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Originally Posted by kimosabu  Ok - I'm genuinly trying to see the arguements from both sides here so bear with me... I'm fascinated by paranormal claims, and I would love to see someone conclusively demonstrate the existence of psi. However if it were my money and I was offering to *give* it away I expect I would want a similar benchmark. It would be a different story if I was *betting* someone, but thats not the case. |
Well the problem is that you can't solve a scientific problem by setting up a challenge that has a ridiculous benchmark in order to secure money that shouldn't be involved in scientific research in the first place. Now I know that skeptics will say that it's just a test, it's not a research, but see my above post for my response to that.
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Originally Posted by kimosabu As far as the Ganzfeld experiment, yes it's *possible* that some psi is being demonstrated, but if the results are so marginal that it would take 4 years of nonstop testing to produce a 1 in 1,000,000 certainty, isn't is also possible that some inconsistency in the controls is causing the result rather than psi? In other words, if psi does exist why wouldn't someone - anyone (or any dog) - be able to demonstrate a near 100% hit rate? |
Because we're talking about human performance! In no ordinary psychology experiment would you expect a near 100% hit rate. Nor would you expect a football (or soccer, in the US) player to score every time he shoots. As for the effects being small, they're even smaller in a lot of medical research, and those results are still seen as valid.