Being Duped by Richard Wiseman Video Explains DogsThatKnow

[alextsakiris]

In the last episode of Skeptiko I mentioned how little I thought of quirky psychological anomalies Skeptics offer up as explanation of parapsychological phenomenon.

Michael Shemmer's standard take on this is the video of the gorilla in the basketball game (see the link below for more). This is usually followed by a wave of the hand and not so subtle implication that this kind of perceptual blindness is probably what accounts for all the foolish parapsychological phenomena folks experience.

After the last episode of Skeptiko, one of our listeners (Tom) sent me a similar, and very entertaining clip, from Dr. Richard Wiseman. Take a look before reading further:

Quirkology - The Colour-changing Card Trick

It's not that I don't find this stuff interesting... I think it's great. It just doesn’t have much to do with explaining psychic readings, DogsThatKnow, PK, or anything else in parapsychology.

Here's why... all these tricks our brain/mind play on us are easily counter-balanced by our ability to reason. Let me prove it. Go back and watch the Wiseman video again, but this time look for the color changes. Did you catch them? Of course you did! It's easy once you know the game and pay attention. So, why should it be any harder to ferret out fake psychics, or animal communicators? It's not!

Worried about falling prey to the cruel duplicity of a ‘cold reading'? Call up a psychic (as I did about a year ago) and tell them you're not a debunker but that the most valuable thing you could get out of their reading is confirmation of psychic phenomena. Explain that you would therefore like to provide them with as little information as possible during the reading. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers usually works well enough. Once they agree with to this protocol, proceed with the reading. When you’re done, listen to the recording and rate the accuracy of each answer, or have a friend/spouse independently rate it. You may have to try a few different psychics (it took me three tries), but once you get a good reading the results will be self-evident.

The same holds true for our DogsThatKnow experiments. You may recall the Skeptiko interview with Richard Wiseman where he admitted that his data matched Rupert Sheldrake’s, but he refused to accept the overall conclusions of the experiment. He referenced the, ‘many difficulties of running experiments I the field’ as a probable explanation for Shedrake’s ‘error’. This is a perfect example of this ‘blindness fallacy’. The DogsThatKnow expeiremnt is very simple and straightforward. With the least bit of safeguards for data contamination the results can be counted on… unless you’re a Skeptic.

[Phronk]

I agree that the "unnoticed gorilla" phenomena has little to do with "blindness" in scientific inquiry. If you sent these videos through a peer review process as proof that there are no gorillas at basketball games, I think someone would catch it pretty quick.

But I think this is true of both "skeptics" and parapsychologists. So I wouldn't go so far as to turn this around and say that parapsychologists are immune to this blindness, then accuse Wiseman of being prone to it.

The fact is that we're dealing with noisy, ambiguous data here. Preexisting biases can determine how it's interpreted. I think the best thing to do is to design more experiments that produce less and less ambiguous data. That's one of the awesome aspects about this "Dogs That Know" thing you're doing - hopefully it can produce such data. Make that gorilla so big and obnoxious that nobody can miss it.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Phronk

I agree that the "unnoticed gorilla" phenomena has little to do with "blindness" in scientific inquiry. If you sent these videos through a peer review process as proof that there are no gorillas at basketball games, I think someone would catch it pretty quick.

But I think this is true of both "skeptics" and parapsychologists. So I wouldn't go so far as to turn this around and say that parapsychologists are immune to this blindness, then accuse Wiseman of being prone to it.

The fact is that we're dealing with noisy, ambiguous data here. Preexisting biases can determine how it's interpreted. I think the best thing to do is to design more experiments that produce less and less ambiguous data. That's one of the awesome aspects about this "Dogs That Know" thing you're doing - hopefully it can produce such data. Make that gorilla so big and obnoxious that nobody can miss it.

Of course your'e right. Preexisting bias does cut both ways.

The main point I was trying to make is how insulting it is to hear Skeptics suggest these cognitive biases can explain things like 'cold readings'... they can only as long as you don't know what the game is, then the blindspot goes away.

[Open Mind]

I think psychologists own expectation can also make them misinterpret or misreport what really occurred.

In the 1980s, Steiner fooled many sceptics at a CSICOP conference by claiming he could detect extremely subtle sensory cues (also known as 'cold reading'). They probably believed him because they believe psychics when successful are doing this, in other words the sceptics were willing to believe a very implausible cold reading type act as real.

(AFAIK there has never been proper controlled trials to test just how accurately magicians can 'cold read' it is possibly far less impressive than skeptics think because professional mentalist's have been known to cheat (i.e. hot reading) when presenting it as what mediums do. )

Similarly President of the Society for Psychical Research in the 70s and 80s, Professor Arthur Ellison (trained in both electronics and psychiatry) when giving a lecture would occasionally pre-arrange for an ordinary-looking bowl of flowers to be placed on a table in front of him to be secretly raised electro-magnetically so it floated upwards, levitated and then descended. He would get the audience to 'aum' to hide the electromagnet hum The 'aum' also helped disenchant debunkers .

