Summary: Interview with Dr. Diane Powell about her book, The ESP Enigma, and why research into extended human consciousness remains taboo. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author Dr. Diane Powell about her book, The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. During the interview Powell discusses why psychic abilities are not accepted by mainstream science: Alex Tsakiris: My opinion is that if you’re waiting for the paradigm shift, if you’re waiting for science to roll over and say, “Uncle. We admit it. This phenomenon is obvious; it’s self-evident,” it’s not going to happen. What do you think? Dr. Diane Powell: I agree and I think that, as I said, it is counterproductive to think that way. I think that people close their minds to considering new possibilities. I mean, like I said, in the early 1900’s when people thought that all of the physics had been discovered there was this whole other world out there. I believe that’s true for consciousness. I think we’re just now starting to have more and more receptivity to studying that. But still, trying to understand—I think human consciousness is just too vast a topic and you’re not going to be able to understand it with conventional materialistic science. I mean, that’s only one tool in trying to obtain knowledge. Dr. Diane Powell's Website Play It: Listen Now: Download MP3 (40 min.) Read It: SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/alex/Downloads/Skeptiko-Diane-Powell-Interview-edited.rtf Today we welcome Dr. Diane Powell to Skeptiko. Diane has an amazing background, stellar credentials, Johns Hopkins trained neuroscientist, MD in psychiatry from Johns Hopkins, as well. Faculty position at Harvard Medical School. Salk Institute right here in my backyard in La Jolla. I mean, the credentials go on and on. She’s also written a book titled, The ESP Enigma. Dr. Powell, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to Skeptiko. Dr. Diane Powell: Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Alex Tsakiris: Well, I had a chance the other day to take a look at your excellent website at www.dianehennacypowell.com and I was really amazed. So many of the topics you cover are right up our alley here at Skeptiko, so I’m really looking forward to this dialogue. You teed up so many questions, more questions than I can possibly get to, so I hardly know where to begin. Dr. Diane Powell: I want to get people to think. That’s my mission. Alex Tsakiris: Great. You know, that I guess was one of my first questions because you do have such a stellar background. I had to wonder while I was reading this, gee, Diane, why can’t you just play nice with the other neuroscientists? Why do you have to go off and do this ESP thing and basically claim that the emperor has no clothes like you do? Hasn’t that been a rather difficult path for you to follow? Dr. Diane Powell: It has been a difficult path and unfortunately it’s not a path that’s embraced by academia. I’m somebody who grew up with academia in my blood. My father was a professor. He started out as a mathematician and geneticist. He ended up as a cardiovascular physiologist working as the head of the artificial heart program at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. So I grew up in a scientific family. One of my brothers is a theoretical physicist whose expertise is artificial intelligence. Coming from this family, I’m used to talking about challenging questions and searching for the truth, like a detective. That’s how I grew up. When I started to see holes in the model that neuroscientists had, I started to think, ‘Okay, how can we explain those holes? How can we explain those mysteries?’ I found that there so many things that were not explained and yet people were hanging onto that model and pouring lots of research dollars into continuing to find yet another neurotransmitter and another receptor for those neurotransmitters. I was thinking to myself,
