51. Dr. Julie Beischel Responds to Critics of Psychic Medium Research (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Guest: Dr. Julie Beischel of the Windbridge Institute explains her research into the psychic medium phenomena and addresses skeptical claims about the validity of her findings.

Click here to read more ...

[Open Mind]

Good in depth interview. Beischel comes across well.

I had read the Beischel/Schwartz 'triple blind' study in past, it is a good protocol overall however I think the earlier Roy/Robertson 'triple blind' protocol is better, so it would have been interesting to have seen Beischel/Schwartz attempt to replicate or improve upon that before moving on to their own 'triple blind' design?

Here is my nitpicking of the Beischel/Schwartz design. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Is giving the first name of the deceased person to the medium a potential problem? .

For example if I give you, the medium, two names, lets say 'Dolly' and 'Kimberly' .... which is the younger person? I reckon most people would guess Kimberly?

The name 'Dolly' has slipped in popularity to be out of the top 1000 girls names since the late 1970s, yet the name 'Kimberly' has come from outside the top 1000 names around 1946 to be in the top 10 names by the 1960s/70s
Popular baby names

So the name Dolly sounds more dated? I reckon more people might guess Dolly was an elderly relative or old family friend? Now so far that is fairly minor clue. However ...

Beischel states they chose opposite characteristics in the other deceased person? Hmm ....now if the medium has been given a clue that one deceased person is probably old, the other is known to be young?

Therefore I might guess traditional hobbies for Dolly like gardening, cookery, knitting ... and for the other person I know is likely to be young hobbies such as clubbing, studying, fashion, pop music, etc. I might guess Kimberly died young?

Solution:
- Either do not give the medium a first name at all
OR
- Give medium a first name or photograph in a sealed envelope, if something is required to help mediums 'tune in' to deceased person.
OR
- At least check the name doesn't offer any age related clues, etc.

To be fair, most common first names do offer clear age related information. Clues are more likely to be a problem with uncommon names.

Yes I am nitpicking. A theoretical flaw is not evidence a flaw had any actual effect whatsoever on Beischel/Schwartz outcome ... I doubt it would have in practise.

Rater Bias
One minor comment. Whilst the psi-opponent cannot complain about this in Beischel protocol. The psi-proponent can claim a biased judge can consciously or subconsciously choose the worst matching statements causing the medium to fail? I think there is case for preferring raters who are open minded or even believers under the strictest of conditions rather than die-hard skeptics doing the rating.

Otherwise Beischel's protocol sounds good, natural protocol with many good features IMHO.

[Open Mind]

I have a niggling feeling my above post might not be quite correct .... so I have dug out the original Beischel/Schwartz protocol ....

'....Information about each discarnate and his/her relationship with the associated sitter was collected from the sitter participants by a research assistant who did not interact with the mediums. Discarnate descriptions were then paired to optimize differences in age, physical description, personality description, cause of death, and hobbies/activities of the discarnate.Four deceased parents were paired with four deceased peers of the same gender for a total of four pairs of sitters. It is important to note that this procedure (a) maintained rater blindness by pairing discarnates of the same gender, while (b) optimizing the ability of blinded raters to differentiate between two gender-matched readings during scoring.

Elsevier

Frankly I am not clear on this, not sure I quite understand what exactly was done? Anyone help?

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Frankly I am not clear on this, not sure I quite understand what exactly was done? Anyone help?

My understanding of the protocol is that each sitter rates two readings, one of a person who has died young (a "peer") and one of a person who has died old (a "parent"), only one of which is related to the sitter. The medium, based on the names (which apparently are given to them) may thus make general statements that fit an older or a younger generation, and the sitter may then rate the reading that relates to them somewhat higher because of these "pseudo-hits".

I don't know if Beischel's more recent research deals with this in a better way, but in this "triple-blind" protocol it indeed appears to be possible source of information leakage, if I have not misunderstood the description given in the paper.

