that you can study. It’s taught very skeptically, very critically, [and] takes a range of experiences and tries to explain everything normally. However, I think that might shift as well. [Palgrave MacMillan Publishers have] commissioned a book on anomalistic psychology as part of a whole series of textbooks. Some of my colleagues in the UK and I are co-writing that book. So, we’re trying to infiltrate from within. We can be critical and [acknowledge that] there are all these different explanations, but [also say,] “Hey, let’s look at all the explanations that include the psi hypothesis and see what’s been done!” I think that’s quite exciting that that book is coming out as part of a series of psychology books and that younger kids are going to be studying this stuff, which means that more people are going to be wanting a university education. That is very healthy, even though there is some resistance. I’ve felt it firsthand. I had to Next Page 14 TMI JOURNAL Winter/Spring 2011 stand up and represent our research group at Liverpool, and I could hear sniggering at the back of the group when I first stood up. And then, actually, afterwards several people came up to me and they were like, “Oh, I didn’t realize it was this or this or this.” HW: It sounds like some preconceived notions, but perhaps there is slightly more openness to it over there than here. CSM: Yeah. HW: It’s been suggested that the European mindset is more aligned with a broad and classical understanding of human nature, while the U.S. tends towards a more positivistic/materialistic and behavioral perspective. As a result, academia in the U.S. is less inclined to acknowledge some of the nonlinear aspects of human experience. Perhaps that accounts for some of the slight differences. CSM: I think you’re right. That’s something I’ve noticed about psychology departments over here. They seem to be very old fashioned. You don’t generally see much evidence of qualitative research. At Liverpool, [the study of ] qualitative research methods was half the research course. Here [in the U.S.] it tends to be very old fashioned. A pattern I see in both countries—which is a depressing pattern and I hope it’s not true—[is that] it seems like the new universities that are trying to get themselves established are much more open to studying things that are a bit more unusual, but then when they get more established some of them then try to move away from parapsychology. Like Duke, for example. My university that I just left in the UK wants to remove parapsychology from the curriculum, and so from the next academic year, it will no longer be part of the psychology degree. I think that’s quite sad. HW: What is that about? Is that a sign of a philosophical shift, or an economic one, or something else entirely? Any theories on why that is? CSM: They want to compete with the bigwigs. I think somewhere it’s an economic decision, but I don’t think they’ve really thought it out because if they were aware of the whole picture—i.e., that more students are going to want to be studying this stuff at A-level and looking for universities where they would be able to study this—then they would think again. I don’t know. It seems like at some universities there’s this thing about prestige, and after awhile they don’t want to be associated with things that are not mainstream, despite their popularity. For example, at Liverpool Hope, they recently brought two new professors into the psychology department who are strongly cognitive and somewhat uncomfortable with parapsychology. HW: I imagine you’ve heard about the uproar from many in the psychology community regarding the upcoming article in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that presents what the author considers to be strong evidence for extrasensory perception. Some scientists support the report, saying it deserves to be published in the name of open inquiry, but there are many others who are furious, who consider its publication a flaw in the peer review process and believe that it should not be published at all. CSM: I think the whole discussion is quite interesting as a research topic—the extremity of the reaction. It is fascinating. [Apparently] there is going to be a published rejoinder commenting on the critique that’s come out, which has taken a Bayesian analysis of Bem’s data. The authors of the critique claim that the Bayesian approach demonstrates no evidence of psi, but that is potentially because a Bayesian probability depends on an a priori evaluation of the likelihood of finding a given outcome. And if you come from a skeptical perspective, Next Page 15 TMI JOURNAL Winter/Spring 2011 then the probability of finding evidence for psi may not be very likely. I am less familiar with the Bayesian approach than the usual “hypothesis testing” model, but it seems inherently biased, which is problematic if something as controversial as psi is being evaluated. Bem and others have published a rejoinder, or will hopefully be publishing one in the same journal. This will say that the Bayesian approach can be very useful, but you really do need to look at the whole spectrum of findings to come up with a more accurate a priori probability level. I think the skeptical reactions are quite depressing but also interesting (from the perspective of social science) to see how people are reacting to these findings. HW: At some point, their resistance says more about them and their beliefs than it does about the data. CSM: It does, definitely. “We don’t know how this works so it cannot be true” . . . HW: . . . “This doesn’t fit into my worldview; therefore, I refuse to acknowledge the data.” As a researcher it seems that any research you do, at some point you bump up against yours or somebody else’s ontology and philosophy. It’s hard to move past that. All we have is data, not proof. Just a bunch of ideas, which, frankly, I find fun and exciting. I enjoy the mystery. I’m not so much looking for proof but rather data that leads to the opening of further questions. CSM: I enjoy the mystery, too. And also how people construct their own experience and find meaning. That’s a