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Originally Posted by Topher The debate over the ganzfeld is unusual in the history of the debate with Skeptics in that there is some acknowledgment that science is about replication and the overall weight of the evidence. However, please note: Charles Honorton hoped that the auto-ganzfeld could be turned into a utility experiment that could be run and would reliably generate positive results. This property is certainly very useful, but is not a logical requirement for an experiment to be considered valid, and experiments in other fields are not particularly expected to behave this way. Unfortunately, he did not believe that he had reached that point when he lost funding and later died young. |
I agree that it is not a logical requirement. But it is incredibly useful because then you can use the base replicable experiment as a springboard for modified protocols that allow you to test various hypotheses. If the base experiment is squirrely, you don't know how to interpret failure of the modified experiments. It would be like trying to design advanced airplanes even while the base biplane design doesn't fly reliably.
It doesn't make hypothesis testing impossible, but it sure makes the job harder.
~~ Paul