On one occasion 5 out of 6 sceptical witnesses claimed the bowl of flowers didn't levitate... but it did So while some believers tended to add frills rather than just report what they saw at the other extreme some sceptics entered denial.

Professor Marcello Truzzi once wrote ....... 'There are some myths about science and scientists that need to be dispelled. Science gets mistaken as a body of knowledge for its method. Scientists are regarded as having superhuman abilities of rationality inside objectivity. Many studies in the psychology of science, however, indicate that scientists are at least as dogmatic and authoritarian, at least as foolish and illogical as everybody else, including when they do science. In one study on falsifiability, an experiment was described, an hypothesis was given to the participants, the results were stated, and the test was to see whether the participants would say, "This falsifies the hypothesis". The results indicated denial, since most of the scientists refused to falsify their hypotheses, sticking with them despite a lack of evidence! Strangely, clergymen were much more frequent in recognizing that the hypotheses were false.

The problem is 'expectation'. And the problem with regard to psychologists is that most have expectations that paranormal phenomena never occur and there is a 'normal' psychological explanation. This makes many psychologists vulnerable to misinterpretation too IMHO.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

(AFAIK there has never been proper controlled trials to test just how accurately magicians can 'cold read' it is possibly far less impressive than skeptics think because professional mentalist's have been known to cheat (i.e. hot reading) when presenting it as what mediums do. )

Interesting post... the above really made me think... I bet you're right.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

Worried about falling prey to the cruel duplicity of a ‘cold reading'? Call up a psychic (as I did about a year ago) and tell them you're not a debunker but that the most valuable thing you could get out of their reading is confirmation of psychic phenomena. Explain that you would therefore like to provide them with as little information as possible during the reading. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answers usually works well enough. Once they agree with to this protocol, proceed with the reading. When you’re done, listen to the recording and rate the accuracy of each answer, or have a friend/spouse independently rate it. You may have to try a few different psychics (it took me three tries), but once you get a good reading the results will be self-evident.

First of, cold reading is not only about the medium fishing for verbal answers. If you read books about mentalism, and especially about cold reading, you'll discover that. It's also about looking for external informations, taking from the way you look, and any other non-verbal informations your body (the way you look, you move, and so on) can give during the interraction with the psychic or mentalist. So in the "experiment" your proposing there, you're not controlling at all for cold reading, you're just preventing the medium for fishing for verbal informations. It's of course important, but it's not enough for preventing cold reading at all.

Second, cold reading uses knowledge about human behing. For exemple, if the medium says: "Do you sometimes have back pain?". In your experiment, you'll probably score that has a hint. The problem is: in average, more than half the people will answer "yes" to that answer. So in reality, it's not a hit at all, it's just that your medium knows well the art of cold reading. But your "experience" doesn't control for that either.

Third, your "experiment" doesn't control at all for hoaxer or "hot reading". Let's play this little script: someone does what you're proposing. After a while, he goes to Mr. X, and this medium is really really good: the scoring is really really good. According to you, that's good proof that psi does exist. The only thing is: Mr. X had small microphones in the waiting room, and he was listening to the converstion his client had in his waiting room with someone else, before letting him inside his office. So with this easy trickery, he scores a lot of hits. You're "experiment" doesn't control for that either. And this kind of trickery is an old one. I know someone who was doing that in the 40s, in a fare, with a friend of his listening for him in the waiting room, then reporting to him before he met a client. Nothing new to that kind a trickery, and really easy to pull of.

So I must say the advice you're giving is really a bad one...

they can only as long as you don't know what the game is, then the blindspot goes away.

I don't agree with that: I think that cognitive bias plays even when you know a lot about a subject. Nobody is above cognitive bias. Cognitive bias are hard-wire in the human brain by evolution. A lot of Skeptics will agree with that, I think.

But anyhow, by reading what you're saying above about "cold reading", I don't think you really know what the game is. So it doesn't matter...

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Venom

So I must say the advice you're giving is really a bad one...

Alex said 'call up' ....I assumed he means telephone call. If so, none of your criticism really applies. The only sensory clue would be tone of voice.

Hmm... is this also an example of cognitive bias, skeptics misreading vital clues in posts and interpreting what they want to?

[Venom]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Alex said 'call up' ....I assumed he means telephone call. If so, none of your criticism really applies. The only sensory clue would be tone of voice.

If you read my post, you'll see that my only point about sensory clue is the first one. The second one, knowledge about what would seem specific to a lot of people, but in reality is not specific at all, is still completely valid.

