Pathologizing Scientists May Try to Stigmatize Witnesses of the Spooky

The Society for Scientific Exploration or SSE is an organization doing research on the anomalous and the paranormal. The SSE publishes a monthly bulletin called the Explorer, and a quarterly journal with back editions you can read here, without being blocked by a paywall. 

The current leader of the SSE is James Houran. Houran makes frequent use of the extremely elastic "shame and slur them" jargon term "transliminality," a not-really-scientific term designed to stigmatize various witnesses or believers in reasonable things as being guilty of "fantasy proneness" or "magical ideation."  The word "transliminality" has appeared in the titles of ten papers Houran has authored or co-authored. In one paper Houran uses that term "transliminality" 15 times, and the term "transliminal" 5 times.  The definition he gives of the term "transliminality" in one paper is the nonsensical-sounding definition of "a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness." 

In the latest edition of the SSE's Explorer, we have a defense of the term "Haunted People Syndrome," which seems to be a term used by a very tiny group of psychologists to try to pathologize or stigmatize some witnesses of the paranormal, to make them sound psychologically disturbed.  The word "pathologize" is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "to unfairly or wrongly consider something or someone as a problem, especially a medical problem."

The term "Haunted People Syndrome" was coined in 2019 by a group of researchers including Ciarán O’Keeffe and James Houran. In the latest edition of the Explorer, we read a defense of that term "Haunted People Syndrome," denying that it is a term that pathologizes witnesses of the paranormal. Referring to the term "Haunted People Syndrome", someone incorrectly claims "the HP-S model is not diagnostic or pathologizing." That is not correct, because this HP-S model is pathologizing. 

The writer of the Explorer article is not identified, but we may suspect it is either Houran (currently in charge of the Society for Scientific Exploration) or Ciarán O’Keeffe, who is thanked at the end of the article. Misspeaking badly, the Explorer writer claims this:

"Unfortunately, the technical term 'syndrome' is often misread by non‑specialists as implying a psychiatric disorder or condition. Instead, as is common in behavioral sciences, it refers to a cluster of signs, symptoms, or features with no established cause. It is a descriptive label—not a diagnostic one—and carries no implication of pathology."

That is not correct. There is often an established cause for a syndrome (for example, carpal tunnel syndrome is known to be usually caused by repetitive hand or wrist movements such as typing).  The term "syndrome" definitely does carry an insinuation of pathology.

The quote below from the original 2019 paper introducing the term "Haunted People Syndrome" should make you suspect that the authors such as Houran and O’Keeffe were introducing the term in an attempt to pathologize or stigmatize some witnesses of the paranormal or people reporting spooky events: 

"The term 'syndrome' refers to a set of signs and symptoms that occur together to characterise an abnormality or condition (British Medical Association, 2018), therefore the concept of HP-S [Haunted People Syndrome] most obviously encompasses percipients within the general population who invoke labels of ghosts or other supernatural agencies to explain a specific set of anomalous events that often are perceived recurrently." 

In that paper the authors suggest that this "Haunted People Syndrome" tag of shame should be applied to people such as witnesses who report "apparent object movements, malfunctioning of electrical or mechanical equipment, and inexplicable percussive sounds like raps or knockings." I made a very exhaustive study of the very many people in the nineteenth century who reported the extremely widely-reported phenomenon of mysterious raps, focusing on the original, earliest published reports of such cases. I found no sign at all that any of the reports could be explained by any theory of psychological disturbance in some individual. To the contrary, the most notable feature of such reports is how very often they occurred as reports in which multiple witnesses (very often more than three) were simultaneously reporting hearing the strange sounds occurring very loudly. My posts documenting such occurrences can be read using the link here leading to a free online book collecting the posts. 

A look at the papers co-authored by Houran on the topic of this "haunted people syndrome" leaves me with a very clear impression that the authors wish to stigmatize, pathologize and delegitimize certain types of witnesses of the spooky.  For example in the paper here Houran states that his "Haunted People Syndrome" or HP-S "equates the psychological drivers of these anomalous events to some of the fundamental mechanisms that stoke outbreaks of mass (contagious) psychogenic illness or autohypnotic phenomena." And in the paper here Houran and his co-authors state, "This view essentially equates ghostly episodes to the same fundamental mechanisms that stoke instances of mass (contagious) psychogenic illness."  And the beginning of Houran's paper here states, "Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S) denotes individuals who recurrently report various 'supernatural' encounters in everyday settings ostensibly due to heightened somatic-sensory sensitivities to dis-ease states (e.g., marked but sub-clinical levels of distress), which are contextualized by paranormal beliefs and reinforced by perceptual contagion effects." 

