In my widely-read post "Pathologizing Scientists May Try to Stigmatize Witnesses of the Spooky," I described the bungling methods of a pair of scientists who have attempted to spread insinuations of psychological problems in people reporting that they saw spooky things. The latest example of bungling work of this type by a pathologizing scientist comes in the form of an article at "The Conversation" site, an article by psychologist Melissa Maffeo. The article is entitled " Is my brain wired to never see a ghost? A psychologist on three factors that make a paranormal experience more likely." We get more evidence of mudslinging weaponized psychology, resembling the folly depicted below.
In the article Maffeo shows no evidence of having studied apparition sightings. She cites not one single report of anyone who claimed to see an apparition. A look at her papers on Google Scholar shows no papers showing signs of scholarship of reports of apparition sightings.
Maffeo offers three very lame explanations for why people may see apparitions. Her first attempt at an explanation (which she called "Haunted Factor #1") is the extremely lame explanation of "environmental stimuli." She starts out by referring to electromagnetic fields, which can be measured by a portable EMF detector sometimes marketed as a "ghost detector."
EMF fields might explain why you might get a higher-than-expected reading on an EMF device. But EMF fields are worthless in explaining apparition sightings. I have published 85 posts describing apparition sightings, which you can read here (continue to press Older Posts at the bottom right to read them all). Not one of the many hundreds of apparition sightings I describe involved a case in which someone got a high EMF reading while reporting seeing an apparition about the same time.
Maffeo describes a scientific study in which people were put in a special room, and bombarded with infrasound and complex electromagnetic fields (EMFs). The study's paper found that "although many participants reported anomalous sensations of various kinds, the number reported was unrelated to experimental condition." The paper mentions subjects reporting "mildly anomalous sensations," but does not mention any subject reporting seeing an apparition. The paper says, "The results reported do not support the idea that complex EMFs play a role in inducing anomalous experience." So Maffeo's "Haunted Factor #1" is a flop as an explanation for people seeing apparitions.
Maffeo lists "Neurological Mixups" as "Haunted Factor #2." She refers to a study involving an epilepsy patient who had electrodes implanted in her brain. After an electrical current was sent to her brain, the female supposedly reported a "creepy feeling that somebody is close by." The study fails to qualify as good evidence, because we do not have any transcripts of interviews in which this effect was reported. We merely have some short quotes from a subject, quotes which are not full sentences; and we do not know whether these quotes are in response to leading questions designed to elicit particular types of anomalous reports from the subject. In any case, what was reported was not an apparition sighting, and the case is of no value in explaining apparition sightings in people who do not have electrodes implanted in their brains, people with brains not being artificially stimulated by electricity sent into the brain from an outside source.
Maffeo also refers to the 2002 paper "Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions." This 2002 paper has some quotes by a subject who the authors had brain-zapped with electricity, by inserting electrodes in her brain. The authors have attempted to portray this as evidence of an artificially induced out-of-body experience. But the only sentence that the paper quotes from the subject is one that does not indicate a full out-of-body experience. That sentence is this: "I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk." That sounds like some weird electricity-induced perception anomaly that is not properly described as an out-of-body experience. During an out-of-body experience a person will typically report leaving his body and seeing his entire body (not just the legs and lower trunk) from outside of the body. Eager to report some experimental induction of an out-of-body experience, our authors seem to have taken some account that does not match those of out-of-body experiences, and called that an out-of-body experience. The authors make this claim: "Two further stimulations induced the same sensation, which included an instantaneous feeling of 'lightness' and 'floating' about two metres above the bed, close to the ceiling." Since this is not an actual full-sentence quote from the subject, it has very little value as evidence. A second-hand account of a person's weird experience during brain zapping (by some other person who did not have that experience) is pretty worthless as evidence. What would we have read from a transcript of what the subject said, one including any questions the subject was asked? We have no idea.
The paper did nothing to explain out-of-body experiences, since such things occur in people who do not have electrodes in their heads, and are not receiving inputs of electricity from an outside source. And the paper does nothing to explain apparition sightings.
The final part of Maffeo's discussing of her "Haunted Factor #2" is a discussion of the rare phenomenon of sleep paralysis. This does nothing to explain 95% of apparition sightings and 95% of out-of-body experiences, which do not occur during any such sleep paralysis.
Maffeo then offers a "Haunted Factor #3" of "Personality Traits." Maffeo now moves into pathologizing mode, playing the game of "stigmatize the witnesses." She claims, "There’s a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal." She links to a page that has the journal Nature as its source, but strangely has no listed author. It's an "AI overview" page that reads like AI slop.
Maffeo then refers to the very dubious socially-constructed concept of "schizotypy." She states this:
"There’s a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal. For instance, some people are hyperaware of unconscious perceptions and ideas, which then permeate their consciousness. Often, these traits are associated with magical thinking, distorted or unusual thoughts, disorganized behavior and, sometimes, trouble forming close relationships. Psychologists refer to this set of traits as schizotypy. They’re related to schizophrenia, although being high in schizotypy doesn’t mean you will be diagnosed with the disorder of schizophrenia. People with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal."
