I just want to jump in and say that I really enjoyed the start of Season 2 of Skeptiko. The touches of humour and more polished feel were welcome. I liked the short snippets of interview in this context, but I do hope that the longer in-depth interviews of "Season 1" aren't completely abandoned.
On another note...I'm surprised by the results of Sheldrake's analysis that Open Mind brought up. Although I wouldn't expect as much double blinding in the so-called "hard" sciences (they obviously should be using it as much as anyone else, but they're probably not as aware of the psychological processes that blinding is designed to protect against), I would have expected it to be common in psychology research.
I didn't read the whole article, but it is worth noting that only a handful of journals were chosen to represent each one, and they don't go into much detail about how they were coded as blind or not (i.e., was this research itself blind? Given Sheldrake's obvious biases and the subject matter of the article, I would really hope so, but it doesn't seem to be the case). Still, it's cause for alarm.  |