Whoever claimed in the recent SSE Explorer article that "Haunted People Syndrome" is not an example of pathologizing people has misstated the truth badly.  Claims of "Haunted People Syndrome" are pretty obviously examples of "shame the witnesses" stigmatizing that can be called gaslighting or pathologizing, and seem like examples of weaponized psychology in which the chief goal seems to be to destroy the credibility of certain types of witnesses and claimants (I here use the word "gaslighting" in the broader sense of the word, to mean someone trying to undermine the report of some witness by suggesting pathology in the witness). 

On page 180 of the document here, in a paper entitled "Quantifying the Phenomenology of Ghostly Episodes: Part II – A Rasch Model of Spontaneous Accounts," we read of a "Survey of Strange Events" created by Houran and O’Keeffe. It is a type of survey that rather seems to be designed to get as many "Yes" answers as possible, with all "yes" answers being used to discredit or suggest pathology in the people taking the survey.  Some of the items are very questionable, given the purpose of the survey. Among them are these:

#1: "I saw with my naked eye a non-descript visual image, like fog, shadow or unusual light." 

#4: "I smelled a mysterious odor that was pleasant."

#5: "I smelled a mysterious odor that was unpleasant."

#6: "I had a positive feeling for no obvious reason, like happiness, love, joy, or peace."

#7: "I had a negative feeling for no obvious reason, like anger, sadness, panic, or danger."

#8. "I felt odd sensations in my body, such as dizziness, tingling, electrical shock, or nausea (sick in my stomach)."

#9: "I had a mysterious taste in my mouth." 

#16: "I heard mysterious sounds that could be recognized or identified, such as ghostly voices or music (with or without singing)." 

#17: "I heard mysterious 'mechanical' or non-descript noises, such as tapping, knocking, rattling, banging, crashing, footsteps or the sound of opening/closing doors or drawers."

22. "I saw objects moving on their own across a surface or falling." 

25. "Pictures from my camera or mobile device captured unusual images, shapes, distortions or effects." 

26. "Plumbing equipment or systems (faucets, disposal, toilet) functioned improperly or not at all." 

27. "I saw objects breaking (or discovered them broken), like shattered or cracked glass, mirrors or housewares."

28. "I heard mysterious 'mechanical' or non-descript noises, such as tapping, knocking, rattling, banging, crashing, footsteps or the sound of opening/closing doors or drawer."

Very strangely, this survey is introduced with the claim of "we calibrated a 32-item, Rasch-based 'Survey of Strange Events (SSE)' to quantify the phenomenology of ghostly episodes." But none of the 14 items above refer exclusively to anything involving ghosts or spirits, and only one of the items listed above refers to ghosts or spirits. 13 out of 14 items are items that might be reported by someone experiencing natural events having nothing to do with ghosts or spirits.  For example, anyone seeing a shadow would answer "yes" to question 1; any anyone seeing anything falling might answer "yes" to question 22; anyone who ever had a clogged toilet would answer "yes" to question 26; and anyone who ever twice dropped a glass and saw it shatter would answer "yes" to question 27. 

So I am left puzzled by this survey, which seems badly designed. Why would anyone add such items in a survey alleged to be quantifying "the phenomenology of ghostly episodes"? Maybe to get survey scores as high as possible, or to get a nonzero score from as many people as possible, even those who had not reported seeing or hearing or feeling a ghost or spirit.

The survey also has other items which are badly worded, taking the form of "leading questions" seemingly designed to elicit a dogmatic answer from the person taking the survey.  So, for example, an item 16 that should have been some non-dogmatic statement as "I experienced something that could have been communication with the dead" or "I experienced something that could have been a sign from the dead" appears as the dogmatic statement "I communicated with the dead or other outside force." 