I quote in the appendix of this post how Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD discusses this concept of "schizotypy," and states that "This test for schizotypy is bogus." The term "schizotypy" seems to have been hoisted as a smear word to stigmatize and shame various nonconformists or believers in things that materialists rather that you not believe in. In the appendix of this post Gøtzsche describes a checklist for "schizotypy" characteristics, which he says is similar to one on a page of the Mayo Clinic website. He does not mention that one of the items on that Mayo Clinic checklist is "belief in special powers, such as mental telepathy." And looking at the paper here and the paper here offering a "scale" to assess "schizotypy," I see in both a checklist in which anyone reporting experience with ESP or a sixth sense would be judged to have a "symptom of schizotypy." So Matteo's claim that "people with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal" is pretty meaningless, given that schizotypy has been defined so that anyone who believes in telepathy will score higher on a "schizotypy checklist."
What is going on here is weaponized psychology involving circular reasoning. A particular psychiatric-sounding term of abuse "schizotypy" was invented, without anyone giving a cohesive definition of such a term. Some alleged "characteristics of schizotypy" were arbitrarily listed, including "odd beliefs or magical thinking that’s inconsistent with cultural norms," "odd thinking and speech patterns," and "belief in special powers, such as mental telepathy." Now anyone who fails to speak like a materialist would (and anyone who deeply studies the two hundred years of evidence for ESP) can then be conveniently shamed and stigmatized as being guilty of "schizotypy." This seems like very bad psychology bungling by pathologizing psychologists eager to attach badges of shame on sane well-functioning people. The nebulous term "schizotypy" is a not-really-scientific term of abuse similar to the equally nebulous and not-really-scientific term of abuse "transliminality" discussed here.
Because the experimental evidence for ESP includes very well-replicated results such as the Ganzfeld experiments and extremely convincing results such as reported by professors Rhine and Riess, we should note that when psychologists include belief in telepathy as a symptom on a checklist of a socially constructed syndrome they call "schizotypy" (consisting of an arbitrary disjointed potpourri of unconnected "symptoms"), such psychologists have gone very far astray. It's kind of like someone inventing a checklist of 10 "symptoms" of something he decides to call "Wilkinson's Syndrome," and listing belief in the reality of social injustice as one of the symptoms.
A recent paper ("Personality Facets Systematically Relate to Nonordinary Experiences") attempted to look for a relation between personality characteristics and reports of paranormal experiences. Contrary to Matteo's claim of a link between personality traits and reports of the paranormal, the paper failed to find any strong evidence of such a link.
Maffeo seems to be engaging in the type of mudslinging that goes on when someone vaguely tries to tar someone by suggesting "associations" or "similarities" between that person and some other unsavory-seeming or despised type of person. She lists no real evidence of a correlation between this "schizotypy" and schizophrenia, no evidence that people who reported apparitions have this "schizotypy," and no evidence that people who see apparitions have schizophrenia. The type of hallucinations typically occurring in schizophrenia are auditory hallucinations, in which people hear voices, rather than seeing human forms.
Wrapping things up, Maffeo offers the lamest attempt to explain apparition sightings, the kind of explanation that would probably only be offered by someone who had failed to decently study reports of such sightings. She states this:
"Consider a person who believes in paranormal phenomena who experiences a natural change in electromagnetic fields or an episode of sleep paralysis. Those experiences induce unusual sensations that this person cannot explain. Searching for meaning in ambiguity, this person distorts their distinction between internally and externally generated sensations. They settle on the only explanation that makes sense to them – that this strange feeling they experienced was a ghost."
This fails miserably as an explanation for apparition sightings. There is zero evidence that people reporting apparition sightings ever experienced any such thing as "a natural change in electromagnetic fields"; and goofy, reckless experiments bombarding people with electromagnetic fields fail to ever produce apparition sightings. The vast majority of reports of apparition sightings (more than 95%) occur in people who are not experiencing any such thing as "sleep paralysis"; and probably 90% of them are reports from people who were not lying down when the reported event occurred. And very few of the rare people who report "sleep paralysis" report seeing apparitions. Also, in reports of apparition sightings there is only rarely a claim of an unusual sensation before the apparition was seen.
Maffeo's final reference to a paper is a reference to a paper in which some 22 people were taken to a building, with half of them being told that the location was haunted. The paper authors say "our model predicts that demand characteristics such as the mere suggestion that a location is haunted are also sufficient to induce poltergeist-like perceptions such as reports of a 'sensed presence,' apparitions, or other anomalous sensations." But contrary to such a prediction, none of the 11 people told that the house was haunted reported seeing an apparition. So the paper gives no support for Matteo's insinuation that belief in the paranormal helps explain apparition sightings.
