James Randi Challenges Skeptiko’s Telepathic Dog

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by davidsmith73

I expect scientists to apply their skills and knowledge to find out what is really going on. In the case of Jaytee, I don't think Wiseman et al. did a very good job of this. Although I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest they ran out of time and resources...




But it's entirely possible, and probable, that any predictive power such as this would be masked in an analysis where trials are classed as a failure because the dog goes to the waiting area for a few moments during the non-return period. Sheldrake may well have been looking at the temporal precision of this effect, but he was wise not to adopt Wiseman et al's criteria of 'hit' and 'miss' because that just massively increases your chances of type II errors for reasons I outlined before.



In the case of Sheldrake, I'm sure he was aware of these issues before he ran his experiments, so these "excuses" are not likely to be post-hoc. If you're talking about post-hoc in the sense of explaining why Wiseman et al's data didn't show an effect, I would call it "criticism" rather than "excuses".

The best way would be not to exclude any data due to distractions because you run into huge difficulties deciding what is a distraction and what is not. The best way would be to analyse the data in such away that noise causd by distractions are kept to a minimum.



I'm suggesting a way to analyse the data using the amount of time in the waiting area as the dependent variable. If you simply calculate the proportion of time spent in the waiting area during return and non-return periods then will get the artifact you were talking about. If we consider the dog behaviour in our 100 min trial example we've been using, this would result in 100% waiting time during the return period and 90% for the non-period. I am suggesting that the waiting time is calculated as a proportion of the total time in the waiting area across return and non-return periods. This would give 10% for the return period and 90% for the non-return period (ie., 100 min of waiting in the waiting spot, 90min during non-return but only 10min during the return period). This would guard against the artifact you were talking about, I think.



No, it's not imperative at all. Not many behavioural experiments measuring a continuous variable would adopt a 'hit' and 'miss' approach. It's more sensible to compare means of the dependent variable between conditions.



Now, that I may have to agree with you on. But I'm sure it will on JREF's insistence.

This is all very interesting... a couple additional points:

- This kind of analysis of the DogsThatKnow data will be done by experts trained in animal behavior research. I'm sure they have a large body of knowledge/experience (I don't regularly read Anthrozoös )

- At the same time, I plan to make their methods and techniques transparent and open for all of us to see and comment on.

- Finally, results like those achieved in the first two videos don't require a lot of advanced statistics to measure success -- it's OBVIOUS! The only question is repeatability.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

- Finally, common sense tells you that any result like the first two videos doesn't require a lot of advanced statistics to measure success -- it's OBVIOUS! The only question is repeatability.

It's obvious that the spot you choose is arbitrary (and in a really small space), and it obvious that the dog seems to be sleeping there. I woudn't call that "waiting behavior", I would call that "sleepy behavior".

When you're saying that he's "waiting", it's really an anthropomorphisation. You're the one saying that he's "waiting". Doesn't look like waiting for me. How do you know his not "waiting" for his owner when he's sleeping on the chair? You're making so many assumptions, and then call them "obvious". That's really annoying.

It's also arbitrary that you're correlating his behavior with the son in the second video. Even if thelepathy is real, maybe he's assuming is favorite "sleepy behavior" spot because the mother tough somewhere "What a crappy day".

You're the one making the assumption in the second video that he's reacting to the coming back of the son (by the way, who many people are they in this family? I mean he can react to the mother, father, son and son on).

There is nothing obvious about those videos. You want us to believe that all that stuff is obvious (because you think so, because of your prior strong belief in this phenomena), but I don't see anything obvious about them.

So try to be a better scientist. Improve you're controls. Decide what's a hit and what's not a hit.

For the moment, when I watch your videos, I understand a lot more the concept of "experimenter effect". Because you believe in the phenomenum, you're doing all you can to obtain data that will confirm you're prior belief, and discard everything that doesn't confirm it. Very interresting.

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Venom

Sounds for me like saying: "be carefull, because you can have a few lucky trials, but after a while, of course, they will be a return toward the mean (or average)".

Well, that's kind of obvious. Alex should stop now that he's lucky, but with more and more trials and more and more dogs, things are going to look a lot less impressive. Well, even now, he's just showing on YouTube his best trials, the lucky ones, but doesn't show the rest. It's kinda a filedrawer effect. He's goal is to make believers trough YouTube, not to really inform people...

I can't dispute that it "sounds for [you] like saying" -- you are the only one who can speak to the truth of that statement. However, if this is what it sounded like to you then it is a purely a matter or you projecting your prior beliefs onto something that in no way resembles your beliefs.

What I said is that there is a mechanism that can cause a decrease in performance by any living or non-living incremental learning system over time of any task where there is too much noise relative to the signal being discriminated (OK, that's a bit more specific than I was before). Charley presented evidence that this might be a factor in the psi decline effect.

Attributing the "decline effect" to classic "regression towards the mean" is a favorite cant of Skeptics, but that is complete nonsense, which has been clearly and unambiguously refuted time and again. One of the nonskeptical characteristics of Skeptics is that they persist in confidently asserting the truth of arguments that have been shown conclusively to be false. It is unclear in any particular case whether this is just a matter of them ignoring the facts or their being willing to make pronouncements despite being ignorant of the facts -- neither is consistent with the tenets of skepticism. Generally no effort is made to actually address the refutation.

