These kind of make sense, from a objective view point, because efficient energy patents could affect profits and would have no real interest to energy companies (who clearly wouldn't want to make less money).

After all, if your business is fossil fuel, something like 'cold fusion' (for example) represents becoming obsolete.

There was similar 'blackening' of the reputation of Nuclear energy (an arguably cleaner fuel than fossil fuels) by the oil and gas industry, focusing specifically on the Nuclear aspect.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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Firstly, psychological phenomena aren't nonsense. Oddly, the study of parapsychology has revolutionised human understanding of neurology and how our senses work (read Paranormality - it's a book about how studying claims of the paranormal helps us understand more about the mind and brain).

Secondly, I think that there is more to unearth here as well, its just that its in the 5-10% that can't be easily explained or the explaination is effectively a 'dismissal without justification' (i.e. Sceptics being too sceptical)

Problem is, when ever an explaination of a paranormal phenomena occurs, its always going to be less exciting than the spurious claims. Telepathy becomes Body Language reading and NLP. Ghosts become infrasound etc and the believers aren't interested in that.

People still believe in Spontanous Human Combustion - even though its been proven to be a combination of unlikely events. People claim that the events are 'unlikely' and that's true, but then cases of SHC are also incredibly rare so it wouldn't be unusual for them to consist of a unlikely occurrence of events.

Basically the person passes out, or dies, typically exposed to a mild accelerant (usually alcohol or perfume), and a source of fire (cigarettes, fireplace or spark).

The accelerant burns slowly but sufficiently to ignite the tissue fat, which causes the person to burn very thoroughly at a very high temperature.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

The fact that when Nikkola Tesla died the Secret Service (as was at the time) simply went into his hotel room as the body was being removed and stripped the place clean of all his ideas, manuscripts and drawings would lead to suggest the very same.

Free energy would bring down governments...

The Voice of Reason In An Otherwise Mediocre World

I don't think we should immediately dismiss peoples claims. I think that its necessary to investigate claims responsibly and thoroughly. But the problem is that no one really has an interest in doing that. I think sceptics and believers are inherently disposed towards their own belief, which if your dealing with perceived evidence is pretty difficult to evaluate.

I'd say a minority of claims deserve proper investigation. But I think as well that when faced with evidence, believers (and some skeptics) tend to look to dismiss, in favour of their beliefs as opposed to countering that evidence.

I'm kind of in that middle ground, that I don't know for certain, so I'm kind of interested in finding out what might be going on - especially in those few cases where the evidence outweighs the explaination.

Problem is, no one like this is investigating these claims.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

You should never exclude the improbable on the basis of it being improbable - As Sherlock says, once you dismiss the probable, what your left with is the improbabable and that's kind of how science works.

You don't prove 'it could be aliens', you prove that it can't be anything else, systematically through testing all other hypothesis.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Correct."I'm not sure what this is so it must be controlled by aliens from another planet" is pretty far down any rational list.

Edited by wordup (04 Jul 2017 4.30pm)