2 Many of the sceptical arguments do not hold water as they do not address all of the FACTS.
3 Media sceptics choose a weak example of a particular phenomenon and dissect it for TV/ magazine/ etc.
4 They do not address the wealth of evidence which is already on record.
5 Psychological interpretations are not always the answer (although they may sometimes be).
6 Paranormal phenomena may not be parapsychological-they could possibly be Para-physics, Para-biology etc.
7 The explanation for paranormal phenomena will not have a "one fits all" answer-that is for certain.
8 The avid sceptic (or skeptic in the US) will never look at these events and examine the evidence with an impartial eye; they KNOW what is possible or not possible before they examine the evidence. This is a belief system.
9 I am not a religious person with a fixed belief; I examine evidence and carry out research (over years) on claims of the paranormal.
10 The half-hour or one-hour sound bite we see on TV is worthless. This end-product only reflects how a producer/director chooses to shape a programme.
 
If you are really interested in psychical research, then you must read reliable books and do your own research.
 
Quotes regarding avid scepticism:
 
Sociologists Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch conducted a study to evaluate the manner in which parapsychology has been treated by critics in the main scientific journals. They found straightforward statements of prejudice; pseudo-philosophic arguments to the effect that parapsychology ought to be rejected simply because it conflicts with accepted knowledge; accusations of fraud without any evidence to support them; attempts to discredit scientific parapsychology by association with cult and fringe activities, and emotional dismissals based only on grounds that the consequences of its acceptance would be too horrible to contemplate. They concluded that the ordinary standards and procedures of scientific debate were being seriously violated. This fear, in the minds of some sceptics, seems to stem from a perceived threat to the structure of science. (Collins and Pinch, The construction of the paranormal.)
 
However, Physicist Henry Margenau has demonstrated that it is impossible to identify a single scientific law actually threatened by the reality of paranormal phenomena. He points out that the Law of Conservation of Energy and Momentum has already been broken by discoveries in quantum physics, which also deal with non-locality-or action at a distance; and notes that nothing in parapsychological discoveries contradicts either the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the Principle of Causality. The only contradictions that seem to exist are with our culturally accepted view of reality based on such laws. (Le Shan, From Newton to ESP.)
 
Psychologist, Charles Tart, University of California, suggests that the emotional nature of the debate might be due to the fact that discoveries in parapsychology offer a more personal kind of threat that operates through unconscious fears of the subject. This is clearly not the whole answer, but I find such psychological explanations very persuasive....science is not so much a body of undisputed fact as a set of perceptions about facts that are, on the whole, very useful, but occasionally harden into dogma. Normal science is guided by a substantive set of beliefs, held both consciously and unconsciously by the scientific community. And anything that starts out by defining itself from the beginning as paranormal is likely to be dismissed as irrelevant.
(Lyall Watson, Biologist, Supernature 2.)
 
Tricia J Robertson
DACE Tutor University of Glasgow.
Hon Sec SSPR