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Originally Posted by Larry Boy  Aspirin has been proved to prevent heart-attacks, and the effect size was much, much smaller than in parapsychology studies. You suggest people should stop taking aspirin? |
This was not discovered by accident. Scientists had a good understanding of the pharmacological properties of aspirin and theorised that it could reduce the risks of heart attacks. They did trials with sufficient poer to demonstrate an effect.
The problem with small effect sizes with "psi" is that if the effect is close to that achievable by chance guessing then there is no possible way that somebody could have simply stumbled across it by trial and error. You don't have a sound scientific basis to guide the generation of hypotheses. There is no theory of "psi" let alone one that has been supported with experiments.
The question I always ask is how is it that you know what you think you know. You can either have something with a large effect size that you can find by trial and error or something with a small effect size and a sound scientific basis.