The "decline effect" is only said to have occurred if it can be shown that the decline in question is not due to chance or "regression towards the mean." Whatever the cause of high scoring at the beginning of the tests in question it is not just a statistical fluke that naturally disappears at the end. There is, for example, no sign of an equal but opposite "incline effect" in some sets of experiments with fixed termination criteria. The decline effect, by the way, was also routinely found to occur within smaller units within experiments. So for example, it was fairly consistently found that there was more "hits" in the first quarter of a run of a deck of Zener cards than in the last quarter. Any "Skeptical" explanation of psi results must explain this and other patterns to psi hitting (scientific explanations are required to explain the actual observations), but they rarely made any attempt to.

Its also worth noting that the within subject "decline effect" has mostly disappeared in the last few decades. This is generally attributed to the whole thing having been primarily due to simple boredom. Modern tests are generally more interesting to the participants.

If I showed that some measure of sports performance (say batting average) declined over the course of a long, grueling period for the individual, recovering somewhat after brief rests, would you claim that this "sounds to you" that hitting the ball was simply a matter of chance all along? Or would you consider the possibility that it might be due to some factor such as fatigue on the part of the athlete?

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

I can't dispute that it "sounds for [you] like saying" -- you are the only one who can speak to the truth of that statement. However, if this is what it sounded like to you then it is a purely a matter or you projecting your prior beliefs onto something that in no way resembles your beliefs.

What I said is that there is a mechanism that can cause a decrease in performance by any living or non-living incremental learning system over time of any task where there is too much noise relative to the signal being discriminated (OK, that's a bit more specific than I was before). Charley presented evidence that this might be a factor in the psi decline effect.

Attributing the "decline effect" to classic "regression towards the mean" is a favorite cant of Skeptics, but that is complete nonsense, which has been clearly and unambiguously refuted time and again. One of the nonskeptical characteristics of Skeptics is that they persist in confidently asserting the truth of arguments that have been shown conclusively to be false. It is unclear in any particular case whether this is just a matter of them ignoring the facts or their being willing to make pronouncements despite being ignorant of the facts -- neither is consistent with the tenets of skepticism. Generally no effort is made to actually address the refutation.

The "decline effect" is only said to have occurred if it can be shown that the decline in question is not due to chance or "regression towards the mean." Whatever the cause of high scoring at the beginning of the tests in question it is not just a statistical fluke that naturally disappears at the end. There is, for example, no sign of an equal but opposite "incline effect" in some sets of experiments with fixed termination criteria. The decline effect, by the way, was also routinely found to occur within smaller units within experiments. So for example, it was fairly consistently found that there was more "hits" in the first quarter of a run of a deck of Zener cards than in the last quarter. Any "Skeptical" explanation of psi results must explain this and other patterns to psi hitting (scientific explanations are required to explain the actual observations), but they rarely made any attempt to.

Its also worth noting that the within subject "decline effect" has mostly disappeared in the last few decades. This is generally attributed to the whole thing having been primarily due to simple boredom. Modern tests are generally more interesting to the participants.

If I showed that some measure of sports performance (say batting average) declined over the course of a long, grueling period for the individual, recovering somewhat after brief rests, would you claim that this "sounds to you" that hitting the ball was simply a matter of chance all along? Or would you consider the possibility that it might be due to some factor such as fatigue on the part of the athlete?

A couple of additional thoughts:

- I think working with canines might reduce chances of this occuring (although I can't be sure). It's seems plasubile that humans could get bored or fall into behaviors that might explain this effect (at least in some instances).

- And... the decline effect is another reason why we must be careful when altering any aspect of the dog's home environment. We don't want to turn this into "dog training"... although that might be an interesting follow-on research project.

[Topher Cooper]

Wiseman did conclusively prove something. He proved that if you throw away most of your data, you are unlikely to get a statistically significant result. This is a hypothesis that Skeptics seem intent on demonstrating over and over again. On the basis of the existing data (which he had, of course seen before selecting his design) and Sheldrake's hypothesis about that data it was a clear and unambiguous prediction that Wiseman would fail to produce significance. Basically, he wasn't making any attempt to test Sheldrake's claim, but only a claim that Sheldrake's data already refuted. It is disengenuous, to say the least, for him to imply that he had tested and found wanting Sheldrake's claim. In fact, I would say that it borders on scientific misconduct for him to fail to clearly state at every occasion, given the clear potential for misunderstanding, that his results in no way contradicts Sheldrake's. The same goes for his failure to make clear that his test lacked the statistical power to even adequately test the hypothesis he was addressing for any plausible level of effect.

On the other hand...

Sheldrake's original test failed to distinguish a psi effect from a plausible and fairly obvious conventional effect (an anticipation effect). After the initial test was performed it was hypothesized that the positive results might be due to this effect. Sheldrake then devised a test of this hypothesis and found that it was false -- that it was inconsistent with the data. This type of exchange is routine in science. Continuing to assert that his results were due to this effect is neither skepticism nor science.

