Because we re gambling with the lives of our fuzzies, that s why!
 
I m a skeptic myself, and I m familiar with the tenet, Extraordinary
claims require extraordinary proof .  If you re going to come forth
and claim you can communicate with animals, you better have very good
evidence that will stand up to tests for personal bias, scientific
misunderstanding and deception.
 
This worked for me!  Not good enough.  Testimony is not valid scientific
evidence.  Not all claimants to psychic ability or their supporters are
frauds, but the average observer is human and prey to human faults.
Humans tend to remember the hits and forget the misses , and they tend to
discount the effect of coincidence.  Paranormal phenomena has far more
misses than are reported, and coincidences do happen.
 
There are many things in the world that Science can t explain.  Science
has been proven wrong many times.  Scientists and skeptics are
close-minded.  Also not good enough.  Statements like these prove nothing
about the existence of paranormal phenomena; they are only attempts to
denigrate established scientific thought, on the principle, if my
opponent is wrong, I must be right .  True, scientific thinking has been
proven wrong several times, but Science gets it right far more often.
In my experience, the believers in the paranormal tend to be far more
close-minded than what they claim for the skeptics; tell them that there
s a simpler, more prosaic explanation and they get all bent out of shape.
 
I, for one, would not take a pet of mine to an animal communicator or
dose them with alternative drugs such as colloidal silver, any more than
I would take them to a psychic surgeon or dose them with Laetrile.  John
Edwards *might* be able to communicate with the dead; the Pet Psychic
*might* be able to communicate with your pet; colloidal silver and a
whole lot of other fancy drugs *might* work as claimed.  But there is no
*proof*.  The only thing you can say for certain is that the TV psychics
and the colloidal silver salespeople are making money.
 
Don t just give us testimonials; don t just put down the skeptics; don t
just ooze sincerity from every pore.  None of this proves anything.  Give
us good, solid *evidence*.  Because the lives of our pets depend on it.
Their lives are far too important to leave to the results of what could
easily be parlor tricks.
 
After all, it s all for the fuzzies, right?
 
Paul E. Jamison
[Posted in FML issue 4097]