I wasn't suggesting that the data leads to telepathy. It may, it may not. I don't know. I haven't studied it. But dismissing anyone that studies it as a crank, and by implication anyone that supports them in that study as also a crank, is bad for all of us.

I'm less concerned about telepathy per se than with "science as politics". The social sciences are seeing some serious problems because there are things that scientists cannot say or talk about because of their political implications. Climate science is hampered by the problem of having to be constantly aware of the political ramifications of their research: are they "helping the deniers" if they publish a result?

If we start bringing this bullshit into hard science then we'll break that too. This is maths and physics. There's the hypothesis, there's the experiment. Do the experiment and validate the hypothesis. If the experiment isn't working, devise a better one. If the new theory leads to predictions then test those predictions. It's all objective, it can be tested, and those tests can be reproduced.

It's like free speech. I may not like the things you say, but I will absolutely support your right to say them. If you find telepathy interesting enough to study, then that's awesome. If you think you've got a result, and I'm interested enough, then I'll look at your methods and your data and work out if I agree with you or not. But dismissing you as a crank just because you're studying it is anti-scientific.

And just like free speech is being threatened by politics and there are now things that people must not say, science is becoming threatened and there are things that must not be published. This is bad imho.