There was a scientist who was scornful of everything that was not scientific. He harbored particular contempt for people who believed in things like ESP and ghosts. One day a study came out in a very legitimate and well respected journal of psychology that ESP was actually real! Like for real for real! The scholars behind the study said that proud, scornful science types like the proud, scornful scientist should seriously recognize and wring their caps and feel sheepish. Empiricists and natural scientists everywhere are so pissed. Meanwhile, the government goes, great! They hire a bunch of psychics and fortune tellers in the justice department and as detectives and consultants. Scientists are getting madder and madder, especially this one scientist who is honestly kind of an asshole to begin with. One day the Angry Scientist’s young son, who is the apple of the scientist’s eye and endlessly doted upon by the Angry Scientist and the Angry Scientist’s wife and indoctrinated by the Angry Scientist, gets kidnapped! The police look all over town and then the state for weeks but no one can find him. Finally, a psychic comes in and sniffs the kid’s baseball hat and instantly is like, oh, he’s in Rockaway at a jewelry store where he gets Mcdonalds whenever and plays with lifesize ceramic Dalmations. He’s fine. They go pick him up and the Angry Scientist and his wife are SO SO relieved and happy. They donate a ton of money to psychics’ unions and nonprofits that support paranormal research. Later, the Scientist finds out later that his son is psychic! And the psychic detective who found him actually has the Shining with the Scientist’s kid. So the Angry Scientist knows that in case he ever goes crazy and kills his family, the psychic detective with the Shining will know and maybe intervene. This is a comfort to the Scientist and allows him to chill out a little bit. Things are pretty good until the son grows up and hosts a TV show where he talks about the past lives of peoples’ dogs. The Scientist is mad again until some more scholars discover that dogs definitely have past lives and everybody should just shut up about it. By now the Scientist is old as hell and doesn’t care too much about anything besides binoculars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?hp
