Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Top 5 Mad Scientists In The World

MODERN MAD SCIENTISTS

The term "mad scientist" conjures up images of Dr. Frankenstein in his laboratory trying to reanimate the macabre quilt that was Frankenstein's Monster.  While Dr. Frankenstein and modern day "mad scientists" may not have much in common, they do share one passion: pushing the boundries of accepted science. We call them "mad scientists" here not because they are crazy and share insane delusions, but because they pursue what most scientists would call "pseudosciences"
(From Wikipedia:  Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status.)  
Before It's News presents its choices for the Top 5 "Mad Scientists" in the World:
 
1. Dean Radin
Dean Radin, PhD, is Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University.  He is author or coauthor of over 200 technical and popular articles, a dozen book chapters, and several books including the bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006). His technical articles have appeared in journals ranging from Foundations of Physics to Psychological Bulletin, he was featured in a New York Times Magazine article, and he has appeared on television shows ranging from the BBC’s Horizon and PBS's Closer to Truth to Oprah and Larry King Live.
He has presented over a hundred invited lectures at universities including Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Virginia Tech, and University of California at Davis, at industrial facilities including Google headquarters, and for US government organizations including DARPA and the US Navy. In 2010, he spent a month lecturing in India as the National Visiting Professor of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, a program in the Indian government's Ministry of Human Resource Development.  
Mr. Radin, after studying psychic phenomena as a scientist for about 30 years, has concluded that some psychic abilities are genuine, and as such, there are important aspects of the prevailing scientific worldview that are seriously incomplete. He's also learned that many people who claim to have unfailingly reliable psychic abilities are often delusional or mentally ill, and that there will always be reprehensible con artists who claim to be psychic and charge huge sums for their "services." These two classes of so-called psychics are the targets of celebrated prizes offered by magicians for demonstrations of psychic abilities. Those prizes are safe because the claimed abilities of these people either do not exist at all, or they're much weaker than sincere claimants may wish to believe. There is of course a huge anecdotal literature about psychic abilities, but the evidence that convinced him is the accumulated laboratory performance by people who do not claim to possess special abilities, collected under controlled conditions and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.  
www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/deanradin.html   Homepage of Dean Radin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin    Wikipedia page for Dean Radin
 
              
2. Daryl Bem
Bem received a B.A. in physics from Reed College in 1960, and began graduate work in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The civil rights movement had just begun, and he became so intrigued with the changing attitudes toward desegregation in the American South that he decided to switch fields and pursue a career as a social psychologist specializing in attitudes and public opinion. He obtained his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1964, and has since taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, Stanford, Harvard, and Cornell University. He started at Cornell in 1978 and retired from there in 2007, becoming a professor emeritus. 
In parapsychology, Bem is known for his defense of the ganzfeld experiment as empirical evidence of psi, more commonly known as extra-sensory perception or psychic phenomena. Bem also supports the idea of a connection between psi and quantum phenomena. 
In 2011, Bem published the article "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that offered statistical evidence for psi. If "Feeling the Future" is correct, it would provide evidence for psi, significantly altering the assumption of the linear nature of time, challenging the very core of modern scientific thought on the matter. Both the presentation of this article by a highly respected researcher, and the decision of an upper tier journal to publish it has engendered much controversy. Not only has the paper's publication led to a criticism of the paper itself, but it also prompted a wider debate on the validity of peer review process for allowing such a paper to be published. Bem has appeared on MSNBC and the Colbert Report discussing the experiment.  [From Wikipedia]
www.dbem.ws/  home page for Daryl Bem
dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf  "Feeling the Future" pdf link
www.dbem.ws/online_pubs.html  Some of Daryl's work
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Bem  Daryl's Wikipedia page
3. Rupert Sheldrake
An English biochemist and plant physiologist, Sheldrake is known for having proposed an unorthodox account of morphogenesis and for his research into parapsychology. His books and papers stem from his theory of morphic resonance, and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory, telepathy, perception and cognition in general. His publications include A New Science of Life (1981), Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1995), Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1999), and The Sense of Being Stared At (2003).
Sheldrake's ideas have often met with a hostile reception from some scientists, including accusations that he is engaged in pseudoscience. (fromWikipedia) His research on telepathy in animals (summarized in his book "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Jome") led him to see telepathy as normal, rather than a paranormal phenomenon, an aspect of communication between members of animal social groups. The same principles apply to human telepathy, and he has investigated little explored aspects of human telepathy, such as telepathy between mothers and babies, telephone telepathy (thinking of someone who soon afterwards calls) and email telepathy. 
www.sheldrake.org/homepage.html  Rupert Sheldrake homepage
 
4. Russell Targ
Targ received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College in 1954, and did graduate work in physics at Columbia University. He received two NASA awards for inventions and contributions in lasers and laser communications.
In 1997 he retired from Lockheed Martin as a project manager and senior staff scientist, where he developed laser technology for airborne detection of wind shear and air turbulance. He has published more than a hundred papers on lasers, plasma physics, laser applications and electro-optics.
At the Stanford research institute in the 1970s and 1980s, Targ and his colleague Harold E. Puthoff co-founded a 23-year, $25-million program of research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence. These abilities are referred to collectively as "remote viewing." Targ and Puthoff both believe that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price, and artist Ingo Swann all had genuine psychic abilities. They published their findings in Nature and the Proceedings of the IEEE. From 1972 to 1995 the program was classified SECRET and compartmentalized with Limited Access. That is to say, the program was not only classified, but every single person who was informed about the program had to personally sign a so-called bigot list, to acknowledge that they had been exposed to the program data. However, their work met criticism from some, including psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann in their 1980 book, The Psychology of Psychics. (frm Wikipedia)
www.espresearch.com/  Russel Targ's homepage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Targ  Russell Targ wikipedia page

 

5. Yakir Aharonov

An Israeli physicist specializing in quantum physics, Aharonov is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and the James J. Farley Professor of Natural Philosophy at Chapman University in California. He is also a distinguished professor in Perimeter Institute. He also serves as a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He is president of the Iyar, The Israeli Institute for Advanced Research.
His research interests are nonlocal and topological effects in quantum mechanics, quantum field theories and interpretations of quantum mechanics.  In 1959, he and David Bohm proposed the Aharanov-Bohm effect for which he co-received the 1998 Wolf Prize. (from Wikipedia)
Aharonov and his group are “looking into the notion that time might flow backward, allowing the future to influence the past. By extension, the universe might have a destiny that reaches back and conspires with the past to bring the present into view.  On a cosmic scale, this idea could help explain how life arose in the universe against tremendous odds.  On a personal scale, it may make us question whether fate is pulling us inexorably forward and whether we have free will.
Recent research by Aharonov's team suggests a similar notion of the nature of time as Daryl Bem's. However, because Aharonov's research has taken place under extremely controlled circumstances, it may garner more respect from the scientific community (fairly or unfairly).
chapmannews.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/chapman-professor-lands-discover-cover-story/  Article about Aharonov's work on the nature of time
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakir_Aharonov  Yakir's wikipedia page

These are just five scientists out of the dozens "crazy" enough to push the boundries of accepted science. Men and woman like these will likely determine the future of humanity's understanding of the universe.  As history demonstrates, it is "mad science" where progress comes from, not from the stagnant, skeptical and accepted views of most sciences.  After all, the world is round, not flat.   ;)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.'"
Isaac Asimov

"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
Albert Einstein
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