Controversy and the problems of parapsychology

As proponents of a science that is considered to be failed or erroneous by mainstream science, we as parapsychologists can understand the need for constructivists to propose a corrective to the sociology-of-error approach positivists adopted. Paradoxically, however, like the hard science combatants in the Science Wars who are particularly unnerved by the principle of symmetry, we parapsychologists as scientists can resonate with the notion that the strength, validity, and reliability--the "trueness" of the scientific knowledge underlying a controversy--is extremely important to any real understanding of what is going on. After all, whether or not there is demonstrable, replicable ESP or PK in our data, whether or not spontaneous case experiencers actually experienced something paranormal or are merely misattributing paranormality to some normal event, is of prime importance to us. As scientists, we are working toward a level of descriptive and predictive understanding of the natural world that is as close to "true" as it can possibly be. So, as working scientists, we understand and applaud the efforts positivist detractors of science studies have made to get science analysts to realize that the content of science is at least as important as the context of science, if not more so.

Still, we, as parapsychologists, are not above "capturing" the rhetorical advantage the principle of symmetry can convey on us. For example, it was music to our ears when, talking about scientific parapsychology, Collins and Pinch (1979) declared that in the subtitle of their article "nothing unscientific is happening here." We perceived that statement and others like it to be a validation of our enterprise evidence that even if the mainstream scientific community has marginalized us, we do not deserve to be. Collins has found that we are not the only community who is willing to co-opt science studies in this way (Collins & Pinch, 1993/1998a). But I digress.

The Social Structural Approach

The fourth approach to controversy Martin and Richards (1995) described is the social structural approach (p. 514), which looks at scientific controversy from the point of view of such macrosocial structures as class, the state, and patriarchy. Marxist and feminist sociologists of science have generally used these approaches with widely varying degrees of success. Among the most important of these types of analyses, to my mind, are those that have been done on gender and science (Haraway, 1991; Harding, 1986; Keller, 1985), a topic that has found some resonance in our community as well (Coly & White, 1994; Hess, 1988; Zingrone, 1988, 1994).

A Multimethod Approach

The bottom line here, Martin and Richards (1995) maintain, is that a method which integrates one or more of these four approaches is needed to properly understand scientific controversy. Such a method has, they feel, a significantly better chance of providing really useful answers to such questions as "Why do specific scientific controversies erupt?" "Why do some controversies persist?" "What counts as closure in a scientific controversy?" and "Flow does closure occur?"