Post by CougarBob on Jul 11, 2008 13:18:24 GMT -11
This being the continuance of the first season, long after the original batch was filmed, the first part of the episode is a combination of reintroduction and setup. I was quickly reminded of one essential truth regarding GHI: it is a very, very new team with none of the long-term partnerships evident in TAPS. Some of them have worked together, sure, but the dynamic is different when the team composition is based on production design vs. existing status quo.
Rob continues to play the leadership role, and I think he’s growing into doing it for television nicely (even if I disagree with some of his opinions about his team members). Andy continues to be the earnest debunker, and no matter what others may say, I still enjoy and appreciate his presence. He may not be the strongest critical thinker in the world, but he tries, and that’s a lot more than I can say for some members of TAPS these days.
Donna continues to play the spiritualistic case manager, which is the role the editors chose for her years ago. I would still like to see that engineering education play a bigger role, but that’s not how she was taught in the field, so it’s not likely to change. For the most part, she’s a comfortable presence: a bit softer than the rest of the guys and a cooperative team member as a whole.
Barry is described by Rob as the source of strong scientific ideas. This follows a trend that I see in the field as a whole. Using new ideas, sometimes with technical equipment, does not equate to scientific investigative practice. Yes, utilizing a camera with the capability of capturing a wider spectrum of light on an image is technically helpful, but there’s analytical expertise that needs to come with the package. The images need to be interpreted correctly. Someone who jumps at every noise and shadow is not in the right psychological state of mind to judge a photographic anomaly objectively. (Also, while I appreciate innovation, it’s not innovation if the idea has been around for years!)
Rob also makes a similar mistake regarding Brian. In the field, the term “tech manager” means many different things. One would hope it means someone who understands every aspect of the equipment being used, why it is used, and how the data generated by the equipment should be interpreted. All too often, it means “the guy who sets things up and checks the bags at the end of the night”. With all due respect to Brian, for all his earnest desire to investigate, I think he’s much closer to the latter than the former. (However, if Brian should ever correct the rest of the team on the proper interpretation of FLIR footage in a future episode, I’ll consider myself proven wrong.)
That brings me to the biggest surprise of the episode: the replacement of Shannon with Dustin Pari, formerly of TAPS. I see this as an instant improvement. Shannon was never a good fit for the group, and while her apparent lack of experience may have been played up for the cameras, she was no better than Brian or Barry (or even Donna) when it came to keeping a level head. Dustin, on the other hand, was a bit more reliable during his time with TAPS, and he’s certainly more popular than Shannon ever was with the fanbase.
Two things impressed me about GHI during its initial run: the stronger emphasis on debunking and the somewhat more consistent criteria for accepting activity as paranormal. Neither was perfect, but both were better than the current status quo on “Ghost Hunters”. I greatly appreciate the idea that an argument for confirmed paranormal activity is built with overlapping sources of anomalous data. I may quibble over whether or not the data is interpreted correctly, but I can’t argue the general rule. A single event does not constitute overwhelming evidence.
Larnach Castle was certainly an impressive location, and another that might have been too large for such a small team. That said, the team did a good job of covering the areas that were mentioned in the client’s reports. And accordingly, I thought Andy did a very good job of debunking many of the claims, particularly the “phantom odors” and Brian’s discovery of elevated EMF. It seems obvious and a bit arrogant to push those explanations, but frankly, it’s rare in the field, especially when so many groups just want to find anything paranormal in a location.
That said, I was a little disappointed when Andy (and Rob, to be fair) fell into the same FLIR trap that has tangled TAPS all too often in the past. Cold spots in a castle seem like an inevitable problem to me, especially when everyone is commenting on how cold it is outside, but that’s beside the point. The FLIR simply will not register air temperature. Period. Rob might have discovered a “cold spot”, but the FLIR is still reading the temperature of the wall behind him.
I’m also not sure that the “Singapore Method” is as well-designed as the team seems to think it is. While playing period music is an intriguing notion, it would be a lot more meaningful if played in an empty room under surveillance. By playing it in a room with the investigators, the tone and mood of the music is more likely to influence the psychological state of the investigators than anything else. And that, in turn, will influence their perceptions, from noticing small ambient noises in the sudden silence to the “feeling” of the room.
Other “evidence” was a bit more intriguing. I thought Dustin and Donna did a great job of adjusting to the noise of plates rattling. They heard the noise (capturing it on audio at the same time), adjusted their monitoring strategy to account for the noise, and managed to catch more unusual sounds as a result. Granted, it could have been something as simple as a mouse (given that it’s a big castle in the middle of the night), but gathering more than one point of data is the name of the game, and they made the right kind of effort.
The “evidence” that excited GHI the most, however, was the face in Barry’s photo. While I always question photographic evidence, since pattern recognition is a powerful deceiver, I like how the team went through the due diligence to find the video from the moment the photo was taken to show how where all the team members were at that exact moment. All too often, “ghost photos” are tossed out to the paranormal community without a whiff of context, as if the conclusions should be based on faith. I may not be convinced in this instance, but they made an effort.
In the end, Rob declared the site haunted. I can understand that from their perspective. They were convinced that the face in the photo was a ghost, and so that had to be very compelling. I think I was more impressed by the changes in the team and how much of the reported activity was debunked. It’s what drew me to the original “Ghost Hunters” in the first place, and I’m happy to see it continue at least somewhere in the franchise.
