The Reality of ESP by Russel Targ (Evidence for PSI)

[EthanT]

Looks like Russel Targ has a new book coming out. I thought the following article from IONS was a decent read and summary of the book.

The statistics at the end were rather interesting.

At the LHC, they are currently waiting for enough data to come in so they can reach 5-sigma significance above chance deviation (or odds of roughly 1 in a million to be a chance occurrence) before they announce the "official" discovery of the Higgs particle.

3 of the fields/tests Targ mentions (Ganzfeld, RV, Bem) have up to 6-sigma results and beyond (or odds of roughly 1 in a billion to be a chance occurrence)

Why aren't these "official" discoveries? Well, I guess we know why.

I believe it was Bernardo that posted up some videos of other psi/esp tests that had even stronger statistical significance than this.

Noetic Now Journal | Institute of Noetic Sciences

Science is supposed to go where the evidence leads. It seems to me that not only are we not going there, we're not even entertaining the idea of going there.

[Craig Weiler]

Interesting article. He makes a good point. I was particularly surprised that Targ lives in Portola Valley. That's VERY close to where I live. I know exactly what sort of view he has from his house. He overlooks Stanford University and Palo Alto.

[Johann]

Originally Posted by EthanT

The statistics at the end were rather interesting.

At the LHC, they are currently waiting for enough data to come in so they can reach 5-sigma significance above chance deviation (or odds of roughly 1 in a million to be a chance occurrence) before they announce the "official" discovery of the Higgs particle.

3 of the fields/tests Targ mentions (Ganzfeld, RV, Bem) have up to 6-sigma results and beyond (or odds of roughly 1 in a billion to be a chance occurrence)

Why aren't these "official" discoveries? Well, I guess we know why.

I believe it was Bernardo that posted up some videos of other psi/esp tests that had even stronger statistical significance than this.

Noetic Now Journal | Institute of Noetic Sciences

Science is supposed to go where the evidence leads. It seems to me that not only are we not going there, we're not even entertaining the idea of going there.

According to Radin, the sum total odds against chance for all 186 experiments reported in Extra-sensory Perception After Sixty Years hits a p-value of p = 10^-2000 (yes, -2000). That number is staggeringly beyond the reach of anything we could ever conceptualize; it is endless orders of magnitude higher than even the amount of atoms in the universe!

Don't believe me? I have the quote:

...the cumulative odds against chance for the 186 experiments listed in Pratt et al (1966, "ESP after 60 years", as noted in my book)... is approximately 10^-2000, to which application of standard methods (Rosenthal, 1991, "Meta-analytic procedures for social research") gives my reported figure...

- Johann

[Scott]

Originally Posted by Johann

According to Radin, the sum total odds against chance for all 186 experiments reported in Extra-sensory Perception After Sixty Years hits a p-value of p = 10^-2000 (yes, -2000). That number is staggeringly beyond the reach of anything we could ever conceptualize; it is endless orders of magnitude higher than even the amount of atoms in the universe!

Don't believe me? I have the quote:



- Johann

Well other than that value is so absurd it is pure meaningless. At the least it is a typo.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Scott

Well other than that value is so absurd it is pure meaningless. At the least it is a typo.

I assume that each experiment is actually a series of experiments, in which case if each series had p=10^-10 (say), then multiplying all 186 p values together, you would approach that stated figure.

I think Dean's point is that there is a huge amount of statistical significance in existing ESP results.

BTW, I know Arouet doesn't like statistical experiments, so I wonder if he has realised that the LHC experiments (like other earlier accelerator experiments) are entirely statistical

David

[Arouet]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

BTW, I know Arouet doesn't like statistical experiments, so I wonder if he has realised that the LHC experiments (like other earlier accelerator experiments) are entirely statistical

David

I never said I didn't like statistics - statistics are all over science! They can be quite usefull! But also misused...

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Arouet

I never said I didn't like statistics - statistics are all over science! They can be quite usefull! But also misused...

I seem to remember you hand wringing that all psi experiments depended on statistics - you wanted a 'real' experiment.

David

[Johann]

Originally Posted by Scott

At the least it is a typo.

This is not a typo; it is in a letter Radin wrote to Nature correcting a misinformed article about CU.

Well other than that value is so absurd it is pure meaningless.

I agree that it's very high, but it is certainly not meaningless. Counting Rhine and other investigators, parapsychologists in the heyday of ESP experiments tested over 60,000 subjects in more than 2.5 million trials over 60 years. After so much testing, values like these are to be fully expected if there is a small but real effect.

- Johann

[Johann]

Originally Posted by Arouet

I never said I didn't like statistics - statistics are all over science! They can be quite usefull! But also misused...

Luckily, with five ESP cards and a simple method of calculating odds against chance, it is difficult to misuse statistics. And indeed, it turned out there was nothing wrong with Rhine's statistics.

- Johann

[Scott]

Originally Posted by Johann

Luckily, with five ESP cards and a simple method of calculating odds against chance, it is difficult to misuse statistics. And indeed, it turned out there was nothing wrong with Rhine's statistics.

- Johann

1 - making sure there is not leakage of info so the stats mean what you think they do.
2 - it is easy to misuse statistics, without even knowing that is what you are doing. Very easy if that is your intention (look at politicians).