> If the 1930s ESP experiments showed anomalies, lets reproduce them and learn something new.
There's not really anything to learn. There's no widespread evidence of ESP going on. The experiments back then were evidence enough that it doesn't exist. Yes, there were statistical anomalies, but perhaps you are misinterpreting the meaning of that phrase? If you roll a dice and get a 6 ten times in a row, and then you roll it more times and show a regression then you had an anomaly. If you continue rolling 6 then it's not an anomaly, it's evidence of something else. In those experiments they got anomalous sixes, but wanted to believe it was evidence so made up a story about ability fading or other explanations.
There are various things that people want to believe, and they'll keep coming up for as long as there are people. We each have so many thoughts and feelings and a long enough life that in our lifetimes there will be a few instances where a thought or feeling circumstantially matches reality in a way that makes us believe something more is going on. Most of the time its probably harmless and not worth getting worked up about. Sometimes it deserves investigation, and when disproof is not heeded, a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams.
> a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams.
I think this is only true if you think scammers are driven by a desire to avoid ridicule or if you think people that have been scammed are likely to respond positively to being ridiculed. As a parallel consideration, look at the current accepted wisdom for talking about online scams. As far as I know, the current consensus is not to ridicule people who have been ensnared by an online scam because it’s likely to get them to dig their heels in harder and more likely to cause them to not speak up if they think they’ve been scammed.
"a bit of ridicule might prevent future scams"
That is something I don't believe at all. Humans are emotional beings and some will react by defending whom them perceive as "the underdog speaking truth to power".
All the previous mocking didn't stop the growth of the anti-vaxx movement, for example, up to some serious levels (see also: the current US government). Even ye olde religion is still quite strong in many, regardless of the absurdity of some of its claims.
Looking at this thread, I get the impression that there are many high-IQ and low-EQ individuals who don't get the societal ramifications of being seen as an "establishment asshole sneering down on people".
I agree. Ridiculing Christians for worshipping a zombie, after all their god was a man who was killed then rose from the dead, isn't a productive approach. All that will really do is make Christians feel besieged which is a position they are very comfortable being in, feeling besieged by mean people actually just makes them feel vindicated.
A better approach is to maintain a respectful tone while not giving ground to them. Don't call Jesus a zombie, but do say that you don't think people can rise from the dead after three days. When they say that belief in a god is a necessary foundation for moral and ethical behavior, don't accuse them of only acting good because they're scared of punishment, but instead explain how secular bases for ethics and morality can work.
Skeptics should be able to explain their positions without throwing down with insults. Instead of trying to shame the other guys into silence, explain your own position respectfully. And when that doesn't immediately produce satisfying results, let it be. Some people will only come around after they've had a long time to think about it. Some people will go to the grave believing. That's fine. Becoming impatient and trying to force a satisfying conclusion to the confrontation might make you feel good but it isn't actually doing any net good in the long run.
I'm not high IQ low EQ. At least not high IQ. But I do think society is better when it has the capacity to laugh at it's own absurdities. Which also means mocking the establishment as well. In some ways I feel that what happened with the anti vaxx stuff was a serious lack of skepticism about the vaccines, and suppression of the more comical position: these have been rushed and might not be great but it's what we've got and it's probably better than getting COVID.
Mocking? The safety of vaccines has been continuously, rigorously studied by scientists the world over, and specifically unlikely vectors of danger have been studied and restudied because they became specific targets of the anti-vax movement as the source of danger. Ingredients which were proven to be non-dangerous were removed to try and keep vaccination rates up anyway.
The anti-vax movement is mocked because everything else was tried. And frankly you must be terminally online to think this is a problem, because the medical establishment bends over backwards to try and ensure kids are vaccinated. The anti-vaxxers get mocked in exactly one place: the internet, on Twitter, where they aggressively seek out and try to belittle others are spread misinformation. And then retreat into accusing people telling them off or correcting them that they're "causing them to reject science" as though they didn't start from the same position they already held.
It was actually annoyingly difficult when my son was born to stress to the hospital to give him all the routine vaccines as soon as possible, give him the Vitmin K etc. because the medical establishment doesn't know if a routine protective intervention, presented the wrong way, is going to lead to that child never receiving appropriate basic precautionary care.