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Originally Posted by Ersby  Okay, but let's simplify things. Just two readings. One of which is full of platitudes which is pretty much applicable to everyone, while the other is full of inaccurate but specific guesses, amongst which is one very good hit. Are you saying the cynic would choose the second while the believer would chose the first? If so, I'd say that the cynic has chosen the one that is probably from the psychic, while the believer has chosen the cold-reader. |
I do see your intriguing point Ersby, the recipient/judges might have a bias towards detailed information even if wrong and another might have a bias towards correct information even if terribly vague
however ... ....that was not the protocol here, it was all mediums, not a medium vs cold reader .. there was no cold reading, no sensory clues. ... just a test to see if the recipients chose the the messages intended for them better.
Let me define the extremes of bias as ......
Biased Believer - someone who remembers the hits and forgets (or makes fit) the misses. This type of person will subconsciously help medium, if possible
Biased Disbeliever – someone who remembers the misses and forgets (or rationalizes) the hits. This person type of person will subconsciously prevent the medium being successful, if possible.
The key thing is a that the medium can only be successful in this type of experiment by the ability of the recipient to match hits, 'lucky hits' which will of course occur but will still not be above chance in a long enough trial run. The extremely biased believer can't help the medium due to the protocol, no sensory clues or cold reading is possible. However the biased disbeliever who wants the medium to fail will subconsciously avoid choosing best matches in my opinion.
Therefore in this design protocol Wiseman was rather quirky to choose only all male message recipients from the university (males are the more sceptical sex and academia or young male students are generally regarded as far more sceptical than the general public). It is of course unfair to say those judges were subconsciously wanting the mediums to fail, the length of the Wiseman trial was far too short to ever be meaningful anyway unless the mediums were producing strong effects.
Personally, I think Wiseman is subconsciously loading experimental designs and analysis in favour of a null hypothesis. But hey I could be wrong
We are all biased at times, the important thing is that the protocol prevents or minimizes it.