Ghosts as subject for scientific study

As I see it ghosts (spirits of those who have died) is contrary to the prevailing "physicalist" or "materialist" view of the vast majority of modern scientists.  I would say this is the ruling "paradigm," but I would appreciate it if I got that word off a bit: dictionaries are no help.

That means that scientists are not going to risk their careers investigating something they already know is nonsense.  It would be like asking one to investigate moon rocks for evidence of the presence of cheese.  Also, of course, a few have actually ventured into the area and come back empty-handed.  Scientists don't waste their time investigating things already disproved.

So the field is left to two other groups: those with a different belief-set who really want to somehow prove science "wrong" (although, ironically, were they to succeed science would merely co-opt them and alter its belief-set accordingly -- science does this on rare occasions -- and whoever was responsible would go down in history as having been a great scientist).  Then there are charlatans making money off it selling books and whatnot.

I personally think it is all a waste of time, not because I have a strong physicalist bias in my thinking, but because the reports have been around long enough with nothing convincing to the objective observer coming out of them that by now it is pretty plainly a mix of fraud, both venal and pious, superstition, delusion and over-active imaginations.