I have a science degree (physics/math), so calling me "ignorant" of science or publication is a stretch. I'm not a working scientist though.

Most published research claims are false. Note that this applies to psychology/medicine/similar fields (which is what we're talking about), not the hard sciences.
I'll just leave you with the words of the former editor of the British Medical Journal:
I'll expound more on this when I get time to respond to your "Trump supporters are more authoritative" thread, in which you thought it was ridiculous that the result was more than 50% to be false (which is actually a lock). There's a hilarious data point that just came out in that field that will make you look very gullible. People are gullible and don't know how scientific research and publishing works and how incredibly unreliable it is.

That's not to bash science. Science is more reliable than most things. It's just that the best reliability we can come up with for any new field/area of inquiry is incredibly low. The world is full of error and noise and selection bias, and it takes many decades (of research, of engineering improvements) to work through that.

Should you saying that you have a proper subset of the degrees I hold make me more or less inclined to believe you?

Uhhh.... yeah... Here's a good summary from the Scientific American:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...eve-it-or-not/

Reasonable minds accept that error can and do happen. But Ioannidis' approach is a bit strained. Ironically, one can argue that he had "something to gain" by making his results far more severe than the reality. And the article above points out how when actual statisicians looked at his work, they found it to be problematic. (Ioannidis is part of the statistics department "by courtesy" -- and yes, that's a real thing.)

Your approach also suffers tremendously from an as-yet-unjustified extrapolation and ignoring data that works against you. This is just logically problematic. But your philosophical chops are weak, so such errors can be expected.

Now, had you been more clever, you would have pointed to the vast array of non-peer reviewed journals, which publish all sorts of nonsense, as a way to bolster the failure rate. And if you had done that, you might actually have gotten me. After I posted, I did worry about that, though that one is much harder to meaningfully quantify, and I could argue with you on whether those are considered acceptable publications (they're not). But since you didn't go there, it doesn't matter.

You may continue with both the bad science and the bad philosophy. I have no problem with you doing that.

Edit: Actually, I will be quite interested in seeing you wriggle around on your failure to understand the distinction between causation and correlation. Please do go back to that thread.

It's like there is a bias for every scientist.

That factor is almost irrelevant in this case. If him writing that demonic possession is is true meant that he lost all his money he would still be a giant underdog to be right.

That's non-sequitur. Listing a different factor that questions his story does not auto-dismiss the other factors involved.

This is a rare time that I'm going to agree with DS's assessment. It's not dismissing the other factors, rather estimating the relative weight of this particular factor to be much smaller than other things.

It's just another way of pointing out the very poor decision heuristic that you've presented.

Edit: Here's another way of looking at it. Suppose that the author had something to LOSE by publishing the article (perhaps his job). Would you suddenly accept everything he says to be true?

No, I would not suddenly accept it. But again, Listing a different factor that questions his story does not auto-dismiss the other factors involved. And you have not provided any rationale that supports your attempt to rank order them. In fact, DS didn't even list any other factors. He simply implied, "There are other factors, thus yours is irrelevant." Invalid logic.

LOL @ dropping words from the quote. You've got to be better than that if you've got any amount of intellectual integrity.

What is the absolute change in your perception of the likelihood of truth based on whether the author has something to gain or not? I think "almost irrelevant" seems like an apt description because if you think that it changes by more than even 1%, I think you must be some kind of idiot.

Also, he doesn't need to list other things. He's challenging you on your thinking, so his reasons don't actually matter. If it's true that there's very little change in the outcome in your perspective based on the factor you listed, then you must have some other thing in your mind that carries significantly more weight.

Lastly, I really don't like defending DS's position. I'd prefer to not continue, but he's clearly right and you're clearly grasping at straws. Why not just accept the truth?

You've already attempted to bait me into a bickering match once in this thread, and while doing so, shown that you're unable to follow basic logic. Others have pointed out your inability to follow logic as well, so i'm going to assume it's congenital. It's pointless to discuss things with someone like that. Have a nice day.

