43. From the desk of James Randi (Podcast)

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

The Ganzfeld studies that used the original protocol, but with improved controls (auto-ganzfeld) showed a hit rate of around 33%, when chance was 25%. Wiseman and Milton's meta-analysis showing near-chance results included a lot of studies experimenting with new targets (such as music instead of pictures), and it was these that produced chance results, thereby lowering the average in the meta-analysis.

Now, since when is a hit rate of 33% "barely (if at all) discernible from chance" when chance is 25%?

Even at 33% the effect is still not large enough that one person could have come up with the idea that they could telepathically communicate on the basis of this effect.


Psi proponents have also failed to improve the Ganzfield experiments. Real science builds upon past experiments and the effects become clearer and clearer over time. The results from individual Ganzfeld experiments are still all over the place. Some are negative and some are positive and there is no clear pattern.

There were no huge bodies of science to predict quantum mechanics or relativity theory, either. There were just some tiny little anomalies, which most scientists seemed to think were going to be accounted for by small revisions in current theory. If you like, you can see psi as an anomaly in today's theoretical paradigm.

Both quantum mechanics and relativity were developed from existing well established science. The scientists who were instrumental in both fields didn't simply pull ideas out of the ether. Special Relativity came out of Maxwell's Equations. You can't say the same for "psi" which has no connection to any known science.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Even at 33% the effect is still not large enough that one person could have come up with the idea that they could telepathically communicate on the basis of this effect.


Psi proponents have also failed to improve the Ganzfield experiments. Real science builds upon past experiments and the effects become clearer and clearer over time. The results from individual Ganzfeld experiments are still all over the place. Some are negative and some are positive and there is no clear pattern.




Both quantum mechanics and relativity were developed from existing well established science. The scientists who were instrumental in both fields didn't simply pull ideas out of the ether. Special Relativity came out of Maxwell's Equations. You can't say the same for "psi" which has no connection to any known science.

I think that at 33% a person might intuit that they had telepathy. Furthermore, in emotionally charged situations the telepathic effect could increase further. Unfortunately, you can't repeatedly kill grandma in a lab experiment

Sheldrake seems to have improved on traditional Ψ experiments enormously - his effect sizes are huge - I guess his view might be that if you are seeing a weak effect size, you haven't picked the right experimental conditions. For example, he has discovered that telephone telepathy only gets a decent effect size among friends and family. Either Sheldrake is a total fake (which would still not explain replications of his work by others), or he has done exactly what you propose.

You seem awfully hung up on the concept of ideas being pulled out of the ether! I'll bet QM seemed exactly like that when it was first proposed. The idea of taking mathematical variables - such as momentum - and treating them as differential operators must have felt exactly like that. It certainly did to me when I first encountered the concept!

You obviously loath the very idea of Ψ, but some of your reasons for rejecting evidence that doesn't go your way makes me smile. If the difference between 33% and 25% is negligible, you can discard an awful lot of experimental studies! Indeed, the whole subject of statistics was devised to help sort out issues like this - but somehow you don't seem to trust proper statistics when applied to Ψ data

Contrary to what you may think, I would still classify myself as somewhat undecided about the reality of Ψ, but your posts have the curious effect of swaying me the other way! I find myself reading your posts and thinking, "well if that is how peer review, etc. has worked in relation to Ψ papers, what would the scientific evidence for Ψ look like if the subject were treated fairly!
David

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Even at 33% the effect is still not large enough that one person could have come up with the idea that they could telepathically communicate on the basis of this effect.

What's your basis for this claim? The effect is larger than in many other scientific studies. And why are you talking about coming up with the idea of telepathic communication on the basis of an experiment? It's the other way round: parapsychologists are testing a phenomenon that has been reported over and over again throughout culture and history.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Psi proponents have also failed to improve the Ganzfield experiments. Real science builds upon past experiments and the effects become clearer and clearer over time. The results from individual Ganzfeld experiments are still all over the place. Some are negative and some are positive and there is no clear pattern.

Actually there is a pattern. As I mentioned in my last post, those experiments that use video footage as targets tend to get better results than those that experiment with totally new targets, such as musical compositions. Still, you can't expect the results to be crystal clear. Dean Radin quoted in his The Conscious Universe several prominent psychologists saying that in ordinary psychology experiments, even when the exact same methods are used, you don't get the same results every time. A lot of factors are involved: the attitudes of the researchers toward the research subjects, the level of comfort in the laboratory setting, the research subjects' personalities, etc. etc. You have to remember we're talking about experiments testing human performance here. We're not talking about experiments in chemistry, where you rightly can expect everything to work as long as you set up things properly.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Both quantum mechanics and relativity were developed from existing well established science. The scientists who were instrumental in both fields didn't simply pull ideas out of the ether. Special Relativity came out of Maxwell's Equations. You can't say the same for "psi" which has no connection to any known science.