Because of all of these defects in this Survey of Strange Events, I cannot take seriously any paper using it in an attempt to validate the existence of such a thing as "Haunted People Syndrome." So when Houran and O' Keeffe use such a survey in the paper here, one entitled "The Dr. John Hall story: a case study in putative 'Haunted People Syndrome' ", we should have no confidence in their methodology. And we should be left with a low confidence in the paper when we consider that this "Survey of Strange Events" contains mostly first-person statements beginning with the word "I," with 27 out of 32 survey items beginning with "I"; but the authors of the paper did not get any completion of the survey from the person who is the subject of their paper (Hall). So in Table 2 of the paper authors or their helper rather seem to be "putting words in the mouth" of the target subject (Hall), by counting him as answering "Yes" to questions on a survey he did not actually take.  (We read, "An experimentally-blind rater reviewed Hall’s (2009) self-reported group-stalking experiences and coded their alignment with the SSE [Survey of Strange Events] categories.") The authors claiming the case of Hall as validation for their attempted explanation of "ghostly episodes" is  laughable, as Hall's claims apparently do not even involve supernatural-seeming events, judging from a book of his that makes no substantive mention of ghosts, spirits or the supernatural, but instead makes claims of shadowy clandestine intrusions and interference by governments or their agents. 

A similar "putting words into someone's mouth" seems to be going on in the paper "Haunted People Syndrome Redux: Concurrent Validity From an Independent Case Study," in which Houran and O' Keeffe apply their "Survey of Strange Events" survey (containing mainly first-person assertions) to a case (investigated by Auerbach) involving people who never actually completed their survey.  Table 3 of that paper has 27 first-person sentences beginning with "I" (such as "I saw objects flying or floating in midair"). But that table was not filled in by any actual witness or person reporting something spooky, but was instead filled in by someone else, basically "putting words into the mouth" of someone else after studying what someone else reported. 

This seems to be methodology that has gone badly astray. Researchers eager to try to validate the "Haunted People Syndrome"  concept have committed methodology bungling. No one should ever be filling in for someone else some survey consisting mainly of first person assertions beginning with "I," just as your friend should not be doing your income tax form without your consent, in an attempt to validate some theory he has about you. 

Referring to Houran and O'Keeffe's paper mentioned above ("Haunted People Syndrome Redux: Concurrent Validity From an Independent Case Study"), another paper mentions voluminous objections to that paper, by stating this:

"We take issue with a number of O’Keeffe et al.’s claims on logical, empirical, conceptual, and clinical grounds, and since our counterarguments are too extensive to meet the 10,000 word limit allotted to us by the JSE, we instead present them in the collection of papers contained herein, prefaced by introductory remarks from L.A."

The authors of that  paper (or collection of papers) seem to have some complaints similar to those I discuss above; and we hear mention of a complaint of "what appears to be a possible misinterpretation or seeming misrepresentation of Auerbach et al.’s data." 

The concept of "Haunted People Syndrome" is a relatively recent invention contrived by a tiny band of researchers such as Houran and O'Keeffe, a group small enough to fit in a small room.  The term "Haunted People Syndrome" does not appear in the standard manual of psychiatric diagnostics, the DSM-5. Even if you were to get the original witnesses to fill out some survey such as the Survey of Strange Events, that would do nothing to show the validity of the "Haunted People Syndrome" concept.  That survey does not even mention fear or distress, so it seems senseless for Houran to keep  trying to suggest that some score on that survey validates a "Haunted People Syndrome" concept based on claims of distress or fear causing reports of the anomalous. A high score on this Survey of Strange Events merely suggests that something very spooky was reported, and does nothing to show a cause of such reports. 

Houran and O'Keeffe seem like people who may be clinging to old stereotypes about reports of apparitions. I pointed out in a 2014 post that such stereotypes were discredited by a study published in that year, a study of 39 people who claimed to see an apparition. The study concluded that “nearly all of our participants identified either a positive or nonthreatening encounter with a ghost.” The study discredits the "Haunted People Syndrome" idea of Houran that apparition sightings are best explained as being caused by "marked but sub-clinical levels of distress." These days apparitions sightings most commonly occur as deathbed visions, and such things tend to be not scary at all, but comforting. To read about deathbed visions, read my series of posts here. 

You could easily write a very long book solely on the topic of psychologists and other scientists who have unfairly pathologized and stigmatized healthy people by trying to gin up some narrative of mental problems. One chapter of that book would discuss how homosexuality was long classified as a mental illness, with pseudoscientific Freudian claims used to try to justify such a classification. Another chapter of that book would discuss all the psychologists who gave a diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia" to many healthy dissidents merely because they expressed dissatisfaction with the so-called "worker's paradise" of the Soviet Union. 

