While reading a post at one of the paranormal community sites that I frequent, something came to mind.

There is a lot of discussion about how the only valid investigation is a purely science based investigation. That idea is expanded to mean that a GOOD paranormal researcher will approach all of their investigations with no preconceived ideas of the outcome. Their reasoning is that this is how true science is done.

Is it? Is it really?

Let’s go back and look at the invention of the light bulb. Did Edison really test thousands different types of materials and designs with no expectation that any of them would work?

Do you really think that the gentlemen working on the Manhattan Project didn’t expect a really, really big explosion eventually?

The story goes that even Viagra was invented by accident while they were trying to create a new blood pressure medicine. Do you think those scientists were just mixing random chemicals together with no bias nor preconceived intent and then taste testing them to see what happens?

Of course not: Even when using scientific methods of investigation and research an outcome (be it positive or negative) is expected, and…dare I say it…believed in. You don’t spend your life trying to find something unless you have some belief that there is something to find.

My point here is not that I wish to discredit or devalue the “skeptical” method of paranormal investigating. It is a reasonable and valuable avenue of research.

I am glad that there are teams and individuals out there stomping around the same buildings as myself looking for alternative answers to the paranormal. Their efforts may well reveal much more in the long run than my own.

But I have had it up to here (hold your hand high above your head for visual effect) with “respectable” investigators telling me and my ilk that we are doing it wrong and that we have no place in finding the answers…whatever answers…that we are seeking.

There may well be a right way and a wrong way to find these answers, but I suspect we won’t know exactly what will or will not work until after those answers are found. But maybe I am wrong…maybe if everyone does the exact same things from the exact same playbook those answers will fall into our collective laps.

I will leave you with a quote from Thomas Edison. In reference to those attempts to invent the light bulb I spoke of previously, he is quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

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