The parapsychological community should stop worrying about pseudoskeptics and start lobbying congress to allocate funds for parapsychological research.
For over a hundred years psychical researchers and parapsychologists have been trying to convince mainstream scientists that psychic phenomena are genuine by providing scientific proof. Despite the unambiguous proof that has been supplied over and over starting in the late 1800's, the reality of psychic phenomena are still not acknowledged by mainstream science. It should be obvious that trying to convince the pseudoskeptics who lead the scientific community is a waste of time.
The pseudoskeptics are actually powerless. Spending time reacting to them is not necessary. In the US we have the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (wikipedia) which provides government funding for research in alternative medicine. The pseudoskeptics did not want this organization funded and they did everything they could to stop it. Everything they could do was, in fact, nothing. They were completely powerless to prevent it. This exposed them as impotent. Any power the pseudoskeptics have is ceeded to them by parapsychologists who respond to pseudoskeptics or consider them when setting research goals. Parapsychologists and others should recognize this example for what it is and they should not waste time reacting to pseudoskeptics nor should they let the pseudoskeptics set the agenda for parapsychology.
Instead of constantly responding to pseudoskeptics, the parapsychological community should lobby congress for research funds. The current budgetary environment is not encouraging, but money could be reallocated to parapsychology from other areas. What could be more important to humanity that the huge gaps in our understanding of consciousness? What could be more important to science than the huge gaps in our understanding of the universe revealed by the evidence of parapsychology? Making the argument that parapsychology is more deserving of research funds than other branches of science should be very easy to do.
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