Meh --- If "basic logic" to you means misquoting others and making awful assumptions, then I have no problem failing at that. You still have yet to even demonstrate how you've engaged the actual content of the article so as to not have rejected it out of hand.

And I gave you my definition of the term. Why not give yours? I think I know the answer.

I think what DS is saying is that, given the extraordinary nature of the claim and the unlikeliness of it being true, there is no need to look past the lack of evidence.

That i would definitely agree with!

Actually the fact that this guy could gain financially IS a good explanation for why he is espousing these ideas. It just isn't a good reason to adjust your opinion about the truth of these ideas (even though it would be for most including even global warming. Anti global warmists are thousands of times more likely to be right than devil believers.)

David, i agree with you. But if you look at my original post, you will see that i said that the author is suspect. There may be (usually are) different reasons for suspecting an author than there are for suspecting a theory or belief.

OP, replace your celebrated psychologist with a celebrated biologist, and demonic possession with alien abduction (or sasquatch or fairies or unicorns or breatharianism) and what would you conclude?

Demonic possession- Hollywood fraud.

Comprehending that there exists a soul and spiritual nature to Man then one can conclude that there are other beings of a supersensible nature who are able to affect the human being.

It isn't like one person ran the wrong way and became "possessed" but that our earthly work is the working through other and higher beings who can be "impediments' to our particular development.

The perceptible earthly is an outer manifestation of the spiritual or supersensible. this is why the ancient Indian considered the world "maya" or illusion as he clairvoyantly perceived the spiritual (atavistic consciousness) but in the progression of the human being it has become our work to work this illusion and in the process gain knowledge of our individual spirituality.

Yes, there are higher beings than ourselves and some who act against our development;making book on this is bogus attenuated materialism; again potassium doesn't care !!!

That none of these are remotely analogous? I'd hope that even the materialists around here would concede that Evil is real and not a simple human construct, something deeply manifest in the human condition--consider of course the horrific attacks in Nice today, the shooting in Orlando, the slaughter of Middle Eastern Christians by ISIS, worldwide sex-trafficking, or any number of the genocides witnessed over the last hundred plus years. Demonic possession is an (albeit quite small) but nonetheless quite real manifestation of this same Evil.

Odd God that would create a universe with the possibility of pure evil demons. Not sure id create one if that was a possibility.

I didn't ask what you would conclude about a "Biologist/alien abduction" article's appropriateness as an analogy to some other article. I asked what you would conclude about the biologist/alien abduction article as a standalone. (I'm assuming for the sake of discussion that you don't buy into alien abduction stories. If you do, replace it with something you don't think is true, like sasquatch or whatever.)

Your hope that "even" the materialists accept Capitol-E Evil as real seems a non sequitur. One can accept that evil exists without accepting that demonic possession is real.

If everyone gets to toss their pet beliefs into the pile, then what's to stop the abductionist from saying, "I would hope that even non-abductionists accept that there is Evil in the world; things like terrorist attacks and genocide and alien abductions"?

To clarify: The analogy was to a claim made by a "man of science" making a claim of something you don't believe in. As such, what would make them not remotely analogous is if you believed in each of the things I listed.

Are there malevolent entities that are invisible to the eye that can occupy people's bodies and cause them to act abnormally?

Absolutely


Think about it.

The are plenty of materialists that follow blathering idiots like Richard Dawkins, and take atheism to it's rational conclusion - which is that there is no such thing as good or evil, just DNA replicating across the universe.

Just this week someone posted in the free-will thread that there is no such thing as evil:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...4&postcount=28

Richard Dawkins: The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
River out of Eden p. 131,132

Atheism does not automatically or exclusively imply or conclude any one thing beyond: a lack of belief in God/s.

So while that may be one "rational conclusion" you have pointed out; it is one of many; and not all of them (or even most of them) discount the existence of good and evil.

Not sure you understand the necessity of evil, in giving definition to the good. While one of these is less desirable, both are equally necessary, and there is no possibility to create a world without one of these.

Furthermore. Concepts that are less desirable, are also necessary, for giving definition to concepts that are more desirable.

And so on, and so forth.