Perhaps a way to solve this is to give the surname instead, or just a number, or a pseudonym?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

Perhaps a way to solve this is to give the surname instead, or just a number, or a pseudonym?

I feel there is a danger with all Ψ research of stripping away all the human and emotional content of the task, and destroying the effect in the process. Zener card guessing seems a good example of this reduction process.

Why not use individuals with names that are not a problem - David, for example!

David

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I feel there is a danger with all Ψ research of stripping away all the human and emotional content of the task, and destroying the effect in the process.

If I recollect correctly Marcel Cairo was keen on using numbers or something like that in an experiment. He's a medium, as I'm sure you know, so he should know if this is reasonable or not.

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Why not use individuals with names that are not a problem - David, for example!

It would make it hard to find subjects, so I'm not sure it is a good solution. Also it isn't crystal clear whether a certain name really can be considered unproblematical or not. I can imagine a situation where names such as "David" are being used and the protocol is still critizised on the basis of giving names to the mediums. Critics would point out that the medium may have studied the statistical frequency of such common names and thus still may have been able to use the names to their advantage in some way or another. Perhaps there are more "Davids" being born on the country, and thus a higher frequency of pet lovers among this name group.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

My understanding of the protocol is that each sitter rates two readings, one of a person who has died young (a "peer") and one of a person who has died old (a "parent"), only one of which is related to the sitter. The medium, based on the names (which apparently are given to them) may thus make general statements that fit an older or a younger generation, and the sitter may then rate the reading that relates to them somewhat higher because of these "pseudo-hits".

Yes that is what I took from it too but are we interpreting it correctly? I think unless each sitter has supplied both an old and young potential communicator then all information applying to general differences in age group could be selected by the blinded sitters who perhaps knows 'I only gave info on old person' and select information that applies generally to an older person?

What concerns me even more is that even if the first name is withheld and the mediums knows 'a reading will go to an old deceased person and another reading will go to young deceased person' then if the sitter knows 'I only give info on an elderly deceased person' + protocol, almost certainly they could beat chance without any psi being involved IMHO. However this assumes the medium and sitters know the whole protocol details.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Is giving the first name of the deceased person to the medium a potential problem? .

I think they are adequately controlling for this. This article has a lot more on the protocol, including:

In a recent study in which each medium read for a pair ofdiscarnates, the names in each pair (given to the mediums one at a time at the beginningof each phone reading) included: Ron and Brandon, Pamela and Ariel, and Cindy andJoan (Beischel & Schwartz 2007). (One pair containing two rather unique names is notincluded here to maintain confidentiality.) Furthermore, the discarnate pairs in the mostcurrent Step 5 e-mail test readings of prospective mediums are named Daniel and Larry,Vicki and Eleanor, Leola and Debra, Cliff and Harry, and Nick and David. Because themediums are asked to provide specific information about the physical lives of each discarnate, it seems unlikely that they could obtain the necessary information solely fromthese names.

from: http://www.reason9.com/JP71_2007-200...el_Methods.pdf

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Larry Boy

Perhaps a way to solve this is to give the surname instead, or just a number, or a pseudonym?

Roy/Robertson's 'double blind' protocol (which looks triple blind from what I can tell) had the mediums giving readings to a seat number ... it still worked ..... the results of this indicated that some mediums do indeed give information that fits the blinded target sitters better than the blinded non-target sitters.

[Open Mind]

Alex thanks.... I think I have been largely confused by Beischels/Schwartz wording.

Schwartz/Beischel write 'paired to optimize differences in age' They don't mean differences in the sense of pairing one young (deceased) person with one old (deceased) person ..... because they also write 'Four deceased parents were paired with four deceased peers ... which means no differerences in age, peers are of similar age.

I've think I have done what countless skeptics have done for the past hundred years, mislead others reading too. I've created a mythical flaw! It will end up being published in Prometheus Books

Solved. Beischel's protocol now looks fine to me