What's your point? Not having predicted an effect through careful mathematical consideration means it can't exist? There are mountains of cases where the discovery of an effect preceded the theoretical work on it. The whole of science started that way, for God's sake.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

What's your basis for this claim? The effect is larger than in many other scientific studies. And why are you talking about coming up with the idea of telepathic communication on the basis of an experiment? It's the other way round: parapsychologists are testing a phenomenon that has been reported over and over again throughout culture and history.

Hypothesis generation is a part of science. In real science results lead to new hypotheses which lead to experiments and new results etc. In "psi" research the hypotheses come out of the same type of folk anthropological basis as witchcraft, dragons and faeries. The fact that these things have been reported thoughout culture and history does not mean that they are likely to be real. They reflect more on human psychology than reality.

What's your point? Not having predicted an effect through careful mathematical consideration means it can't exist? There are mountains of cases where the discovery of an effect preceded the theoretical work on it. The whole of science started that way, for God's sake.

In these cases the effect size is large enough to be stumbled across.

The phenomenon of humans flying or levitating or being able to move large objects with their mind has been reported across cultures and throughout history.

This has lead to "psi" experiments involving telekinesis. Instead of levitating, which would win the MDC, "psi" researchers have focussed on subtle effects like influencing the role of a die or a random number generator. The effects reported are almost always extremely small and do not deviate far from chance.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The phenomenon of humans flying or levitating or being able to move large objects with their mind has been reported across cultures and throughout history.

This has lead to "psi" experiments involving telekinesis. Instead of levitating, which would win the MDC, "psi" researchers have focussed on subtle effects like influencing the role of a die or a random number generator. The effects reported are almost always extremely small and do not deviate far from chance.

I think in this you are correct! A similar example would be astrology, where statistical studies are done and reveal a minute effect (which might be somehow related to the fact that people read the things so much), whereas to make horoscopes meaningful, you would need a substantial effect.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot of dross to be eliminated - just as I am sure you could trawl up a lot of dross by reading early chemistry manuscripts. The question is whether it is all dross.

The problem is, that it is generally accepted that any Ψ effects work best in emotionally meaningful situations. This is absolutely vital. Imagine being given the job of hand recording each binary bit from the Phoenix lander on Mars. Even if you know the task was absolutely vital (for some obscure reason that we will not explore), your error rate would soar after a short while even if you had the capacity to be 100% accurate and were highly motivated to do well. I imagine traditional Ψ experiments as having this quality!

Therefore you absolutely need to consider Sheldrake's work, where he tries to achieve greater emotional meaning - and seems to get much more interesting effect sizes. Sheldrake's experiments obviously contain a greater risk of contamination by outside forces, because you need to let the outside world in enough to make the experiments emotionally meaningful to the participants.

I think it is interesting that both the numbingly boring type of traditional Ψ experiment and the less boring, Sheldrake-type experiments both show significant effects in the same direction, and the different between the two types of experiment really does make sense using the above argument (which is not, of course new).

In this context, I guess presentiment is intermediate - fairly irrelevant to the participants, but the arresting images keep participants reasonably focussed. Although Dean Radin's experiments don't have startling effect sizes, they show a significant result after just one sitting of a subject, I believe.

David

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Hypothesis generation is a part of science. In real science results lead to new hypotheses which lead to experiments and new results etc.

You appear to think science is uniformly conducted whether it's physics or psychology or any other field. In physics, it's comparatively easy to generate new hypotheses because the phenomena occur at such a "basic" level and there aren't as many factors to consider as in the soft sciences. This makes it a lot easier to make mathematical models explaining the phenomena. I mean, compare particles to all the neural connections in the brain; which are more complex?

Now because of the complexity of the human mind, results in psychology are a lot less clear than in physics. This leads to the hypotheses and theories being vaguer technically. Therefore you aren't likely to see the same kind of rapid generation of new hypotheses and theories in psychology as in physics.

Subliminal perception was in the same boat as psi just a couple of decades ago: it had struggled to prove it's existence for almost a century. Is this not relevant to you?

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

In "psi" research the hypotheses come out of the same type of folk anthropological basis as witchcraft, dragons and faeries.

Fair enough. But remember chemistry came out of alchemy. Does that make it a pseudo-science?

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The fact that these things have been reported thoughout culture and history does not mean that they are likely to be real. They reflect more on human psychology than reality.

Often, reported phenomena reflect human psychology more than reality, but sometimes it is the reverse.

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

In these cases the effect size is large enough to be stumbled across.

The phenomenon of humans flying or levitating or being able to move large objects with their mind has been reported across cultures and throughout history.

This has lead to "psi" experiments involving telekinesis. Instead of levitating, which would win the MDC, "psi" researchers have focussed on subtle effects like influencing the role of a die or a random number generator. The effects reported are almost always extremely small and do not deviate far from chance.

The effect sizes are small, but the important thing is that over a large number of trials, the results are far better than what's happening in the control trials and is expected by chance. I find it strange to say that just because an effect is small, it's likely not to exist. We see similarly small effects in medicine, but those results are still seen as valid. Where's the difference? Theory? That's funny because I recall reading that there are cases in medicine where effects are stumbled upon by chance, verified experimentally, and not until after that explained theoretically.

