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Originally Posted by InKY  Maybe someone can clarify for me: people often state that observing particles changes their action (or vibration, or something); when we studied this situation way back in Physics class, it was the presence of the electrically charged particals in the observer coming close to the observed particles that affected them, not the actual decision to observe. Is the afore-mentioned statement a misunderstanding of the actual nature of the affect on the particles, or have I missed something? |
Woah, you're stepping into Schroedinger's cat and the whole causality debate there.
That's a whole different can of worms.
Scientists can class quite a lot of effects as 'Unproven' with this method.
The basic arguement that you being there to observe affects the results of the experiment, but to prove that 'will' (I'm not getting into a semantic debate about the spelling of 'magic') can affect the outcome of an experiment, someone has to be there.
Using this arguement it will be completely impossible to ever prove that unexplained phenomena exist, this is a wall that science can throw up at any time to say 'if we don't know what it is, then it doesn't exist'.
It's the scientific version of the 'faith' arguement that religion uses.
The majority of scientists are open to the fact that they don't know everything, and that there may be something unexplained happening that may be explainable in the future.
The problem is that the heavy hitters in the science world are pretty confident in their omniscience and will shoot down anything that may give the impression that they can't explain something.
If you want a perfect example of something that can be proven to work yet have no scientific explanation, just look at dowsing.
(Sorry for veering away from your point a little Inky, I got carried away)