12/25/2022 0 Comments Seance ghostsThe site is also packed with case files of PIM investigations across the country. That mindset is evident in the “ Paranormal 101 ” section of PIM’s website, which offers unbiased insight into all the tropes of paranormal reality television, from mysterious orbs captured on camera to electronic voice phenomenon. A lot of teams are biased - they already believe in the paranormal so they will be looking at whatever evidence they gather to support that belief. “It’s the method behind the investigation and the people conducting it. “If you do it right, the investigations themselves aren’t pseudoscientific,” he counters. Leigh knows the pitfalls of attempting legitimate scientific inquiry into the supernatural he's well aware that most of the scientific community dismisses paranormal research as pseudoscience. Plenty of investigators are fine with that, it makes for more drama, but that’s not how we operate.” Pseudo vs. Low-quality equipment is subject to interference and gives you lots of false positives. So much of that is ridiculously expensive and useless most of the time. “We use equipment, but not the stuff you see on TV. We make actual reports - a lot of investigators don’t - and we document as much as we can,” Leigh says. “We do bring more scientific rigor to the process. They don’t use mediums or psychics, and while they do use cameras, digital audio recorders and other technical instruments to support their investigations, their most important tool is one you don’t see often in the field: the scientific method. “There are a handful of teams out there who use methods similar to ours, but they’re few and far between.” PIM operates as a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit, which means the group doesn’t charge for its work or make money off of the outreach programs they conduct at libraries and other venues. “We have a ‘debunk-first’ mentality, and that’s reflected in our cases,” he says. Their work is nothing you’d see on TV, but if it was it would be more like MythBusters than Ghost Hunters. In 2007, he founded his own team, Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee (PIM). With an undergraduate degree in biology and a master’s in epidemiology and cell biology, Leigh is a career scientist who applies his scientific training to investigating the paranormal. And some scientists, although not many, have devoted their own time and resources to studying the paranormal - by becoming ghost hunters themselves. Today, a surprising number of colleges and universities offer opportunities to study and even conduct research in parapsychology. Even Einstein once attended a séance (although he did not report any spooky action). In the 1920s, the venerable Scientific American was open-minded enough to offer a long-standing reward, up to $15,000 at one point, to anyone who could provide conclusive evidence of ghosts. Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle - a trained physician, don’t forget - spent the latter part of his life (and much of his credibility) as a defender of spiritualism. Harvard’s own William James, who helped found the school’s psychology department, was obsessed with the supernatural throughout his career. Īnd yet, over the decades, plenty of scientists and science-minded institutions have dipped their toes into the murky waters of the paranormal. With their flashy gadgets and dramatic reactions any time the night-vision camera captures a mote of dust in the air, it’s little wonder that the field of paranormal investigations has long been consigned to the garbage heap of pseudoscience. It’s easy to have a laugh at the expense of all those ghost hunters you see on TV.
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