On the other hand, any further tests of this must take this possibility into account and exclude it from the outset, not as a separate test after the fact. Sheldrake's original test should be revised.

But Wiseman didn't do this -- his test excluded both the anticipation effect and the effect Sheldrake claimed to have found.

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

A couple of additional thoughts:

- I think working with canines might reduce chances of this occuring (although I can't be sure). It's seems plasubile that humans could get bored or fall into behaviors that might explain this effect (at least in some instances).

- And... the decline effect is another reason why we must be careful when altering any aspect of the dog's home environment. We don't want to turn this into "dog training"... although that might be an interesting follow-on research project.

I agree, I don't think that the dog is likely to become bored over time if the experiment is performed at a low enough trial rate (if you did, say, ten trials a day with the same dog/owner, day after day, though, that would be a different matter). The human participants are another matter. Decline in results of performance based tests while the experimenters, lab techs, mentors, and other participants lose their initial enthusiasm is a routine occurrence in many scientific fields.

I was, by the way, addressing the suggestion that deliberate training be done to reinforce the desired behavior for the dogs. I was warning that this needs to be done with care -- if they can be trained they will be mistrained under the wrong circumstances. This is true whether or not the classic psi decline effect is due to this (as it probably mostly isn't).

[davidsmith73]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

Finally, results like those achieved in the first two videos don't require a lot of advanced statistics to measure success -- it's OBVIOUS! The only question is repeatability.

If the other trials are like the ones on the video then I you probably won't! But since there is no theory behind the effect then I would say stats are probably necessary if the experiments are going to be published etc. Good luck!

[Open Mind]

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.

Nonsense. Wiseman didn't ask them, he decided the arbitrary criteria of when the dog spends two minutes at window. In fact in his 4th experiment the sister reportedly says on video that is how Jaytee behaves when Pam is coming home at the exact moment she started coming home. Wiseman dismissed it because it was not two minutes long, the dog reportedly had left window early to be sick.

With regard to the first 3 Wiseman experiments they were careless with the telepathy hypothesis .....

'In so far as the purpose of these experiments was test the possibility that Jaytee was capable of responding telepathically to PS's intentions to come home, the experimental design involved a serious flaw. Wiseman et al. assumed that PS, waiting with Smith in a pub or other location, would not think about returning until Smith told her to. In fact, she tells me that as time went on she could not help thinking about going home, with thoughts like "It won't be long now". In all three experiments conducted in PS's parents flat, the randomly-selected return times were in the second half of the experimental period, and PS knew that they would have to be leaving by the end of this period. Moreover, while they were waiting together, Smith knew when they would be setting off , and he could well have communicated his anticipation to PS unconsciously through subtle cues, such as glances at his watch. Hence the tendency of Jaytee to go to the window before PS set off (Figure 1) could have reflected her own anticipation that she would soon
be leaving.....

The part in bold is also another error in protocol

[Topher Cooper]

I've been thinking a little about how to set up a valid test of the alternate hypotheses. The following came to mind. I would have to give it a lot more thought in regards to its sensitivity, etc. but here goes.

I'll describe this as involving the owner, O, and the dog, D. In each trial the O leaves at time T0, goes to some location at time Ta, at some randomly chosen time, Tl between Ta and Tmax the owner starts home returning at time Tr. For now, lets simplify and assume the place that O goes is always the same and the travel time (Ta - T0) is constant and the same as the the travel time needed to return (Tr - Tl). I'm leaving out details like O being notified when to leave by a text message from someone who has no other connection to any of the other parties except receiving a text message from O when O arrives.

Meanwhile, D is observed and it is recorded whenever they enter or leave the key region. From this can be computed the "median time in the key area" -- the time before which half the time they eventually spend in the key area occurs. Later this is also computed relative to Tl (the time at which O leaves the remote location to return), by simply subtracting Tl from the median time for each trial.

Now over all the trials compute the variance (or standard deviation) for the median times measured from the T0s and the variance (sd) for the median times measured from the Tls. The conventional hypotheses (either the "random activity" hypothesis, or the "anticipation" hypothesis) predicts that the variance computed from the T0s will be less than the variance computed from the Tls. The psi hypotheses (either the "on the way home" or the "getting ready for O to arrive" hypothesis) predict the opposite.

If we also vary the travel time returning, and use both the median time relative to Tl and to Tr, then we can distinguish these two hypotheses from each other as well.

As I said, this needs much more fleshing out and examination before I could actually recommend it, but I thought I would pass it along.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

Meanwhile, D is observed and it is recorded whenever they enter or leave the key region. From this can be computed the "median time in the key area" -- the time before which half the time they eventually spend in the key area occurs. Later this is also computed relative to Tl (the time at which O leaves the remote location to return), by simply subtracting Tl from the median time for each trial.

What is the "key region"? Why would we assume that a psychic dog would move to some physical spot as a reaction to his master returning home, as opposed to any number of other possible behaviors?

Could you elaborate on the bolded phrase? I can't parse it.


~~ Paul