pronounced like, "I am so ugly"
to anon: first of all, thanks for posting Radin's responses. I gave Hyman's criticism weight because the article I linked said that all the above chance results came from the 2nd or subsequent appearances of the target, which seems to suggest an artifact. It's potential flaws like this that make replication so important. Other labs apparently have had a tough time matching Honorton's 34% hit rate.
David: I don't think anybody except maybe Randi seriously thinks there is any real cheating going on in the ganzfeld, but things could happen to subconciously cue a receiver as to what the right target is as you said. You say a poor result with stricter controls doesn't mean that the initial results were no good and I agree, but it does mean that we don't have a psi effect that can be repeated under satisfactory controls, which is what we need.
As for the Dog's that Know thing, whatever the reason for the current results I can say with 100 percent confidence that they have nothing whatsoever to do with hearing and smell and I can't really imagine anybody who understands the experiment arguing that they do with a straight face.
I agree that antipathy towards psi makes it impossible for hardline skeptics to get significant results by themselves but what is needed, and should be possible if psi is real, is to get positive results in joint experiments between skeptics and proponents, like Alex is trying to do. Hopefully in 15 to 20 years this debate will basically be settled.  |