The very high prevalence of reports of the paranormal tends to suggest the invalidity of attempts to explain them by evoking rare psychological syndromes. According to the paper "Psychic Experiences in the Multinational Human Values Study: Who Reports Them?" here: "Three items on personal psychic experiences (telepathy, clairvoyance, contact with the dead) were included in a survey of human values that was conducted on large representative samples in 13 countries in Europe and in the U.S. (N = 18,607). In Europe, the percentage of persons reporting telepathy was 34%; clairvoyance was reported by 21%; and 25% reported contact with the dead. Percentages for the U.S. were considerably higher: 54%, 25% and 30% respectively." 

Similar results are reported below:

• A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Americans said they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost, and that 29% said that they've felt in touch with someone who died.  
• A 1976 survey of 1467 people in the US asked people if they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died?" 27% answered "Yes."

On the page here, we read this:

" A new YouGov poll asked Americans about their paranormal experiences. Most Americans say they’ve had at least one paranormal experience, and many believe that they personally have a paranormal ability."

The poll was a survey of 1136 American adults. Among the more interesting findings were these:

• 18% of the Americans polled reported "seeing unexplained orbs of light."
• 16% of the Americans polled reported "seeing a spirit or ghost." Of these, the majority said they had seen such a thing more than once.
• 23% of the Americans polled reported "seeing lights or other devices turn on or off without explanation."
• 17% of the Americans polled reported "seeing an object move without explanation."
• 16% of the Americans polled reported "seeing a door open or close without explanation."

There is a strong reason for suspecting that the survey results given above are underestimations, because of self-censorship by survey respondents. We must remember that authorities in our culture have a long history of shaming, gaslighting, misrepresenting and attempting to pathologize people who report experiences of the paranormal. For many decades and centuries such authorities (including professors, skeptics and clergy) have attempted to portray people reporting paranormal experiences as neurotic, psychotic, liars, fakes, fools or people dabbling with the diabolical. Consequently we should assume that there is a significant degree of self-censorship in which many  people who had paranormal experiences do not report them, for fear of "getting in trouble" or being embarrassed, shamed, ridiculed or gaslighted. To help limit such self-censorship, all surveys of paranormal experience should be secret-ballot type surveys, but probably most of the surveys above were not surveys that guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity to respondents. Because of the self-censorship factor, the number of people experiencing the phenomena asked about in the surveys above could easily be 25% or 50% larger than the numbers reported in the surveys. 

When Science News Stories Mislead, the Paper Author May Be the Culprit

 Sometimes you may read some moonshine in the science news, some bunk article promoting the latest science paper, and then ask yourself: who is to blame for this baloney, this BS? Is it one or more of the paper authors, or is it the author of a university press release, or is it some science journalist working from the press release and the paper?  So you have a kind of "figure out the culprit" challenge that is a bit like playing the board game Clue. 

Who was the confusion culprit?                      

Tuesday April 22, 2026 was a banner day for hype and groundless boasts in the science world. There was a press conference announcing some findings regarding Mars. It was announced that some organic molecules had been found in Mars, but only simple molecules that existed in a very low concentration of a few parts per billion.  Most of the science news headlines used the phrase "building blocks of life," although such a headline was entirely unjustified, as no such thing had been found. All that was found (in very low amounts) was what are called "organic molecules." That term is used for any molecule containing carbon. Most types of organic molecules found in space have no relevance to life. 

The misleading press accounts were heralding the scientific paper here. None of the chemicals reportedly found on Mars (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene) is actually a building block of life in any sense. So our clickbait-hungry science press was deceiving us very badly on this topic. 

Using the term "nmole" to mean nanomoles, the paper states, "Molecular abundances in the SAM TMAH experiment range from 0.1 ± 0.0 to 1.7 ± 0.3 nmol, consistent with the range of abundances of individual molecules identified by SAM from other Gale crater outcrops." This means the chemicals were found at a very low level of very roughly 1 part per 100,000,000. This amount is correctly described as a negligible trace amount. 

