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

[alextsakiris]

Skeptiko host, Alex Tsakiris, responds to Skeptics Guide to the Universe?s, Dr. Steven Novella. In a point-by-point response, Tsakiris claims Novella?s recent broadcast provides further evidence that prominent Skeptics are often severely

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[Venom]

I loved it when you said the title of the episode was "Bashing the skeptics 2 - The sequel" . It was great.

What I think also is cool know is that you don't pretend to be neutral in the dicussion, and you are open with the fact that you are pro-parapsychology. I hate when psi-believers pretend to be "neutral" or "above the debate". I find that really annoying. Nobody is neutral, nobogy is above the debate...

A lot to say about this episode also of course.

At first Steve Novella (and I must said I also) understood your first claim as "Skepics don't read the litterature". Of course that was a huge claim. Maybe you didn't really met that but it was the way "we" (I say "we" as the skeptic community) understood it.

Well know you are narrowing it (or I should say backing away from your first formulation of it) and claim:

=> some skeptics (or not all skeptcs) don't read every single one parapsychological papers carefully.

Waaaaaw. I mean, it's just like saying:

=> Some scientists (or not all scientists) don't read every single paper in there field of interrest carefully.

That's hardly a big knews!!! Everyone who has ever done scientific reasearch knows (and when I listen to you're podcast it's pretty obvious that you never did any researchs in an academic environnement) that today there is so many publications out there that it's impossible to keep track of everything published in your field of interrest.

Especially because skeptics have many field of interrests. My main topic of interrest is French ufology. And even I would never claim that I can read every single paper writen in French about the ufo phenomena. It's impossible! There is too many of them. And of top of my interrest fo French ufology, I tend to read English publications about ufology, and on top of that I try to read papers about parapsychology, Intelligent Design, cryptozoology and so on...

So come on, what claim is that???

So you're picking one anecdotal evidence from Ray Hyman. But what's really funny is that in your last podcast, you agree know that you don't find Dean Radin research so compelling anymore.

You said that's not the point. That the point is about Ray Hyman.

Well I say: sorry, the important point is not Ray Hyman. It's Dean Radin. Is Dean Radin research scientifically compelling or not? Know you're saying it's not so compelling because "it's not your stuff" (or something like that, I quote you from memories). OK. We have an agreement here: it's not comprelling. Next case please...

About Ray Hyman, by the way, how old is he? 79 years old... I mean, you should deal with is book like The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research, not taking quote from something he said in a podcast when he was way over his 70ies. I mean, for my point of view (and I remember Hyman himself writing about this), we should (the skeptical mouvement should) have a new, younger "Ray Hyman", dealing with the current parapsychological research. Well Wiseman, Blackmore and Alckock are a little bit like that, but they like to do a lot of research on other fields as well, so we need a guy who do parapsychological criticizing full-time (and not a little bit of part-time).

About skeptics don't supporting research on those topics, it's just plain false. We support good scientific researchs on those topics, not bad one. That's the main difference. For exemple, the papers published by Olaf Blanke, showing that you can induce out-of-body experiences by stimulating some area of the brain is awsome. It points to neurological explanations for OBE and for some aspects of NDE.

- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Neuropsychology: Stimulating Illusory own-body perceptions; NATURE; Nature Publishing Group; N. 419; p. 269-270; 19 September 2002.

- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin; BRAIN; Vol. 127; N. 2; p. 243-258; February 2004.

Skeptics are all for that kind of good reserachs about those phenomena!

With that kind of researchs going on, I really can follow you when you start to talk about NDEs like if it was compelling evidence for dualism. It's really not the case, since good scientists are more and more explaining how the brain is generating those anomalous experiences.

Well, that's a few of my thinking about your last episode...

[David Bailey]

Alex,

I found that episode extremely interesting, and it will be very interesting to listen to your subsequent interview. You have got a lot of great points to raise with him!

Originally Posted by Venom

Waaaaaw. I mean, it's just like saying:

=> Some scientists (or not all scientists) don't read every single paper in there field of interrest carefully.

That's hardly a big knews!!! Everyone who has ever done scientific reasearch knows (and when I listen to you're podcast it's pretty obvious that you never did any researchs in an academic environnement) that today there is so many publications out there that it's impossible to keep track of everything published in your field of interrest.

Venom, aren't you missing the point - you sure don't publicly criticise someone else's research without reading it thoroughly. Years ago when I did research (nothing remotely related to ψ) I once did publish a refutation of a paper. You can be damn sure I read the original over and over again before I took that step!

David

[davidsmith73]

I thought the response was on the whole very good.

Alex,

First comment: I'm very glad that you persisted with the Ray Hyman vs Dean Radin comments. Like you say, this illustrates the point you were making. Ray Hyman seems to have made an accusation without first checking whether what he was saying was actually true. He failed to apply critical thinking to his own argument, or so it seems. I second a demand for an apology or an immediate justification for his comments in light on Dean's interview. Perhaps Hyman can justify his comments about adjusted baselines even in light of Radin's 2004 paper. It's interesting that Steve Novella decided not to comment on this. Why not? Did he not feel that Hyman's comments were unjustified? Perhaps he will eventually respond to these points regarding Ray Hyman's accusations. I'll be pleasantly surprised if he does.

