James Randi Challenges Skeptiko’s Telepathic Dog

[Venom]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

James Randi emailed after the video posted. He challenged me to apply for the Million Dollar Challenge. I emailed him right back and accepted.

You REALLY should read this:

Challenge Application - James Randi Educational Foundation

You need to send an application. Obviously you didn't do it. Have you ever read the JREF website? Come on...

If you haven't send an application, you haven't accepted is challenge and your press release is a deception.

You should now that. You're so ignorant of the skeptical mouvement (this has been explained many times on the SGU podcast and on other places), and of he skeptical litterature, and after that you're saying that "skeptics don't read the littarature".

Well, now, if you really want to apply to the JREF challenge, please follow the proper procedure, and don't try to do it you're weird way.

I know you're mainly looking for publicity, and I find that annoying. Do things properly: this is not about you're 15 minutes of internet fame.

[stonesean]

Time for me to "pile on" horrible closed minded skeptic that I am....

This is very exciting and I can't wait to see the results if the tests go forward, but just remember, your claim must be spelled out EXACTLY before the test begins. Not the dog "may" do this, or "may" do that.....the dog MUST do "x". I see an issue coming up with the criteria of what exactly constitutes a "hit" or a "miss".....

In addition, prior tests are not considered evidence for the prize, only the test that is conducted under the mutually agreed upon criteria.

Plus, because we are talking about a hell of a lot of money here, all the legal hurdles must be overcome. Like the actual notarized application.

If this can be done, I am very excited at the prospects of the results. No matter what the outcome!

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Wiseman's criteria actually tested to see whether the dog has any predictive abilities. Sheldrake's don't.

By accident? How did Wiseman do that meaningfully? The claim isn't a fortune telling dog, it is a claim the dog knows when the owner is coming home, not a neighbour coming home, not the black cat at 21 walking by but some sort of emotional bond with owner(s)....i.e. more suggestive of conscious/subconscious telepathy

If the dog is anticipating sometimes, due to the owner (unavoidably) thinking about coming home at times ... Sheldrake's criteria is the best way to find any real effect beyond noise, false triggers, etc.

If the owner returns 100 minutes after the start of the trial and the dog starts "signalling" 10 minutes after the start of the trial and stays there until the owner comes home then the proportion of time spent in the "waiting position" will be 90% and 100% for the main period and the return period respectively. If this was repeated enough times it would attain statistical significance.

This is an extreme example but it demonstrates that Sheldrake's criteria are not a valid measure.

Sheldrake says ',The going-to-the-window-more-and-more hypothesis can be tested by looking in more detail at the average timecourses of long, medium and short experiments in Fig. 4. This Figure shows data from all the experiments, and also from the "normal" experiments after the exclusion of the minority of "noisy" experiments, which tended to obscure the usual pattern.

The data in Fig. 4 show that Jaytee's waiting at the window occurred soonest in the short experiments, later in the medium experiments and latest in the long experiments. In other words, Jaytee's behavior was more closely related to PS's impending return than to the amount of time that had elapsed since she went out. If Jaytee had simply gone to the window more and more as time went on, there should have been little or no difference between the time he spent there in the long, medium and short experiments in any given period. This can be tested statistically. (In the following analyses........ '

[Venom]

Originally Posted by stonesean

If this can be done, I am very excited at the prospects of the results. No matter what the outcome!

Yeah, sure, me too.

I'll look especially to a good scientist really testing this phenomenum, and that means really controlling for the variables we talked about in here and on the SGU forum (nobody else in the house, real randomize return time, same clothes all the time to avoid clues, and so on).

I'm really not impress with the fact that Alex is getting good result. We knew he would, because of his prior belief in it. Bennveniste found positive results for homeopathy, and Gaucquelin found positive results for astrology. If you're a strong believer, as Alex obviously is, you'll find a way to obtain the results you wish to have.

Let's have some real scientist doing this...

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

By accident? How did Wiseman do that meaningfully? The claim isn't a fortune telling dog, it is a claim the dog knows when the owner is coming home, not a neighbour coming home, not the black cat at 21 walking by but some sort of emotional bond with owner(s)....i.e. more suggestive of conscious/subconscious telepathy

The original claim from the dog's owner was that her parents could tell when she was returning from the behaviour of the dog. This is what Wiseman tested.

