Originally Posted by sliccy
I have heard many of the gurus saying that LOA is scientifcally proven, Bob Proctor being one of the main ones. But I have stumbled across criticism on varies occasions. The most recent one, I was just Googleing some LOA material and I wanted to see what wiki had on it. There was a section specifically on the criticism LOA has received. Most of it directed towards The Secret...
My question is what do you do when you read something like this that trys to disprove what you on one level or another know to be true. How do you stay "positive".
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The problem is that people often use that term "scientifically proven" in a very loose, inaccurate way. When they do, and when those familiar with the process of science call them on it, things can look negative for those who made that claim.
Science is a process, and it isn't just a vague process it is a very specific, exact process.
Greatly simplified it would look something like this:
Observation [leads to] Hypothesis [leads to] Testing of Hypothesis [leads to] Successful or Unsuccessful Predictability [leads to] Replication of Hypothesis Testing By Others] = Valid Theory OR Invalid Theory.
And if the theory is found to be valid and enough successful testing is performed by others, both duplicating the original testing methodology as well as testing in new and different ways to insure the outcomes are consistently the same, then a Theory gets elevated to the level of a "Law", as in the "Law of Gravity."
This whole process, followed exactly, step, by step, by step, is called "the scientific method." Any time someone claims a thing has been "scientifically proven" or words to that effect, in order for that to be a true statement this thing they're referring to must have been put through these steps in a very precise way. If it has not been tested using this methodology then it is not "scientifically proven," end of story.
Any researcher will tell you that the most difficult part of applying this scientific method is in devising ways to test the validity of a hypothesis. Tests must be designed precisely so as to validate what is being tested for and eliminate or exclude all other possible causes.
For example, remember a year or so ago there was a salmonella outbreak that was blamed on tomatoes? People began contracting salmonella so health officials started looking for patterns of commonality between these people. They noticed something or other about these people having all recently eaten hamburgers or some such thing, which contained tomatoes. I don't recall the exact details but it was something along those lines.
So they made an observation about salmonella and tomatoes and immediately put a ban on tomatoes and tomato products. As things turned out this was a bad call because it wasn't the tomatoes at all that ended up being the cause of the salmonella. It was something else that was often associated with tomatoes. The health officials were responsible for imposing severe financial consequences on tomato growers because they did not adequately test their hypothesis. They made a quick association with tomatoes and jumped on that as the cause because there were virtually no well designed tests to investigate this tomato hypothesis.
Most scientific research that is submitted for publication in trade journals gets tossed out without printing because the methodology of hypothesis testing is disputed and therefore any conclusions drawn from that testing are also in dispute.
So when Bob Proctor says that LOA is "scientifically proven", or words to that effect, the first thing anyone wanting to verify that statement should say is, "OK, show me the studies and testing that have been carried out using the scientific method." If there aren't any, or if the studies have not been well designed, then the claim for "scientific proof" is worthless. Many times what you have is just a marketing claim. Marketers have lists of words they use that are shown to induce people to make purchases more readily, and that term, "scientifically proven" is at the top of their list.
But if the strict method of science was not used, and used properly, the claim of scientific proof is a mistake at best and a deliberate attempt at deception at worst.
Having said that, we should all keep in mind that not everything that is true is necessarily provable by science, at least science at our present level of understanding.
I love my wife. I love her more than any other person on the face of this planet. I know that is true. It is one of the few things about which I can say without reservation, this is an absolute truth without room for dispute or interpretation. But despite my absolute knowledge of this truth, I cannot prove it to anyone scientifically. There is no way the scientific method can be applied to this statement in such a way that it would satisfy everyone that I have accounted for all the facts and eliminated all contrary possibilities. At our present level of development the love I feel for my wife is not scientifically provable. And yet, it is one of the single greatest truths I possess.
There are many things that might fall into this category. Perhaps LOA is one of them. Perhaps someone knows of such tests that I'm unaware of, but to my knowledge there has been no serious scientific testing of LOA. Certainly nothing that has been reported in a related trade journal. Again, I might be uninformed, but as far as I am aware, Bob Proctor and those who claim LOA has been scienficially proven have no scientific method to back up that claim.
But lack of scientific testing doesn't make LOA untrue. For thousands of years humans had no concept of gravity or the Law of Gravity and were in no position to test for its existence scientifically. Despite this, gravity was always in effect. It didn't care that no scientific validation supported its existence.
It has never been "scientifically proved" to me that my mother is my mother and yet I know exactly who she is because I've experienced her. I could take you to a stadium filled with 100,000 people and pick her out of that crowd and introduce her to you. If you have never met my mother and I took you to that stadium it would be difficult for me to help you know her as certainly as I know her without introducing you in person. I could describe her. I could tell you to look for a woman who was 5'2" tall, medium short, sandy brown hair, 105 lbs., blue eyes, and you would tell me that there were a thousand or more women in the stadium who matched that description. I suppose I could submit the results of DNA testing to you (if such a thing were carried out,) and that would constitute scientific proof she was my mother, but even then you wouldn't be able to pick her out of the crowd. But after I introduced you to her and you experienced meeting her for yourself you would always know exactly who she was, with greater precision than any scientific test or description could ever convey to you. I'd look at LOA in a similar way if I were you and see what grows in your own garden.
In my opinion, the greatest test of all is the test of our own experience. If something works for me I'll keep using it. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work for someone else. It doesn't matter that someone else might be able to assemble facts or arguments that logically demonstrate why a thing can't possibly work. If something works for me, it works for me and I'll use it unless/until it no longer works for me. I'll let the philosophers worry about those questions of "how" and "why". My focus will remain on the successful results.