The building components of life are proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are extremely complex molecules -- so complex that it is always misleading to call them "building blocks" (as blocks are things of very low complexity). Given just the right arrangement of a large number of proteins and nucleic acids, you might have a cell capable of self-reproduction.  But an organic molecule is simply any molecule containing carbon, one that may either be very simple or one that may be complex. The very term “organic molecule” is a poor one, because many of the so-called organic molecules have nothing to do with life. 

It is true that proteins and nucleic acids are organic molecules, but that doesn't mean you have found anything like a building block of life merely because you have found an organic molecule. The building blocks of an opera company are string musicians such as violinists, and singers such as tenors, sopranos and baritones that can sing Italian. All of these are organisms. But it would make no sense to say, “I have some building blocks of an opera company because I have two mice in my cage, and they are organisms.” It makes equally little sense to say that you have some building blocks of life merely because you have simple organic molecules.

But if the organic molecules found on Mars are not the building blocks of life, are they at least the building blocks of the building blocks of life? No, they are no such thing. The building blocks of proteins are amino acids. The building blocks of nucleic acids are chemicals called purines and pyrimidines. None of these has been found on Mars. So not only have we not found the building blocks of life on Mars, we haven't even found on Mars the building blocks of the building blocks of life.

Related to coal tars, the reportedly found chemicals (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene) are neither building blocks of life nor the building blocks of the building blocks of life.  So the science news sites were misleading us badly by describing the finding as a finding of "building blocks of life."

The Guardian story here gives us an example of the carnival barker BS and baloney that was occurring. The story has the  hogwash headline "‘Is it life? We can’t tell’: Nasa’s Curiosity rover finds organic molecules on Mars." The paper's lead author (Professor Amy Williams) says, " “Is it life? We can’t tell, based on this information.” That statement is  baloney.  Living things are not made from any of the chemicals found, so you sure can tell that no life is being detected. 

Later on Williams gives us this mostly false statement:

" 'There are several steps between what we found and DNA,' Williams said. 'It is definitely a building block to how DNA is made now. But it is truly just the bricks, not the house. You can generate these molecules geologically.' "

The statement is mostly untrue. DNA is not made from any of the chemicals that the scientific paper claimed to find. DNA is made from entirely different chemicals, called nucleobases, phosphate groups and sugars. So there's no truth to Williams'  claim "it is definitely a building block to how DNA is made now." Nowhere in nature is DNA being made from  the chemicals the paper reports finding (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene). The paper does not even use the term "DNA," and refers to nucleic acids only in a tentative passing comment about a "possibility" involving nucleic acids. 

The Guardian's story is bunk, but here we must absolve the story author, who got a bum steer from a science paper author making misleading claims about her research. 

Later in the Guardian article Williams gives us this unbelievable "magic meteorites" tall tale: "The same stuff that rained down on Mars from meteorites is what rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet." Why would anyone claim that chemical constituents of the earliest life came from meteorites, when you can more simply imagine them coming  from Earth's surface, without evoking falling meteorites?  Similarly, it would be pretty silly to speculate that your dinner date did not show up  because a  meteorite ruined his car, when you can just as easily claim that he got a flat tire by driving over something sharp. 

One of the news articles tried to make it sound like the discovery of these biologically irrelevant chemicals was a discovery of life on Mars, an inhospitable wasteland where neither life nor its building components have been found. The clickbait-hungry hucksters of the dysfunctional "Science News" infosystem tend to follow a rule of "give us an inch, and we'll take a mile." So when scientists issuing papers misstate and misspeak, they are planting seeds that very quickly grow into the poison fruit that is Fake News. 

Postscript: The issue of earthly contamination throws great doubts on the credibility of all reports of finding something on Mars in the tiniest trace amounts, as anything detected in some tiniest trace amount might have been on the scientific equipment when it left Earth. The same contamination issue undermines the credibility of all claims to have detected amino acids in samples retrieved from asteroids. In that case the contamination possibilities are doubled, because the tiniest "1 part in 100,000,000" microscopic traces of some chemical could have  come from the spacecraft involved in the retrieval or from an earthly laboratory analyzing the retrieved sample. A recent article by an astronomer tells us that scientists got excited about claims that glycine (the simplest amino acid) was detected in space through spectroscopic analysis. But she says "astrochemists now generally agree that glycine had not been found in star-forming nebulae." If we cannot even find by spectroscopic analysis the simplest amino acid in outer space, it seems we should have little confidence in the claim by Williams that " meteorites ...probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet." 