If the dog is anticipating sometimes, due to the owner (unavoidably) thinking about coming home at times ... Sheldrake's criteria is the best way to find any real effect beyond noise, false triggers, etc.

Now you've relaxed the criteria to make it meaningless. If the dog starts "signalling" an hour before the owner comes home then that can be rationalised in a post hoc manner as the owner thinking about coming home. If the dog doesn't start "signalling" until 30 minutes after the owner starts to come home that's OK too.

Sheldrake says ',The going-to-the-window-more-and-more hypothesis can be tested by looking in more detail at the average timecourses of long, medium and short experiments in Fig. 4. This Figure shows data from all the experiments, and also from the "normal" experiments after the exclusion of the minority of "noisy" experiments, which tended to obscure the usual pattern.

The data in Fig. 4 show that Jaytee's waiting at the window occurred soonest in the short experiments, later in the medium experiments and latest in the long experiments. In other words, Jaytee's behavior was more closely related to PS's impending return than to the amount of time that had elapsed since she went out. If Jaytee had simply gone to the window more and more as time went on, there should have been little or no difference between the time he spent there in the long, medium and short experiments in any given period. This can be tested statistically. (In the following analyses........ '

These trials had non-randomised return times. The dog only needs to have a rough estimate of the period of absence -long, medium or short - to be able to produce a statistically significant "effect".

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

You appear to believe that you understand how the experimenter effect works. But little do you know that one skeptic can easily counteract a dozen believers. This is because the believers' vibes are weak.

Mwahahaha!

~~ Paul

I don't know how it works ...) however...

Here is a curious comment made by Kramer in 2005 (Kramer was Randi's $1million challenge assistant back then)

Posted by KRAMER 11th March 2005, 09:13 AM

'....Sorry but I cannot answer many of these questions, such as "Who performed best at testing". I've only been here a year, and answering a question such as this would take weeks of research deep into the files.

However, my understanding is that most applicants fail rather gloriously, performing far below CHANCE. According to everything I have been told, no one has performed well, or demonstrated anything that even came close to warranting further inquiry.

Can we get a Challenge historical wrapup/tally? [Archive] - JREF Forum

Below chance? Odd comment, if true, suggests to me some sort of paranormal experimenter effect?

However not to a die-hard skeptic of paranormal claims, they must assume, if below chance, it is more plausible to the JREF experimenters were assisting a negative outcome by more normal means, rather too well Another reason to police the psi policemen? i.e. have open minded skeptics check what the die-hard skeptics are actually doing?

Why has JREF never published the test results for external analysis? (If anyone knows different, point me to a link)

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Below chance? Odd comment, if true, suggests to me some sort of paranormal experimenter effect?

Sounds to me as if you are building a mountain out of an offhand remark.

The vast majority of challenges fail because the would be applicants never manage to say what they can do in a controlled environment.

Here's one example:

Wendee Jacobson, Dog Trainer

Challenge Applications

[Open Mind]

Chris & Venom ...

Let me respond to both your comments with a previous post .....

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Randi often gives the impression he has tested many hundreds of people e.g. in this video, Randi makes a claim again around the 40:30 minute mark in video

'....'We have filing cabinets just full .....[reference to picture of Kramer with cabinets] .... all with little red stickers on them. That means they have been tested - no good.....'
YouTube - Authors@Google: James Randi

This statement is false Randi is presenting applications (that never reached the stage of a test) as failed tests. The forum has always shown an impressive long list of seemingly active applications – but how many were tested?

Back in 2005, I tried to find out exactly how many Randi had actually tested. The topic is still there .... Exactly how many ‘Preliminary Tests’ have actually been conducted? - JREF Forum

You will see in Post 4 that someone directly quotes Kramer (Randi's challenge assistant at the time) as saying in another topic .... 'There have been two tests since my arrival here one year ago. My understanding is that there has never been more than a couple of tests per year.'

