Dr. Rodney Schmaltz

But definitely more research to be done before we can make any claims either way there.

Well, I'm interested in why people believe in things that don't have good evidence.

So helping people become better consumers of information.

And once people believe something, we know it's really hard to change their minds.

And part of the reason is that when you tell someone that something is false, say that ghosts don't exist, you've created this cognitive gap.

So they've experienced something, it felt ghost-like, and then somebody comes along and says, there's no evidence for ghosts.

It's like, well, then what did I experience?

So I hope research like this will give people at least some pause, like, okay, maybe what I experienced is an old...

low rumbling pipe or an old boiler.

So what we're doing then is helping fill in that cognitive gap.

So my colleagues are more interested in kind of in the noise pollution side.

I'm more interested in kind of the education side and giving people explanations for supposedly paranormal events.

Absolutely.

Like I said, people are experiencing something.

It's a genuine feeling.

And we know from past research that expectation is a huge driver of experiencing anomalous or paranormal things.

So if you've been told a house is haunted and you go into the basement and you feel something, it's very reasonable to think that it is ghostly.

When again, it could just be a factor of the environment in an old building.

Oh, happy to do it.