John Keegan
Reprinted with permission
Original source: c. Critical Myth, 2008
All rights reserved
Link: www.criticalmyth.com
Thanks to Entil2001 for giving me permission to re-post this article.
Rob continues to play the leadership role, and I think he’s growing into doing it for television nicely (even if I disagree with some of his opinions about his team members). Andy continues to be the earnest debunker, and no matter what others may say, I still enjoy and appreciate his presence. He may not be the strongest critical thinker in the world, but he tries, and that’s a lot more than I can say for some members of TAPS these days.
Donna continues to play the spiritualistic case manager, which is the role the editors chose for her years ago. I would still like to see that engineering education play a bigger role, but that’s not how she was taught in the field, so it’s not likely to change. For the most part, she’s a comfortable presence: a bit softer than the rest of the guys and a cooperative team member as a whole.
Barry is described by Rob as the source of strong scientific ideas. This follows a trend that I see in the field as a whole. Using new ideas, sometimes with technical equipment, does not equate to scientific investigative practice. Yes, utilizing a camera with the capability of capturing a wider spectrum of light on an image is technically helpful, but there’s analytical expertise that needs to come with the package. The images need to be interpreted correctly. Someone who jumps at every noise and shadow is not in the right psychological state of mind to judge a photographic anomaly objectively. (Also, while I appreciate innovation, it’s not innovation if the idea has been around for years!)
Rob also makes a similar mistake regarding Brian. In the field, the term “tech manager” means many different things. One would hope it means someone who understands every aspect of the equipment being used, why it is used, and how the data generated by the equipment should be interpreted. All too often, it means “the guy who sets things up and checks the bags at the end of the night”. With all due respect to Brian, for all his earnest desire to investigate, I think he’s much closer to the latter than the former. (However, if Brian should ever correct the rest of the team on the proper interpretation of FLIR footage in a future episode, I’ll consider myself proven wrong.)
That brings me to the biggest surprise of the episode: the replacement of Shannon with Dustin Pari, formerly of TAPS. I see this as an instant improvement. Shannon was never a good fit for the group, and while her apparent lack of experience may have been played up for the cameras, she was no better than Brian or Barry (or even Donna) when it came to keeping a level head. Dustin, on the other hand, was a bit more reliable during his time with TAPS, and he’s certainly more popular than Shannon ever was with the fanbase.
Two things impressed me about GHI during its initial run: the stronger emphasis on debunking and the somewhat more consistent criteria for accepting activity as paranormal. Neither was perfect, but both were better than the current status quo on “Ghost Hunters”. I greatly appreciate the idea that an argument for confirmed paranormal activity is built with overlapping sources of anomalous data. I may quibble over whether or not the data is interpreted correctly, but I can’t argue the general rule. A single event does not constitute overwhelming evidence.
Larnach Castle was certainly an impressive location, and another that might have been too large for such a small team. That said, the team did a good job of covering the areas that were mentioned in the client’s reports. And accordingly, I thought Andy did a very good job of debunking many of the claims, particularly the “phantom odors” and Brian’s discovery of elevated EMF. It seems obvious and a bit arrogant to push those explanations, but frankly, it’s rare in the field, especially when so many groups just want to find anything paranormal in a location.
That said, I was a little disappointed when Andy (and Rob, to be fair) fell into the same FLIR trap that has tangled TAPS all too often in the past. Cold spots in a castle seem like an inevitable problem to me, especially when everyone is commenting on how cold it is outside, but that’s beside the point. The FLIR simply will not register air temperature. Period. Rob might have discovered a “cold spot”, but the FLIR is still reading the temperature of the wall behind him.
I’m also not sure that the “Singapore Method” is as well-designed as the team seems to think it is. While playing period music is an intriguing notion, it would be a lot more meaningful if played in an empty room under surveillance. By playing it in a room with the investigators, the tone and mood of the music is more likely to influence the psychological state of the investigators than anything else. And that, in turn, will influence their perceptions, from noticing small ambient noises in the sudden silence to the “feeling” of the room.
Other “evidence” was a bit more intriguing. I thought Dustin and Donna did a great job of adjusting to the noise of plates rattling. They heard the noise (capturing it on audio at the same time), adjusted their monitoring strategy to account for the noise, and managed to catch more unusual sounds as a result. Granted, it could have been something as simple as a mouse (given that it’s a big castle in the middle of the night), but gathering more than one point of data is the name of the game, and they made the right kind of effort.
The “evidence” that excited GHI the most, however, was the face in Barry’s photo. While I always question photographic evidence, since pattern recognition is a powerful deceiver, I like how the team went through the due diligence to find the video from the moment the photo was taken to show how where all the team members were at that exact moment. All too often, “ghost photos” are tossed out to the paranormal community without a whiff of context, as if the conclusions should be based on faith. I may not be convinced in this instance, but they made an effort.
In the end, Rob declared the site haunted. I can understand that from their perspective. They were convinced that the face in the photo was a ghost, and so that had to be very compelling. I think I was more impressed by the changes in the team and how much of the reported activity was debunked. It’s what drew me to the original “Ghost Hunters” in the first place, and I’m happy to see it continue at least somewhere in the franchise.
John Keegan
Reprinted with permission
Original source: c. Critical Myth, 2008
All rights reserved
Link: www.criticalmyth.com
Thanks to Entil2001 for giving me permission to re-post this article.