(Note in post 4, the link doesn't work, however I read it at the time, this statement was missing did Kramer or someone else delete his comment? There is no reason to presume Kramer did not did not make that statement because he is clearly reading and taking part in the topic and didn't correct it. Also in the following topic, the same quoter (Gr8wight) is actually in private mail communication with Kramer, so perhaps Kramer said in e-mail not in public forum?
Can we get a Challenge historical wrapup/tally? [Archive] - JREF Forum

To return to the point ....

.... Therefore, according to Kramer (Randi's challenge assistant) 2 per year over the 10 years (since it was increased to 1 million) = only 20 people tested?

Why is Randi claiming he has tested hundreds, an application is meaningless, these were not tests at all...so is he counting his tests prior to $1million challenge? Dangling a $10,000 check in front of people and if they don't take up his challenge, it is notched up as a failed experiment?

....What about Randi's past research? Kramer says in topic '.....based upon my preliminary investigation, is that Challenge records were VERY incomplete prior to my arrival here. There wasn't even a real application file before I got here. We have a few VHS tapes of some tests, but it's unclear how many of those were official JREF Challenge tests, as many of these tapes are VERY old and without any paperwork or accompanying data.....'

Then we have Kramer (in another post, link is above) saying on looking it appears the results are worse than chance ... that is odd too.

Why are 'skeptics' placing value in Randi's past claims? Is it based upon past research or just faith in his claims or presentation of past research?

So ... with all the above going on, I suggest anyone (not particularly Alex) taking up the JREF challenge in future publicly insists, known open minded researchers are jointly involved with JREF die-hard skeptics to ensure all are playing fair during the actual prize challenge protocol/testing. What would be the problem with that?

[Larry Boy]

I don't think applying is a very good idea. Even a skeptic should be able to see that there are severe problems with Randi's million dollar challenge. The most obvious one, mentioned by Open Mind earlier, is that since no papers are being published about the tests, there is no way of knowing whether they have been conducted in a proper way or not.
Also, consider the following two statements about the application rules:
"When entering into this challenge, as far as this may be done by established legal statutes, the applicant surrenders any and all rights to legal action against Mr. Randi, and/or against any persons peripherally involved, and/or against the James Randi Educational Foundation."
"Applicant agrees that all data (photographic, recorded, written, etc.) gathered as a result of the setup, the protocol, and the actual testing, may be used freely by the JREF."

Basically you'll have to leave everything in the hands of Randi and his foundation if you apply. I don't think that will help to further any scientific efforts, with open collaboration from both skeptics and proponents.

(Challenge Application - James Randi Educational Foundation)

[davidsmith73]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The original claim from the dog's owner was that her parents could tell when she was returning from the behaviour of the dog. This is what Wiseman tested.

Well, that's true. But scientists aren't in the business of testing someone elses claims. They are supposed to actively investigate the world around us. And that's the position we should be adopting when discussing protocols for Alex's experiments and his potential challenge application. What would be the best way to find out if dogs really have a telepathic link with their owner? Wiseman et al's procedure just lets a load of noise into the experiment. If you simply count a 'miss' as the first instance that the dog goes to the waiting area during the non-return period, then you increase your chances of recording noise rather than signal. For example, an anxious moment or a distraction from a bird near the window.

Surely there are better ways to measure this effect that are acceptable to both parties? The application of most statistical techniques in most experimental situations are going to have some drawbacks and problems. The point here is to devise the best method, not a perfect method.

What about comparing the time spent in the waiting area as a proportion of the total waiting time? Lets say the owner returns home after 100 min and takes 10 min to get home. Lets also say that the dog goes to the waiting area after 10min and stays there untill the owner returns. The proportion of time spent waiting during return as a proportion of total waiting time is 10% whereas the time spent waiting during non-return time as a proportion of total waiting time is 90%. Doing more trials would only lead to a significant effect in the opposite direction, which is what we would expect because in this example it's clear that the dog isn't displaying much psi! On the other hand, if the dog tends to wait only during the return period (ie, a real psi effect but not with the precision that certain sceptics seem to want!) then this proportional measure will detect the effect. Or could there still be an artifact here?