GIGO

Researching the Paranormal

It has been mentioned before in these pages that science in this country is poorly funded. That's why the revelation that the Labour Department spent $90,000 financing a Restart ghost study is particularly distressing. The scheme, employing 10 people, was organised by the New Zealand Institute of Parapsychology, an offshoot of the Kevin Barnard Trust run by Waikato psychology student Kevin Barnard.

Now ghosts and poltergeists, and apparent phenomena relating to them, may well be a field worthy of study. Looking at the paranormal experiences or beliefs of South Pacific peoples may also have a place in the halls of social anthropology.

What I find disturbing in the reports is that the project was dressed up in the guise of science. We have more than enough ignorance and misunderstanding when it comes to science without the government actively financing it.

The cornerstone of the scheme was to "develop quantum particle analysis of Kirlian-type energy fields". Sounds authoritative, doesn't it? It seems that all you have to do these days is pick some arcane words and string them together, and people will believe you're being scientific.

Kirlian fields were popular in the 1970s when Russian researchers claimed to have developed a means of photographing the auras of living things. Popularisers claimed that the photographic technique could do everything from cancer diagnosis to showing that water from Lourdes was particularly rich in "life force".

The technique has been soundly dismissed as a photographic chimera. The corona effect causing the impressive "auras" is well known to physicists. It can be produced with things as mundanely inorganic as money, and does not require any form of paranormal explanation.

Obviously the Labour Department in Hamilton is not scientifically literate. Perhaps so -- that's not necessarily their job. It is their job to ensure that the ever-dwindling supply of taxpayers' money is spent on credible projects. As such, they should have had the wit to see that such a scheme needed more evaluation than they were prepared or able to give it.

It is not particularly surprising that the project came a cropper. The Waikato Times notes that the axe finally fell when it became apparent that wage subsidies were not going to the workers. The trust, the institute and their operator are all subjects of police inquiries, and an internal department inquiry is also being made.

I've been interested to see that all the outrage has been poured on the financial mismanagement involved. Few seem to have questioned the dubiousness of such a study masquerading as science, or criticised the deplorable gullibility of the Labour Department.

I wonder what would have happened had the financial disputes not come to light. Initial plans had proposed a year-long study worth $180,000. You could do a great deal of real science with that...