And the voice can of course give away informations too (your a man or a woman, if your young or old, if you have confidence in your voice, the fact that you don't want to answer by yes or no means you are in some way skeptical of the claim, and so on). If your voice is not like the voice of a robot, each time you will say "yes" or "no" you will give away, by the tone of your voice, if he's going the right direction or not (and that's assuming you can avoid making other noice like "hum-hum" in approbation of a hint for exemple).

And when you answer "no" to a question like "I see a ring. Do you have a special ring?", he knows that he has to reinterpret the miss like "Maybe it's not a ring, maybe it's another piece of jewellery. A necklace?" (well, anyway, woman has jewellery, and every man has a watch, so that's no surprise either...), or he could say "Maybe it's not your ring. Did you're mother had a special ring?", and so on. So yes and no DO give a lot of informations...

But anyway, ok, I missed the idea that this was on the phone only. Of course there is still the problem of the evaluation of what is consider a hit or a miss. He says:

When you’re done, listen to the recording and rate the accuracy of each answer, or have a friend/spouse independently rate it.

The main argument here is that most of the people evaluate like a hit something that is not really a hint.

It's what we call "fallacy of personal validation". The Forer effect works on the phone as well.

Forer effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of course having his wife helping is a nice idea, and a cute one, but still it doesn't help the fact that they will find hit where in fact there is none.

With the Forer effect and other psychological aspect of human beings, psychics can even work on the internet (chatroom, and so on). The only thing is: there "hits" are not really convincing for those of us who don't have a belief in the paranormal.

Maybe he will pretend that the psychic could say real specific stuff, like the name of the company he works with, or the number on his identitiy card. But if this medium can do that (and he's really not doing any "hot reading"), well this medium should apply right away for the Million Dollar Challenge.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Venom

If you read my post, you'll see that my only point about sensory clue is the first one. The second one, knowledge about what would seem specific to a lot of people, but in reality is not specific at all, is still completely valid.

And the voice can give away informations too (your a man or a woman, if you have confidence in your voice at the beginning of the call or not, the fact that you don't want to answer by yes or no means you are in some way skeptical of the claim, and so on).

But anyway, ok, I missed the idea that this was on the phone only, but of course there is still the problem of the evaluation of what is consider a hit or a miss. He says:



The main argument here is that most of the people evaluate like a hit something that is not really a hint.

It's what we call "fallacy of personal validation". The Forer effect works on the phone as well.

Forer effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of course having his wife helping is a nice idea, and a cute one, but still it doesn't help the fact that they will find hit where in fact there is none.

Maybe he will pretend that the psychic could say real specific stuff, like the name of the company he works with, or the number on his identitiy card. But if this medium can do that (and he's really not doing any "hot reading"), well this medium should apply right away for the Million Dollar Challenge.

My suggestions for the psyic readinng were for a DIY exercise anyone can perform to gain personal experience of this phenomena.

I don't know why I waited as long as I did before expereinceing a psychic reading fristhand. It's the differecne between having someone explain what it's like to swim in the ocean versuses dong it yourself.

The protocol I suggested is derived from Gary Schartz's experiments. They were a useful way for me to control the psychic reading and use it for my purposes -- confirming the validity of the psychic phenomena.

As far as the actualy experiemnts in this area, take a look at Gary Schwartz's work. They've controlled for every possible informatiopn leak... they use an email exchange so no part of the voice can be used... they blind the sitter, reader and even the raters and experiementers. Their results are still highly significant... and widely ignored.

[David Bailey]

Venom,

I think it is necessary to step back a bit here. Some experimental cheats exist in every area, for example:

Jan Hendrik Schön - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Strangely enough, even though he was found to have cheated in some of his organic semiconductor work, some of his other papers are now thought to contain genuine results. Even Mendel is now thought to have cheated in some of his genetics experiments, because some of the results are too perfect. Obviously cheating is highly undesirable, but it should be put into context.

Clearly, if you need to take possible cheating into account, very little cutting edge science can be considered valid - only stuff like acid+base=salt+water (OK, I exaggerate a little), that has been repeated endless times can be considered safe.

Given that this is the case, it is easy to take an area such as parapsychology that doesn't fit with certain assumptions that you hold dear (purely physical universe), and discredit it.

Whether your assumptions are right or wrong, can't you see that simply labelling all your intellectual opponents as either cheats of gullible, doesn't take the argument much further!

One solution would be to rule the evidence of psychics as too suspect to use, but there is a danger of doing this with one type of of potential ψ-phenomena after another, pushing parapsychology into utterly sterile card guessing experiments and then losing the effects. A genuine sceptic should be concerned to test the phenomena that are reported - not just to try to eliminate them from consideration.

Maybe Alex should choose a good psychic using his current method, and get him to cold read a number of subjects - each of whom would have been primed to give away as little as possible. Then the question would be if a group of spouses could sort out the readings (in written form) and attach the right name to each reading.

David