Maffeo hasn't done anything at all to explain apparition sightings. All that she has given is another sad example of weaponized psychology in which psychologists seem to be eager to pathologize healthy witnesses of the spooky.
Maffeo ends her article with these "holier than thou" sentences trying to suggest her superiority to the witnesses she has tried to stigmatize:
"I’m pretty sure I don’t have personality traits like schizotypy. I don’t believe in the paranormal. And I don’t think I’ll ever see a ghost."
But this smug assertion of superiority may be inappropriate at the end of an article that fails so badly to explain what it is trying to explain.
One of the reasons why apparition sightings cannot be explained by anything Maffeo mentions is that there are very many cases of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know had died, with the witness soon learning the person did die at about the time the apparition was seen (discussed in the 18 posts here). Also not explained by anything Maffeo mentions is the fact that we often get reports of multiple witnesses seeing the same apparition. To read about such reports, see my posts below:
When Apparitions Get Observed by Not Just One
While materialists would like to dismiss apparitions as a relic of the past, a look at the frequency of the term "ghost" using the Google Ngram viewer shows no sign that references to ghosts or apparitions are fading away. To the contrary, as shown below, the 21st century is showing a strong uptick in references to ghosts.
Appendix: Gøtzsche on Schizotypy
In a page at the Mad in America website (which has many great articles exposing the overconfident errors of psychiatrists), Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD refers to "schizotypy" as "a very vague and highly dubious concept." Below is a quote from an article at the Mad at America site, an article in which Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD discusses this dubious socially constructed term "schizotypy", which does not correspond to any distinct thing in human minds. I'll quote almost all of what he says, although I suspend judgment about some of his complaints about psychiatrists. He states this:
Schizotypy is a very strange construct. I came across this diagnosis because a Danish filmmaker I worked with who made the film “Diagnosing Psychiatry,” got the diagnosis when she became stressed over a difficult divorce.
She jokes about this diagnosis in her film, and I looked it up on the Internet where there was a screening test for schizotypal personality disorder. The test reflects quite well how this construct is described on the Mayo Clinical website and by the DSM. There were nine questions and you should reply true or false, or yes or no, to each one.
- “Incorrect interpretations of events, such as a feeling that something which is actually harmless or inoffensive has a direct personal meaning.” This is a very vague question, and many people interpret events incorrectly or take them personally.
- “Odd beliefs or magical thinking that’s inconsistent with cultural norms.” That’s an interesting one. In Denmark, a young psychiatrist disagreed with the odd cultural norm at the department, which was to institute preventative treatment with neuroleptics for schizotypy. Is this psychiatrist then abnormal?
- “Unusual perceptions, including illusions.” Most psychiatrists would need to say yes to this question. Just think about the illusion called the chemical imbalance.
- “Odd thinking and speech patterns.” Surely, most psychiatrists display odd thinking, maintaining the lie about the chemical imbalance and many other lies, and also denying totally what other people see clearly, including their own patients, e.g. that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good.
- “Suspicious or paranoid thoughts, such as the belief that someone’s out to get you.” If you are detained in a psychiatric department, such a reaction is normal and understandable. The staff surely is out to “get you,” namely to treat you forcefully with neuroleptics against your will. When psychiatric leaders use terms about their opponents such as “antipsychiatry” and “conspiracy,” can it then be considered a “yes” to item 5?
- “Flat emotions, appearing aloof and isolated.” This is what psychiatric drugs do to people, so if they weren’t abnormal to begin with, the psychiatrists will ensure that they become abnormal.
- “Odd, eccentric or peculiar behaviour or appearance.” One definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result, which is what psychiatrists do all the time. I would call that an odd, eccentric and peculiar behaviour.
- “Lack of close friends or confidants other than relatives.” This is what psychiatric drugs do to people, particularly neuroleptics....
- “Excessive social anxiety that doesn’t diminish with familiarity.” If you are detained in a psychiatric department, such a reaction is normal and understandable.
There was no explanation about the number of points needed for a diagnosis, so I tried the test a couple of times. If you have 5 out of 9 positive replies, you are told: “You are suffering from Schizotypal Personality Disorder … You must talk with a professional mental health expert.”
If you have 4 out of 9, the message is: “You have some symptoms and might be suffering from this disorder. You have got few points but according to DSM if you agree with three or four questions on this test, you might have developed this personality disorder. Please check with your mental expert.”
This test for schizotypy is bogus. Amusingly, many psychiatrists would be suspected of having this disorder because they test positive for items 3, 4 and 7, and they would then need to consult a “mental expert” who would likely also have 3 positives if tested. What is less amusing is that the test provides circular evidence for the patients who, even if they are normal, might test positive when they have been treated inhumanely by psychiatrists, including being forcefully treated with neuroleptics.
