As a fellow skeptic, I would advise we avoid outright rejection. After all, part of the mantra is to question our own world view, right?
Disease existed long before we figured out causes and targeted treatments; people possessed it, and people applied treatments with varying degrees of success and failure, including death. One of the more interesting inaccuracies of medical history is that of humors (random site - http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/WomenMed.html). How we treated disease changed over time and is still changing as we learn new things.
My point? It is important to continue to apply rigid scientific study to all manners of phenomena, not only to validate its existence but also to figure out how to repeat or avoid said phenomena, depending on the need, the positives and the negatives of said phenomena. However, we should not turn a blind eye towards what people think they experience just because we have not yet come up with the right tool for measuring or the right study for identifying. There is always some reason behind the claim (even if the reason is "snake oil salesman").
Whatever is behind precognition (to take your example), people claim to experience it and always have made those claims. There is a certain burden of proof required, sure. How do you convince someone born deaf that there is a thing like sound that is experienced the way the hearing experience it? In the case of precognition, it tends to be self-validating (sometimes self-fulfilling), and yet it is still useful for precogs or those who believe in them, whether it is illusion or real, whether we have proven it concretely or not.
That bears a quick repeat... The information is somehow useful. These people who are shouting "open your mind" find their precognitive information useful; in their minds, challenges to this useful information are silly. In the name of understanding, the real focus should be on figuring out how that information is obtained. Is it psychic phenomena, a ghost whispering in the ear, great subconscious brain processing, or something else?
So if the response to an outright simple rejection is "open your minds", I think it is warranted. If the response is to indicate disagreement, however, I always thought that to be a useless response, as useless as the simple rejection.
Disease existed long before we figured out causes and targeted treatments; people possessed it, and people applied treatments with varying degrees of success and failure, including death. One of the more interesting inaccuracies of medical history is that of humors (random site - http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/WomenMed.html). How we treated disease changed over time and is still changing as we learn new things.
My point? It is important to continue to apply rigid scientific study to all manners of phenomena, not only to validate its existence but also to figure out how to repeat or avoid said phenomena, depending on the need, the positives and the negatives of said phenomena. However, we should not turn a blind eye towards what people think they experience just because we have not yet come up with the right tool for measuring or the right study for identifying. There is always some reason behind the claim (even if the reason is "snake oil salesman").
Whatever is behind precognition (to take your example), people claim to experience it and always have made those claims. There is a certain burden of proof required, sure. How do you convince someone born deaf that there is a thing like sound that is experienced the way the hearing experience it? In the case of precognition, it tends to be self-validating (sometimes self-fulfilling), and yet it is still useful for precogs or those who believe in them, whether it is illusion or real, whether we have proven it concretely or not.
That bears a quick repeat... The information is somehow useful. These people who are shouting "open your mind" find their precognitive information useful; in their minds, challenges to this useful information are silly. In the name of understanding, the real focus should be on figuring out how that information is obtained. Is it psychic phenomena, a ghost whispering in the ear, great subconscious brain processing, or something else?
So if the response to an outright simple rejection is "open your minds", I think it is warranted. If the response is to indicate disagreement, however, I always thought that to be a useless response, as useless as the simple rejection.