Reply #202: The point

[skepticscott]

in case you missed it, is that simple declarations by those with a strongly vested interest in seeing a certain worldview maintained, are pretty much worthless without independent verification. And despite what you seem to think, deliberate and conscious fraud is not the only way it works. People in those situations are subject to all kinds of biases, whether they realize it or not, and when you combine that with the failure of other scientists to replicate their results, it renders them essentially valueless. What's more, if psi researchers weren't aware that their field was shaky science from the word go, where is the research (or even informed speculation) on mechanism? If they were really serious about all this, that's a topic they'd be all over, just like serious scientists in every other field. They're as phony and disingenuous as ID "researchers" who claim that all they have to do is show that there was a designer, and who never show even the slightest interest in exploring theories about who or what it might have been. How you coming with those links, btw?