An Amazing Disillusion
I love me some Captain Disillusion. He does a great job debunking the bunk, and his sense of humor slays me. And in this particular video, well, he’s simply Amazing.
Captain D will be at TAM 7, I hear. Doesn’t that make you want to attend even more?
In the video, you can see my book over his shoulder. Awesome! And I’m dork enough to know he got the music at the end right, too.
I KNEW there was a special communication device. I KNEW IT!!
As always, an entertaining video from CD. Bit it proves nothing. It is an entertaining and interesting exercise in critical thinking, but it is not a meaningful debunk.
I posted a critique of the video over at Skepchick, and I’ll do the same here because I feel it is important that skeptics and critical thinkers actually practice what they preach. To quote a poster from Skepchick: “It is not skepticism if you are only skeptical of your opponents.”
I’ll say upfront that I am a fan of both Randi and CD. I suspect that Randi and CD are almost certainly correct about a tricked-out closet. Nonetheless, Randi and CD offer no more solid proof of such than do the ghosters for their claim. Randi and CD do not show us the real tricked out closet. They do not show us the house layout. They do not provide us with documentation or interviews with parties involved.
To paraphrase another poster from Skepchick: To effectively debunk an instance of woo should require more than just stating an alternative hypothesis. It should require some evidence that goes beyond just stating claims of anti-woo.
CD took umbrage (misguided and off-topic) to my critique of his video, so I will repeat here what I said there (recontextualized):
I am in fact quite a supporter and proselytizer of CD’s YouTube videos. I send lots of folks to them. However, that doesn’t change my position that debunking should include some pretty weighty evidence, and this video doe not do so. That is not a criticism of CD. It is a criticism of process.
When fighting woowoo that is based on little more than the ephemera of say-so, supposition, and wishful thinking, the woowoo fighters must include more than just the ephemera of say-so, supposition, and wishful thinking, however well founded. I would honestly think that that is a given. Please excuse my, I don’t know, naivety perhaps, but I am confused that there is any disagreement with such a stance.
Fun? Yes. Informative? Somewhat. Successful debunk? No.
“To effectively debunk an instance of woo should require more than just stating an alternative hypothesis…”
Why?
Not all hypotheses are equal. If someone gives you a hypothesis which is very implausible and you can provide an alternative that is much more plausible and you both have an equally insufficient access to the evidence, any reasonable person would have to conclude that the plausible hypothesis is more likely to be true.
I have to agree with Drew here. Although providing a more reasonable hypothesis doesn’t replace evidence, the tools of skeptics is often a wider web and structure of evidence and critical thinking that allow us to filter out explanation on the basis of probability and over time they are verified.
It would be interesting to see what would come of investigating the house. Doubly curious would be if there is no evidence of any such tampering with the closet.
Hm…I guess time will tell.
“Why?”
Why not?
No, seriously though, the reason I make that statement is because in the war of reality versus woo, skeptics, debunkers, and dewooers have already got such a hard job challenging and countering the endless bath of woo that washes over the world, I think the extra several steps of reality cleanse are extremely important.
Woo entertains and appeals to so many people to such a deep degree, that I feel if skeptics, deubunkers, et al do not go those extra several steps they end up preaching only to the already converted. And what is the point of that?
Yes, I know, many wooists are not going to be convinced by any reality. But fences sitters cover a wide range of being accessible to reality, and they should get the most and the best of reality as often as is possible.
“… any reasonable person would have to conclude that the plausible hypothesis is more likely to be true.”
And just how many wooists are reasonable people?
Exactly. I have to agree with SicPreFix, this isn’t a debate of reasonable people. Basically the CD explanation involves the entire family in a hoax, so certainly they are among those for whom simple reason and probability will have no sway..
I agree that we should always be looking for a full set of evidence. However, you are a bit crazy to think that this “debunk” was insufficient.
They provide a video with an explanation. They are trying to get views, and make people get scared. Simply stating an alternate hypothesis demonstrates to the viewers that, in fact, “ghost” isn’t the only explanation. People are smart, and will weigh the odds on their own. In the absence of another explanation, they will blindly accept the “woo” hypothesis. If we provide a more reasonable one, then they may think of even a better one on their own.
And besides, what kind of video maker who is trying to scare the audience, would let a group of skeptics come in and tear through his house? The video is clearly an attempt to entertain, and the debunking of it just adds some extra entertainment.
Well, by your criteria Randi has never debunked Uri Geller’s 5 party tricks. Where are the videos of Geller flexing his spoons? We do have a video of Geller putting on a thumb tip in plain view (how amateur) and Randi distracting people with a thumb tip when in fact his magnet was taped to his hand – so is Randi’s explanation wrong because there is no proof that Geller used an inoccuous thumb tip and really had a magnet taped to the bottom of his hand? The whole point is that these are simple tricks and as Randi said, there are many ways to obtain the desired effect – he points out one simple and obvious method, but that doesn’t have to be the one actually used. Unless you raid the house and expose the setup or get the video producers to tell you how they did it, you may never know the precise details of how a particular trick was done.
Harry Houdini had a marvelous invention – the “medium’s box”. Claimed to be rigged so that a specific medium could be tested in the box and her powers foiled, the box is also claimed to be designed so that Houdini himself can be locked in the box and yet create the effects which the medium claimed to be capable of. The box was designed to prevent the medium from employing any of the tricks which Houdini was aware of (and which were relevant to the claims). If the box were designed to prevent only one specific trick, Houdini would have looked really bad if he had guessed the wrong trick and the medium were able to do her thing. Unless people stand up to be tested or volunteer to have appropriately skilled people scrutinize their claims, there is often no telling what trick was used to produce an effect. Even when it comes to testing it is not necessary to know exactly what trick will be employed (as long as that particular trick had been accounted for) – it is sufficient to demonstrate that the claimed effect cannot be produced. But in this case neither CD nor Randi are testing a claim, they are merely showing one simple option for how the trick can be done, and in doing so they have already debunked the claim by providing a natural explanation for the observation.
I agree with SciPreFix here. What is plausible will depend on prejudice. “My prejudice is better than yours” is not a sound argument.
I thought the same thing when I watched this video. They didn’t debunk anything, all they did was show a way it could have been faked.
Do I think it’s really a ghost? No, but I think we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard when debunking woo.
*sniff* Work + no money = no TAM.
Where can I get one of those skeptic communicator devices? :P
I called the JREF to order one of those communicators, but they were a bit rude to me.
Many of these recurring arguments about whether a given claim has been truly debunked would go away if the arguers would first agree on their definition of ‘debunk’. Some feel it means ‘disprove’ while others feel it means ‘provide a more plausible alternate explanation that explains all observations’.
The Darwin joke made me laugh out loud!
Me too, a real coffee-spitter, lol.