Response to Skeptics' Guide Host, Dr. Steven Novella (Podcast)

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Venom

It's because "Extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence"

This skeptic catchphrase is accredited to Marcello Truzzi (co-founder of CSICOP) who later questioned the wisdom of his own phrase and the misuse of it by debunkers.

'.....I turned it into the now popular phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" (which Carl Sagan popularized into what is almost the war cry of some scoffers). As anomalistic psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones observed, this demand "may be not only used but misused to the point where no amount of evidence of a paranormal claim will avail against a skeptic who has already prejudged the issue." The central problem however lies in the fact that "extraordinary" must be relative to some things "ordinary." and as our theories change, what was once extraordinary may become ordinary (best seen in now accepted quantum effects that earlier were viewed as "impossible"). Many now extraordinary claims may become more acceptable not when they are replicated but when theoretical contexts change to make them more welcome. ......'

'........When criticizing the paranormal, scientists who are scoffers usually fail to bring the same professional standards expected of them in their own fields. This is particularly evident when one looks at their praise for articles reporting experiments on the paranormal that obtained negative results. Some of these articles contain questionable methods and conclusions and probably would never have passed peer review had they shown positive results. .....'

[davidsmith73]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

What is not a valid criticism is to say that you are unable to find any problem with the experiment's design or conduct but the effect size is small and there must be some error in it. That is not criticism -- that is just stating ones prior belief without any sign of supporting evidence.

I agree. This is why when Steve Novella said the result of Dean Radin's meta-analysis was "just noise", he actually meant the results were down to methodological error. He can't seriously be suggesting that the results were due to chance at such a high significance level.

So, like you say, this is really a belief that methodological error got in there somehow even though it can't be proven. Fortunately for Steve Novella, he suggests a source of bias that would not necessarily be reported in the methods section of a paper, such as subconsciously stopping bad performance trials to check for "callibration". In the staring experiment, I'm not sure what the experimenter would need to "calibrate" however!

If large effect sizes were reported, I wonder how many sceptics would still believe that some unidentified methodological error was to blame?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by davidsmith73

If large effect sizes were reported, I wonder how many sceptics would still believe that some unidentified methodological error was to blame?

Most of Rupert Sheldrake's experiments have large effect sizes - so you don't need to wonder any more!

David

[Bonteburger]

OT: no time to get on topic now - I couldn't believe it was you at first, get well soon etc.

I'll be looking forward to that Skeptic's Guide episode.

Marco

[Venom]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

This skeptic catchphrase is accredited to Marcello Truzzi (co-founder of CSICOP) who later questioned the wisdom of his own phrase and the misuse of it by debunkers.

From a khunian point-of-view, you can expect to change a very strong paradigm if you don't have very strong anomalies (like the materialist paradigm, but I'm not even sure than you can have a non-materialistic science. A dualist science seems really insane to me, because you obviously can't study the non-material part of a dualistic universe, so what science can be done in that case? ).

And with the huge huge HUGE success of neuropsychology at the end of the last century and it's still going strong, you can expect to change that paradigm (the brain generates consciousness) without very strong anomalies. And I'm sorry, it's not the case right now... You have to do much better than that.

So whatever said Truzzi about this, I really don't care.

[NPC3001]

This was an email I sent to Alex. It was originally supposed to be posted here on the forum but my connection went wacky and I had to send via email. I hope it is well understood that I'm trying here to be helpful and not debunking.

Hey Alex, I really enjoy your show and I found the last episode, your response to Steve Novella and discussion of future endeavors, to be provocative. I'm writing out of concern regarding the subject of mediumship as a viable study for parapsychology. I don't mean to say that it's not viable, rather that it's a subject that should be approached with extreme caution and a very narrow criterion of acceptance. The problem with studying mediumship is that the possible variables are extremely scattered and difficult to narrow down. An experiment on the telepathy of animals can be narrowed down enormously as Sheldrake did. A medium, unlike a dog, can use a great many resources and no matter how many of those resources you eliminate, there's always the legitimate worry of an unanticipated resource remaining. It sounds like you're already aware of some of the cold reading problems evident; asking vague, leading questions, observing body language, firing off facts until one of them hits. You should also keep in mind that a successfully deceitful medium will put on a powerful air of being honest, well-meaning and normal. This includes being wishy-washy about their own talents and passing that up to people as a display of decency and sincerity. Consider how John Edward tells the audience up front that he's often wrong. The audiences' guard is lowered so that Edward can more easily toss off a barrage of generalized details at rapid fire pace until one finally clicks with a person. The medium observes the audience as he lists details, and then he finally mentions one that *gets a reaction.* But more pressingly, be careful about drawing conclusions about the honesty of mediums. A good trick for mediums is to admit the failure of a reading and give the customer his money back. It seems like a loss, but often it's not. The medium wins out in several ways:

A. He continues to seem legitimate to the customer even though he didn't produce a useful result, i.e. his reputation is undamaged if the reading didn't go well.
B. Because of his apparent honesty and humanness the customer may feel confident enough about the medium to recommend his services to friends.
C. He keeps the customer intrigued and sometimes coming back for more. Instead of taking the money up front, any good deceiver in mediumship would rather send away a customer with his money only to have the customer come back on a bad day. It's much easier to read body language and behavior when someone is in distress and much easier to cut through someone's weaknesses to gain trust.

So you can see how this sort of thing can actually be more economically advantageous for the medium in the long run. The point I wish to illustrate is just that mediums can be slippery and they can easily fool scientists who think they've exhausted all possible resources on the medium's part. I know that you addressed this point this last episode and that you were trying to open up the scientific study of mediums even with strong cases of debunking as detailed by Novella. I think you could acknowledge its importance even more by encouraging the use of magicians or other performers to observe experiments on mediumship to ensure that the medium isn't deceiving the scientists in some way. Mediums (fake mediums at least, assuming there are mediums out there who don't use trickery) are extremely clever and creative and very fast-thinking. I believe that part of the reason why mediumship is discouraged by skeptics as a subject of interest for science is *because of this,* because mediums are often clever enough to slide significant data into an experiment no matter how hard the scientist tries to limit the variables. If this happens then the parapsychologist produces compelling results that are nonetheless false and misleading.

As I said before, I take the question of whether or not mediums are real to be a legitimate one for science. But as Michael Prescott has said about medium research in his blog, it's like trying to nail jell-o to a wall. Which is why I felt the wish to encourage you to emphasize the need for extremely tight controls on medium experimentation and frankly, more skepticism even than usual.

NPC

[David Bailey]

NPC3001,

I think I would largely endorse what you have written - mediums may sometimes do something valid, but it is very hard to use as a proof of ψ. However, I think I would be a little kinder in talking about the mediums. I run a small consultancy (nothing whatsoever to do with ψ!) and if something does not work out satisfactorily, I don't charge for it. Maybe it increases my profit in the long term, but I don't really think of it like that.

David

[NPC3001]

David,

I'd like to know more about your consultancy.

Anyhow, you're right that I was being pretty hard. The trouble is that if medium research were ever to be found legitimate then it would have to stand up to extremely fierce scrutiny. People like James Randi are just downright pathological (and mean)! They give you the impression that there's just no way to cooly and reasonably examine such phenomena without a debunker coming in and pointing out everything that could have actually happened when existence for psi was found. So I think all possible responses should be anticipated and accounted for and I think the experimenter should try to think in the mentality of the debunker in order to deal with people like Shermer et al. Of course I don't think medium research is going to turn the tables on psi research but if the data is significant and stands up to all scrutiny then mainstream science is only hurting itself by denying the experiment.

It also looks like you worked with AI and discuss consciousness at great length - also one of my interests, I did a paper on Searle and Dennett just recently. I'd be interested to hear your views more.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by NPC3001

[i] I'm writing out of concern regarding the subject of mediumship as a viable study for parapsychology. I don't mean to say that it's not viable, rather that it's a subject that should be approached with extreme caution and a very narrow criterion of acceptance. The problem with studying mediumship is that the possible variables are extremely scattered and difficult to narrow down.

I hear where you're coming from, but I don't totally agree. I find the work of Gray Schwartz a compelling starting point for this research. His very simple protocol has shown significant results and proven that sceintific controls can be applied to medium research. The key is getting over the debunking bias most start with.

The real issue seems to be the lack of of support from other scientists. The results Schwartz has achieved should have generated a flood of interest from other researchers and 10s if not 100s of millions in dollars, but it's still a taboo topic.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

I find the work of Gray Schwartz a compelling starting point for this research. His very simple protocol has shown significant results and proven that sceintific controls can be applied to medium research.

So you just don't care about more than 100 years of mediumship researchs and debates? I mean, in the 19e century, there was already a scientific debate between the metapsychology's researchers and the skeptics of that time. And that's without the scientists investigating spiritualism also.

So here we are more than a 100 years later, and "the work of Gary Schwartz a compelling starting point for this research".

Well, what a late starting point. I mean, parapsychology seems always in the starting blocks.