When People Dream of Someone's Death at the Same Time the Person Dies Far Away

 Below is a newspaper account of a sister who had a dream of a young brother's death far away, on the same night or day that the death occurred:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1907-10-11/ed-1/seq-1/

On the same 1907 page there is a story that is now ironic, for it boasts about how the Luisitania has set a speed record. The same ship was sunk during World War I. 

Below is an account of someone having a dream of someone's death at the same time that person was dying far away. It is from page 579 of the September 5, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here. The "he went over the top" reference refers to leaving a trench to make an attack during World War I, something that often resulted in the death of the attacker.

Here is a similar account, from page 331 of the May 23, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here:

"Amalia Burzio, a peasant woman of Passignana (Valenza) dreamed of the death of her mother who lived near Novara. On awaking she told her husband of the dream, and he tried in vain to calm her distress. The following afternoon she received a telegram informing her that her mother had died suddenly in the night, exactly at the hour of her dream."

The accounts below are mentioned on page 771 of the December 1, 1933 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

Below is another account of someone dreaming of someone's death on the night of that person's death:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85026214/1879-07-20/ed-1/seq-1/#

Given the reported chronology here, the dream of a son drowning at a distant location seems to have occurred about when the drowning occurred.  We read that the body was returned a few hours after the death, and also that this was a few hours after the father had a dream of the son's death. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060127/1924-07-26/ed-1/seq-3/

On page 311 of the September 23, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here, we read the following:

"Another lady, Marguerite Ober, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, writes : At the beginning of this awful war I had a friend who volunteered his services to the French. One night, in the midst of a dead sleep, a vision of him came to me suddenly, as distinct as if the scene were photographed and flung on the wall . I saw him wounded, lying in a trench, his life flowing away. The vision lasted for perhaps a minute and then faced out. I rose, turned on the light, and immediately wrote to a friend in France. ' I know that Bruno Seyler is dead ,'  I wrote ; tell me the details .'  My letter passed, in mid-ocean, a letter from a friend telling me of Bruno's death, and every detail was precisely as I had dreamed it."

Below is an account found on page 203 of the June 24, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

Below is an account found on page 166 of the May 20, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

The newspaper report below from 1887 (which you can read here) describes a son who had a dream that seemed to depict his father dying at sea in a ship. The father was captain of a ship named the Muskoka. We read at the end of the account, "The Muskoka is missing and given up as lost." 

The account below is from the year 1900, and can be read here. We read of a brother who had a dream of his sister's death far away, about the same time it happened. 

Below is a newspaper account from 1913 you can read here:

Below is a 1909 newspaper account you can read here. Although it does not have the simultaneity mentioned in my title, it is close enough to deserve inclusion in this post. 

"An instance of what seems to be a remarkable proof of unusual psychic phenomena has occurred in this city in connection with the death of Chester N. Jessie, a 19 year old lad who was accidentally killed in a landslide at Eugene, Ore,, last Thursday. Mrs. Carlton N. Davis of 1050 Stanyan street, wife of a local businessman, and a sister of the decedent, had a mental vision of her brother's death the day following the accident, and before news of the tragic occurrence reached her."

When Scientists Speak Inaccurately in Their Zeal to Show Some Theory Is "Beyond Doubt"

There are in academia quite a few highly intelligent thinkers who have widespread doubt about the reliability of most scientific theories. Such thinkers are often philosophers of science. Philosophers of science have often said that most scientific theories are underdetermined. A theory is said to be underdetermined if there is not sufficient evidence to establish its truth. A scientific theory is said to be underdetermined when there are no observations allowing us to tell that such a theory is true rather than other rival theories that can explain observations equally well. Such theories are called “empirical equivalents.” You can find out more about this topic by doing a Google search for “underdetermination of scientific theory.” The article here gives a detailed discussion of the topic.

In many cases, we can readily think of alternate theories to explain the things that a scientific theory was created to explain. For example, we can easily imagine a rival to the theory that man appeared by evolving from lower species : a theory that humanity was specifically introduced to our planet with help from visiting extraterrestrials. In other cases, we may not be able to readily think of a rival theory to a scientific theory. But in such a case there are typically five or ten possible theories that could be imagined by someone willing to expend enough time thinking up alternatives. When we can't think of some rival theory that might be an empirical equivalent to some popular scientific theory, this usually just reflects the weakness of our imagination, not a lack of possible alternatives.

