I thought the response was on the whole very good.
Alex,
First comment: I'm very glad that you persisted with the Ray Hyman vs Dean Radin comments. Like you say, this illustrates the point you were making. Ray Hyman seems to have made an accusation without first checking whether what he was saying was actually
true. He failed to apply critical thinking to his own argument, or so it seems. I second a demand for an apology or an immediate justification for his comments in light on Dean's interview. Perhaps Hyman
can justify his comments about adjusted baselines even in light of Radin's 2004 paper. It's interesting that Steve Novella decided not to comment on this. Why not? Did he not feel that Hyman's comments were unjustified? Perhaps he will eventually respond to these points regarding Ray Hyman's accusations. I'll be pleasantly surprised if he does.
Second comment: In the SGU podcast, Steve dwells on small effect sizes. I do not think this is as damning a point as he would like. Sure, the effect sizes in psi research are on the whole small. However, they are also on the whole highly significant. To call these highly significant but small effect sizes "noise" is really a claim of
methodological error, because lets face it, it's highly unlikely to be chance. Indeed, Novella suggests that researchers may be interupting poor performance trials on a subconscoius level to "check for calibration". But this is a groundless claim. With regards to the presentiment work (which was the original subject of the Hyman/Radin exchange), Radin's 2004 mini meta-analysis has this to say (taken from
http://www.scientificexploration.org...18.2_radin.pdf) :
"While working at Interval Research Corporation, I was asked to arrange for an
independent critical evaluation of the methodology and results of Experiment. Because assessments of controversial evidence tend to differ depending upon whether opinions are presented in public or in private, to encourage an unbiased review it was agreed in advance that the identities of the reviewers and the specifics of their written reports would remain confidential. Six experienced scientists were identified to conduct the review. Three were
sympathetic to the possibility of precognition, and three were skeptical. The
group’s expertise included statistics, experimental psychology, personality and
cognitive psychology, psychophysiology, computer science, and physics. The
reviewers unanimously agreed that they could not identify any methodological
flaws that could explain the observed outcomes. However, their personal
opinions about whether the data persuasively demonstrated precognition fell into close alignment with their a priori beliefs about the possibility of precognition. This outcome demonstrated one of the key difficulties encountered when trying to achieve scientific consensus about controversial ideas, especially ideas that are not yet supported by well-accepted theories. Members of the Society for Scientific Exploration are undoubtedly familiar with this syndrome. "
So it seems that the small effect size argument is not really a scientific argument as Novella would like us believe. I respect it as an opinion however, but it really just relies on a belief that small effect sizes are due to methodological error rather a small but real anomalous effect.
Other comments to follow...