DMcG,

I'm probably not being as clear as I could be either, probably because I'm trying to diplomatically and carefully express a long-term issue I have had in a wide variety of situations, not just in this thread.

I meant that if a person who is a scientist has no specific expertise in an area, e.g. scientifically investigating psychic abilities, or studying the experiments, data and conclusions of other scientists in that specific field, is there any reason to take their assertions on the topic of psychic abilities more seriously than the average human in the street who has a general knowledge of the subject, may or may not have read a number of books or articles, may or may not have experienced situations relating in a general nature to psychic abilities which throw a positive, negative or undecided/neutral light on the subject, and who also holds opinions on the subject.

To be clearer, is Richard Feynman's quoted opinion based on a study of the topic or is it just an opinion he expressed which has no evidential data to back it up? Just because he was a reputable scientist, doesn't mean that everything he says should be taken as evidentially based conclusions. If he said that it is possible the moon was made of cheese, would people stop and think, well, if he says it's possible, maybe it could be possible.

And going back to my post of 08 Jan 13 - 05:07 PM, yes, I do admit that some claims of psychic intuition or premonition can be mere coincidence, but I don't think that that explains all claims of psychic experiences. I think that open minded, scientific, analytical, evidence based investigation would reveal that some psychic events can not be explained away so easily, or in some cases, so glibly.

Helen