The current theory of the origin of the universe is the Big Bang theory, which postulates that the universe began expanding from an infinitely dense point at a time nearly 14 billion years ago. There are two strong reasons for thinking that the theory is true. The first is that what are called the redshifts of galaxies suggest that the universe is expanding. An expanding universe seems to imply that the universe was once long ago in some state of extremely high density. Another reason for believing in the Big Bang is that it seems to explain something called the cosmic microwave radiation. 

However, like so many other major scientific theories, the Big Bang theory is underdetermined.  We lack any observations that prove the Big Bang theory beyond any doubt. There are also two major reasons why the Big Bang theory fails to be a predictively successful theory. The first reason is rather small: the Big Bang theory does not correctly predict the level of  ⁷Li (one of the isotopes of the element lithium) that now exists in the universe. This is known as the primordial lithium problem. According to the 2024 paper here, "there is still a disparity of ⁷Li abundance overestimated by a factor of ~2.5 when calculated theoretically." Successful scientific theories are supposed to make predictions that "hit the bulls-eye." Being wrong by a factor of 250% is not hitting the bulls-eye, but is instead missing the target entirely. 

A much larger problem is that the Big Bang theory does not actually predict a universe like the universe we live in. It instead predicts a universe that is either 50% matter and 50% antimatter, or a universe that is pure energy. The problem is illustrated in the infographic below. 

Experimenting with very high-speed particle collisions occurring in particle accelerators, scientists observe that when two very high-energy photons collide, they produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter; and they also observe that when matter collides with antimatter, it is converted into high-energy photons. Such collisions are observed in particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider, where particles are accelerated to near the speed of light before they collide with each other. But such observations about matter, antimatter and photons leads to a great mystery as to why there is any matter at all in the universe.

Let us imagine the early minutes of the Big Bang about 13 billion years ago, when the density of the universe was incredibly great. At that time the universe should have consisted of energy, matter and antimatter. The energy should have been in the form of very high energy photons that were frequently colliding with each other. All such collisions should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. So the amount of antimatter should have been exactly the same as the amount of matter. As a CERN page on this topic says, "The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe." But whenever a matter particle touched an antimatter particle, both would have been converted into photons. The eventual result should have been a universe consisting either of nothing but photons, or some matter but an equal amount of antimatter. But only trace amounts of antimatter are observed in the universe.

It would be incredibly inconvenient if matter and antimatter were equally distributed. So much energy is released when matter makes contact with antimatter that if there were trace amounts of antimatter lying about, you'd have “oops, someone blew up Europe because he stepped on a tiny piece of antimatter” situations all over the place. We know that there is very little antimatter in the universe because of the great rarity of high-energy events observed through telescopes. If there was lots of antimatter in outer space, we would be observing very frequently extremely high-energy events in space; because whenever matter came into contact with antimatter, enormous amounts of energy would be released. 

A scientific paper puts it this way: 

"In theory, a matter [amount] will be immediately annihilated if it meets with its antimatter, leaving nothing unless energy behind, and the amounts of matter with that of antimatter should be created equally in the Big Bang. So, none of us should exist in principle but we are indeed existing."

So the Big Bang theory does not actually predict a universe like ours. It instead predicts a universe that is either half-matter and half antimatter, or a universe with only energy (because all of the matter and antimatter made contact with each other in the early Big Bang, leaving nothing but photons). This shortfall of the Big Bang theory is called the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem or the baryon asymmetry problem. The problem is still unsolved. Do not be fooled by occasional speculative papers that appear claiming to provide a "solution" to such a problem. All such papers will involve extremely wild speculation that no one has verified. 

Another very severe limitation of the Big Bang theory is that it can never be proven true, given what the theory itself describes. The theory says that during the first 300,000 years of the universe's history, the density of matter was so great that all radiation coming from the universe's beginning must have been hopelessly scattered, because of innumerable collisions of particles in a very dense universe. So even though telescopes can in effect "look back in time" by looking at galaxies billions of light years away, there is no hope that telescopic observations will ever allow us to "look back in time" far enough to observe the very beginning of the universe, given the assumptions of the Big Bang theory. 

