Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Big Paranormal Problem

Here is something that often isn't ever addressed until you find yourself or your team or group in the middle of it. An that is, the competitive nature of the paranormal investigator, and the ego's. This competitive nature and ego problem leads to another problem. The unwillingness to share collected data, and information with fellow researchers and investigators.

It's as if they think there is some great notoriety or money in this research. The truth of the matter is, there isn't.

The competitiveness and ego's all to often lead to fighting between teams, and groups. Fighting and arguing on message forums, and other forms of Internet communication, is one thing. But when you get into real life fighting between two teams or groups that are in the same area, It then can quickly get out of hand.

When two teams begin to fight over a location it does none any good. It ends up most of the time with these two competing teams going back and forth to a client telling the client this or that about the other team. Resulting hopefully in, neither team getting into the location.

I have been lucky thus far, to have not been involved in any of this behavior. But i have lost count in seeing this happen on numerous forums and chat rooms.

All this behavior does is hamper the forward progress of the paranormal community, to an extent. And lets face it, most of the teams and groups that behave this way, aren't really contributing much to the paranormal community. They certainly aren't sharing data, or conducting any kind of ground breaking experiments. So for the most part as a whole, the community isn't losing much.

There are a few organizations that are attempting to span the distance between teams, and groups. One such organization is International Paranormal Investigators. The organization is the brain child of Ryan O'neill, of Scottish Paranormal, who seen the need to try and bring together as many teams and organizations through out the world that he could, in order to share data and research. Thus far the undertaking has been a success. Boasting the cooperation of multiple teams in 36 states, 3 continents, including Canada, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Scandinavia, and reaching out to teams through out Asia, Australia and new Zealand.

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1 comment:

Jessica said...

Until this past month, I had never encountered an investigator in the field with an "ego" and our group has been lucky to partner with other area groups to share the sometimes acquired cost of hunts, as well as equipment. We had never had a problem until, someone who I shall not name, went onto a radio show I will not name, and claimed our evidence as their own. I would not of been bothered by it as much if said person would of mentioned that it was caught with our group...but...the way it was said...made it sound as if the new group that person X belongs to caught it. Maybe I have been in college too long, but, as far as I know, when you use someone else's work, you give them proper citation. Then you have the run of the mill name dropping investigator that thinks because they "know Jay and Grant" that their word should be taken as the authority.

I can see how this can cause problems between groups. It seems as if it is something very silly to squabble over though. Yet, it still remains.

Then we wonder why paranormal investigators are not taken seriously....