Second comment: In the SGU podcast, Steve dwells on small effect sizes. I do not think this is as damning a point as he would like. Sure, the effect sizes in psi research are on the whole small. However, they are also on the whole highly significant. To call these highly significant but small effect sizes "noise" is really a claim of methodological error, because lets face it, it's highly unlikely to be chance. Indeed, Novella suggests that researchers may be interupting poor performance trials on a subconscoius level to "check for calibration". But this is a groundless claim. With regards to the presentiment work (which was the original subject of the Hyman/Radin exchange), Radin's 2004 mini meta-analysis has this to say (taken from http://www.scientificexploration.org...18.2_radin.pdf) :

"While working at Interval Research Corporation, I was asked to arrange for an
independent critical evaluation of the methodology and results of Experiment. Because assessments of controversial evidence tend to differ depending upon whether opinions are presented in public or in private, to encourage an unbiased review it was agreed in advance that the identities of the reviewers and the specifics of their written reports would remain confidential. Six experienced scientists were identified to conduct the review. Three were
sympathetic to the possibility of precognition, and three were skeptical. The
group’s expertise included statistics, experimental psychology, personality and
cognitive psychology, psychophysiology, computer science, and physics. The
reviewers unanimously agreed that they could not identify any methodological
flaws that could explain the observed outcomes. However, their personal
opinions about whether the data persuasively demonstrated precognition fell into close alignment with their a priori beliefs about the possibility of precognition. This outcome demonstrated one of the key difficulties encountered when trying to achieve scientific consensus about controversial ideas, especially ideas that are not yet supported by well-accepted theories. Members of the Society for Scientific Exploration are undoubtedly familiar with this syndrome. "


So it seems that the small effect size argument is not really a scientific argument as Novella would like us believe. I respect it as an opinion however, but it really just relies on a belief that small effect sizes are due to methodological error rather a small but real anomalous effect.

Other comments to follow...

[davidsmith73]

sorry about the formatting on the last post. Couldn't edit it...

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Venom

So you're picking one anecdotal evidence from Ray Hyman. But what's really funny is that in your last podcast, you agree know that you don't find Dean Radin research so compelling anymore.

You said that's not the point. That the point is about Ray Hyman.

Well I say: sorry, the important point is not Ray Hyman. It's Dean Radin. Is Dean Radin research scientifically compelling or not? Know you're saying it's not so compelling because "it's not your stuff" (or something like that, I quote you from memories). OK. We have an agreement here: it's not comprelling. Next case please...

What Alex said was: "I for one am not particularly all that excited about presentiment work, it's just not my thing."

What do you mean "you agree now that you don't find Dean Radin's research so compelling anymore"? The fact that Alex doesn't think presentiment research is as interesting as, say, medium studies, doesn't mean he thinks it's flawed or anything, now does it?

What are you trying to say?

By the way, what's your reasons for not taking Dean Radin's research seriously?

[GaSS PaNiCC]

He thinks their just "noise".

[David Bailey]

The published graphs sure don't look like noise - in fact, probably because the experiment does not require the active participation of the subject (guessing cards or whatever) it can run a little longer which helps to suppress the noise.

David

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Venom

[B]
we should (the skeptical mouvement should) have a new, younger "Ray Hyman", dealing with the current parapsychological research. Well Wiseman, Blackmore and Alckock are a little bit like that, but they like to do a lot of research on other fields as well, so we need a guy who do parapsychological criticizing full-time (and not a little bit of part-time).

With regard to Hyman he didn't conduct much research after dowsing tests in the 1970s. His role has been a critic of other people's research. The 'skeptic movement' is placing far, far too much faith in Wiseman, a trail of controversy follows his psi research. Berger did an meta-analysis of Blackmore's parapsychological work actually shows a weak effect, so Blackmore then dismissed her own work as inconclusive. Has Alcock conducted or published his own research? If so, post link here.

About skeptics don't supporting research on those topics, it's just plain false. We support good scientific researchs on those topics, not bad one.

David Marks, CSI (CSICOP) fellow, does not think funding should go on psi. Venom, I suggest you get out of the 'we'. This is not like supporting a football team, it is about trying to get at the truth from any angle.

That's the main difference. For exemple, the papers published by Olaf Blanke, showing that you can induce out-of-body experiences by stimulating some area of the brain is awsome. It points to neurological explanations for OBE and for some aspects of NDE.

- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Neuropsychology: Stimulating Illusory own-body perceptions; NATURE; Nature Publishing Group; N. 419; p. 269-270; 19 September 2002.

- BLANKE, Olaf et al; Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin; BRAIN; Vol. 127; N. 2; p. 243-258; February 2004.

Skeptics are all for that kind of good reserachs about those phenomena!

This research failed to be replicated in a ‘double blind’ controlled trials by Swedish team lead by Pehr Granqvist who found no discernable effects. (If you put a device on people’s head and they are half expecting to experience something weird, many will report it. If the researcher believes in the effect of what they are reporting they can misintepret information).

Even if one assumes the effects claimed by Blanke, Persinger, etc. was correct, it still does rule out the brain is a filter of consciousness, such effects could equally be viewed as disruption of the brain filtering.

With that kind of researchs going on, I really can follow you when you start to talk about NDEs like if it was compelling evidence for dualism. It's really not the case, since good scientists are more and more explaining how the brain is generating those anomalous experiences.

Not really the case in my opinion. They are just not asking the alternative question 'does this contradict the brain is a filter of consciousness?' The answer so far IMHO has been no, that doesn't mean the brain is a definitely a filter, just that some materialists are joining the dots to a materialistic expectation perhaps much in the same way people see faces in clouds that aren't there

[Open Mind]

Alex for the tests planned with mediums. Are you sure it is a good idea to let the debunkers choose the recipients of messages? If so, ask them to choose people who at least believe mediumship could be real. The last thing one wants is someone subconsciously marking hits/misses badly due to feeling hostile towards those type of claims.