If our scientists were to honestly describe the Big Bang theory, they would describe it very humbly, saying something like this: 

"The Big Bang theory is our best guess about the universe's beginning, and there are some reasons for believing in it. But the Big Bang theory cannot be the full story. The theory does not actually predict a universe like ours. And we can never prove that the Big Bang actually happened, given the theory's assumptions. The early density was too great to ever observe what happened in the first 300,000 years. "

Instead of honestly speaking in such a way, some scientists have recently been speaking in a very misleading away about the Big Bang theory. For example, on the site The Conversation we have a long article by cosmologist Konstantinos Dimopoulos. It is reprinted on the Science Alert site with the title "The Big Bang is Beyond Doubt. An Expert Reveals Why." But that wasn't the original title of the article, so we can't use that title as evidence of a scientist claiming certainty where there is no certainty. 

However, reading the article we soon find evidence of just such a thing: a scientist claiming certainty where there is no certainty.  For in the article Konstantinos Dimopoulos says this: 

"The 14 billion year story of our universe begins with a cataclysmic explosion everywhere in space, which we call the Big Bang. That much is beyond reasonable doubt." 

No, such a thing certainly can be reasonably doubted, because no one ever directly observed such a thing, and also the Big Bang has two predictive failures, one of which is fairly small (the failure to correctly predict the abundance of one lithium isotope), and the other one extremely gigantic (the failure to predict a universe like ours, in which matter is very many times more abundant than antimatter). 

What does Dimopoulos say about the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem? He fails to even mention it. He does not even use the word "antimatter." He also fails to mention the problem that the Big Bang theory fails to correctly predict the level of  ⁷Li (one of the isotopes of the element lithium) that now exists in the universe. He says only one thing about predictions, and it is a very false claim. Referring to the theory of primordial cosmic inflation, a kind of offshoot of the Big Bang theory, he claims, "Precision observations of the cosmic microwave background in recent decades have spectacularly confirmed the predictions of inflation." No, that isn't true at all.

The theory of primordial cosmic inflation is actually a large family of theories, consisting of hundreds or dozens of theories. Each one of these theories can predict any of a million different things, based on what you supply as input parameters to the equations of the theory. The result is that the predictions of the theory of primordial cosmic inflation are "all over the map," as some cosmologists have confessed. The main prediction of cosmic inflation theories has been that there would be observed something called primordial b-modes. Huge amounts of money have been spent looking for such primordial b-modes, without any success. 

Dimopoulos has erred.  He has claimed that the basic idea of the Big Bang theory is "beyond reasonable doubt," but it is no such thing. He has claimed predictive success for a "cosmic inflation" offshoot of the Big Bang, a success that never occurred because there are so many versions of such a "cosmic inflation" theory that its predictions are all over the map (and because the primordial b-modes predicted by the theory were never found).  Dimopoulos has also ignored two predictive failures of the Big Bang theory (one very gigantic), which together mean that we have no warrant for claiming that the Big Bang theory is "beyond reasonable doubt." 

As bad as the misstatements by Dimopoulos are, they are nowhere near as bad as the grotesque fiction stated by astrophysicist Pablo G. Pérez González. He makes this huge misstatement:

"The first three minutes of the universe determined the current composition of the universe, along with all of its subsequent evolution. In other words, what we are today — everything that exists, everything that will exist, everything that does not exist and will not exist — was decided in just three minutes!"

Nonsense. Nothing that happened during the Big Bang did anything to guarantee that life and humans would one day exist. No one observing the first three minutes of the Big Bang would ever predict that the results billions of years later would one day include living things or beings as intelligent as humans. To the contrary, what they would predict from observing the first three minutes of the Big Bang is either a universe with 50% matter and 50% antimatter (which would be uninhabitable), or a universe in which all of the matter had combined with antimatter, leaving only energy photons left (which would be even more uninhabitable). 

What does Gonzalez say about this central problem with the Big Bang theory? Nothing at all. He does not even use the word "antimatter." 

There is a lesson to be learned here. The lesson is:  when a theory beloved by scientists has not been proven and when the theory has some gigantic problem that has not been resolved, scientists may speak as if so huge a problem does not even exist, and falsely claim that the theory is "beyond reasonable doubt" or "beyond doubt." It seems that scientists are very good about ignoring "the elephant in the room."