Quote:
Originally Posted by Rudism 
trials during which the bird did not respond with words matching to the owner's "psychic" signal are evidence that the stimulus does not exist. But most of this data was thrown out, apparently using the very excuse that the bird did not appear to get any psychic messages during that trial! If that's not bias, I don't know what is.
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Sheldrake actually said that the parrot did not appear to get any telepathic impressions when it was silent?
Let's suppose this was indeed the case and the parrot really did not receive any telepathic impressions at those times. Let's imagine the following scenario. Suppose you were to think of a digit from 0-9 (inclusive), and you did this on 20,000 different occasions, and each time I was asked to put down what number I thought it was utilizing any telepathic ability I have. But say on half of those occasions I didn't put a number down because I felt I wasn't getting any telepathic impression. However, for the 10,000 times where I
did put a number down, I get the right number 15% of the time. You would maintain that is less impressive than if you had only chosen a digit 10,000 times and I had got 15% of them right?