Parapsychology and alternative medicine forums

alextsakiris · #1 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 01:17 PM

it's here: Second Trial of Telepathic Dog Experiment | Skeptiko Blog

davidsmith73 · #2 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

it's here: Second Trial of Telepathic Dog Experiment | Skeptiko Blog

That's impressive.

How many trials have you taped so far?

How random was the return time?

Look out million dollars...

David Bailey · #3 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 03:57 PM

Alex,

This is looking really good - are you only going to look at dogs, or will you try cats too?

David

Venom · #4 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidsmith73

Look out million dollars...

Well, Alex should ask a psychic about that, and the psychic would explain to him that he has to apply (that is: submit an application form) to the JREF if he want to take the challenge.

So far, Alex is like Sylvia Brown: he doesn't know how to read an internet website (in this case the JREF website).

Chris Noble · #5 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidsmith73

How many trials have you taped so far?

How many trials is Alex not showing us?

It is easy to pick out a couple of trials which were successful and invent post hoc reasons for ignoring the rest.

Venom · #6 (**permalink**) 04-23-2008, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

How many trials is Alex not showing us?

It is easy to pick out a couple of trials which were successful and invent post hoc reasons for ignoring the rest.

+ 1. We want to see all the tests.

Something I don't understand. Alex said this in the commentary of his first video:

Quote:

Sounds good, right? If there’s someone at the house, they could signal the dog that the owner is coming home, and you’d screw up the experiment, right? It turns out – and I heard this initially from Dr. Sheldrake, and then I found it and confirmed it in the work that we’ve done so far – it turns out dogs are more likely to demonstrate this waiting behavior when someone else is around, either another person, multiple family members, or other dogs.

But with the second video, he's saying:

Quote:

The dog in the house are more sensitive to the first person that comes home, and are less likely to wait when someone is in the house.

Is it just me, or those two sentence are exactly the opposite of each other?

wett0035 · #7 (**permalink**) 04-29-2008, 09:09 PM

To Alex--
Hi, I have been listening to your podcast for a couple of months now and have to say that on the whole I enjoy it. Your attempt to keep an open mind about both the skeptical side and the none skeptical side of issues was intriguing to me because like you I to feel that hard core skeptics can some times jump to de-bunking before they have even taken time to consider what is going on. While they might come to the same conclusion in the end my gut tells me that once the de-bunking switch is thrown not all the evidence in a situation can get taken in.
Anyway, I am writing to you in regard to the telepathic dog situation. Long story short I think it is a worthless study but here is why. The correlation between dogs waiting for their owners to come home and them having telepathy is logically incongruous. In my mind it is similar to saying that there is a correlation between the number of psychics not sleeping on a given and that causing the northern lights to be brighter or dimmer. There is no way to prove that psychics don’t affect the northern lights because no one knows how psychic power “works” and is therefore un-testable. As far as I know the mechanism that allows telepathy to take place has not been outlined and therefore you can not run a test that has telepathy as the mechanism because you don’t even know how to actually measure the amount of “telepathy” being used in the experiment. It’s a little like measuring the rate of oil flow and knowing nothing about viscosity.
I am very open to discussion on this point I have by no means made up my mind but I feel the need to express the concern that I have right now before I can progress logically forward.

alextsakiris · #8 (**permalink**) 04-29-2008, 09:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidsmith73

That's impressive.

How many trials have you taped so far?

How random was the return time?

Look out million dollars...

We've only been to record 3 so far. I'm going to be installing a notebook at her home next week with some improvements to the set-up and controls. Hope to have more in a month.