15.10: Glossary

ad hoc rescue A fallacy committed by those faced with data that appear to conflict with a claim, when they try to rescue the claim by pointing out how the conflict will disappear if some new assumption is taken into account and there is no good reason to accept this assumption other than that it successfully rescues the claim.

clairvoyance Remote viewing of the world; seeing without being there.

coherence with the paradigm Logical consistency with all the features of a science's paradigm.

contaminating the control A situation that occurs when a supposedly controlled experiment permits the control group to be affected by the suspected causal factor applied to the experimental group.

control In an experiment that applies the suspected causal factor to one group but not the other, the group that doesn't get it is called the control group. The group that does get it is called the experimental group or treatment group. Well-designed experiments create the control group and the experimental group by random assignment.

decisive test A test between two hypotheses that will result in one of the hypotheses being refuted and the other confirmed. Ideally, we would like decisive tests, that is, crucial tests. Practically, we usually have to settle for tests that only tend to show whether one claim or another is false.

ESP Extrasensory perception. A person with ESP can perceive by means other than the usual sense organs. Three main kinds of ESP are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

experimenter effects Effects on the outcome of an experiment that are caused by the unintentional influence of the experimenter. Contamination of the control would be such an effect.

fruitfulness The ability of a theory to inspire scientists to imagine many interesting ways in which the theory can practically be tested. A fruitful theory generates a great deal of scientific research.

hypothesis A proposed explanation or claim or theory.

paradigm The ways of solving problems in a particular science, including the methods, standards, and generalizations generally held in common by the community of those practicing the science. The paradigm guides the scientific investigator by setting limits on what can be a possible cause of what.

parapsychology The field or research program that tries to scientifically study unusual (paranormal) phenomena such as ESP and psychokinesis.

placebo A substance known not to be effective for causing a phenomenon of interest. In a controlled experiment designed to test whether a drug is causally effective, the experimental group might be given a green liquid containing the drug while the control group is given a placebo, a green liquid that appears to be identical but contains only water.

precognition Sensing the future. Fortune telling is an example.

psychokinesis Giving kinetic energy to a physical object by using "mind power."

rational Pertaining to those who arrive at, accept, and revise their beliefs according to the accepted methods of their culture.

superstition Beliefs based on reasons that are well known to us or to our culture to be unacceptable because those reasons are based on fear of the unknown, trust in magic, or an obviously false idea of what can cause what.

telepathy Mind reading; direct mind-to-mind communication without using the normal, indirect channels such as hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting.

test An observation or an experiment intended to provide evidence about a hypothesis.

theory Either a proposed explanation or else a comprehensive integrated system of laws that can be used in explaining a wide variety of phenomena.