Is it psi research's "unability to jibe with other sciences" that makes all the results worthless? Now why should that matter considering it's practically the same for all sciences in the initial stages? QM and relativity theory were seen as nutcrack theories by a large proportion of the scientific community when first proposed. And once again: subliminal perception was highly controversial for almost a century. Neither parapsychology's lack of accord with other sciences nor it's long history should be seen as decisive arguments against it in light of these facts.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The phenomenon of humans flying or levitating or being able to move large objects with their mind has been reported across cultures and throughout history.

Chris, if you look closer you will find most cases were not claims of moving an object 'with their [own] mind' ... the far more common claim are witnesses accrediting it to something invisible causing physical movements.

Most people who experience 'poltergeist' like phenomena do not think 'I am doing that' , it is often the scientists who witness it too and try to make sense of it as a brain function who tend to think 'this is occurring around this person, therefore they must be doing it unconsciously' .

If macro psychokinesis were a brain function it should be under conscious, personal command, it would have been a major evolutionary advantage ....people making the rarer claim of PK as a 'personal power' therefore should perhaps be viewed with greater suspicion than the far more common claims of spontaneous phenomena in history of objects moving not necessarily obeying their commands, wishes or desires, at least consciously.

In fact many people claiming poltergeist phenomena want it to stop ... the ironic thing is they contact 'psychical research' organizations often in desperation to have it stop completely while the researchers want it to occur, to record and log it

This has lead to "psi" experiments involving telekinesis. Instead of levitating, which would win the MDC, "psi" researchers have focussed on subtle effects like influencing the role of a die or a random number generator. The effects reported are almost always extremely small and do not deviate far from chance.

Needless to say they won't necessarily have confidence to win a million dollar prize over spontaneous phenomena they do not have much direct conscious control over.

If the evolution of individual consciousness (not collective consciousness) requires filtering out psi from other's minds to increase isolation, we should be looking for psi as a collective group effect, rather than an individual ability in parapsychology labs or as 'gift' that can win prize challenges?

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Needless to say they won't necessarily have confidence to win a million dollar prize over spontaneous phenomena they do not have much direct conscious control over.

To be fair, there are also cases where the claim involves direct control over the phenomena, as in Daniel Dunglas Home's levitating.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

To be fair, there are also cases where the claim involves direct control over the phenomena, as in Daniel Dunglas Home's levitating.

Larry it is long time since I've read books on D D Home ..... but wasn't this guy a 'spiritualist', in other words wasn't he claiming spirits are producing the phenomena more so than personal psychic ability? Certainly some of the stuff (if real) reported did seem rather like personal command but was that his claim? ... I don't think so.

Of could the skeptics will say 'ah how convenient, this was to give him an excuse at times not to be able to produce the phenomena' ... perhaps they have a good point too ... but one thing is clear, if Sir William Crookes reported accurately, I doubt a magician could have produced what occured under those conditions. Even Hyman agrees no one has ever given a plausible method of fraud under these conditions.

D D Home is an enigma, either way he is one of the greatest magicians ever or one of the most remarkable psychics ever. He claimed he was genuine to the end and despite some claiming he was caught in fraud, the reports are weak IMHO, anyone claiming anything paranormal will get the odd claim of fraud without decent evidence to back it up.

As you might have noticed I am not keen on organized religion, frankly I don't think organized 'spiritualism' has done the scientific invesitgation of paranormal claims many favours, particularly by implying (wrongly) that modern psychic phenomena started with the Fox Sisters claims. One could choose scientist Emanuel Swedenbourg's claims or much further back in history too...

After the investigation of D D Home, Sir William Crookes urged 'spiritualists' (which around that time also just meant the belief that minds survive death, the opposite of materialism) not to make yet another organized religion out of it ....however a set of philosophical principles, the singing of Christian hymns, etc. was to follow and spiritualism became a religion. The theosophical society also emerged too and it's 'new age' movement didn't help much either smudging claims with ancient mumbo jumbo and old ideas, hardly 'new'.

If the scientific investigation points to invisible intelligences, discarnate minds, spirits, non local minds, survival of brain death, external consciousness, whatever terminology we prefer to use ... we cannot avoid it just because organized religion has botched it up in past or made it sound deeply implausible to those in science ......we have to put the record straight outside religion on a more scientific basis

Science is the way forward, at least it is self correcting.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

The problem is, that it is generally accepted that any ? effects work best in emotionally meaningful situations.

Before you can start claiming this you have to demonstrate that the psi effects are real in the first place. Confirmation bias and other effects are also expected to be higher in emotionally charged situations. This doesn't mean that the psi claims are necessarily false but it does make me skeptical.

Sheldrake claims that morphic resonance explains molecular structure and the formation of galaxies. I find it extremely suspicious that instead of choosing experiments or tests in these fields he chooses experiments with dogs where it is extremely difficult if not impossible to control for all confounding factors. None of his experimental hypotheses are actually generated from his theory. From my point of view he is just hunting for popularly held beliefs where he can do experiments that are difficult to control fro subjective biasses.