Is Wikipedia unfair to Psi research?

[Open Mind]

After reading the topic 'anti-skeptic anger' ... I do understand why some proponents get annoyed (although it achieves little). Biased reporting by organized skepticism can indeed be annoying.

So I thought we might look into it. First word I chose was 'Psychic' (On Google search engine Wikipedia has the No.1 position for 'psychic').

Here is the article.... does anyone in here think it is actually fair?
Psychic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

'... The scientific community has rejected claims of psychic phenomena,[8][9][10] and no compelling evidence of psychic phenomena has been found.[11]

There are many scientists who found the evidence compelling. Yes not compelling to those who weren't there. Not compelling to those who didn't do research.

A study using neuroimaging published in 2008 provides the strongest evidence yet obtained that paranormal mental phenomena do not exist.[11]'

As Dean Radin points out this 2008 study is contradicted by at least 4 or 5 others earlier studies. Watch Radin's Google talk video to see why just selecting this one is ridiculously biased.

...In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena."[12]

Did they read any of the 130 years?

There has been over 1000 controlled lab psi studies ... with combined odds against chance of ... 10^104 to 1 ...so there is no scientific justification?

'.. Parapsychologists, who generally believe that there is some evidence for psychic ability, agree with critics who believe that no psychic ability exists that many of the instances of more popular psychic phenomena such as mediumism, can be attributed to non-paranormal techniques such as cold reading, hot reading, or even self-delusion.[37]

This is a gross generalization ... but I partly agree ... too many parapsychologists have not directly investigated evidence suggestive of survival properly, favouring a psi as brain function hypothesis by default.

'Cold reading' has never ever been tested by organized skeptics under scientific controls .... 'Hot reading' is basically a claim of fraud. Self delusion? But who is deluding themselves?

Magicians such as James Randi, Ian Rowland and Derren Brown have demonstrated techniques and results similar to those of popular psychics, but they present psychological explanations as opposed to paranormal ones.[39]

In many of the documented original cases magicians and those expert in fraudulent methods often did not detect fraud. Derren Brown used a camera trick in the programme 'séance', did the Victorians do that too? Ian Rowland has never been scientifically tested so no one has a clue how well he can cold reading (or hot reading) under controlled conditions ... and James Randi has declined offers to replicate past claims under the same controlled conditions.

[Open Mind]

Here are the footnote references.....

I've decided to colour these accordingly ....

RED = organized 'skeptic' source of information
ORANGE = commentary by scientists who have written for and been supported by organized skepticism.
BROWN = historical opinion or commentary.
BLUE = source favourable to Psi research
GREEN = specific psi research not commentary/revision

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Footnotes for the wikipedia article 'Psychic'

1.^ a b David W. Moore (June 16, 2005). "Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal". Gallup News Service. Retrieved on 2008-10-08.
Gallup poll shows that Americans' belief in the paranormal persists, Skeptical Inquirer, accessed October 28, 2006


2.^ Matthew Nisbet (May-June, 1998). "Psychic telephone networks profit on yearning, gullibility", Skeptical Inquirer.

3.^ a b Gracely, Ph.D., Ed J. (1998). "Why Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof". PhACT. Retrieved on 2007-07-31.

4.^ Nova, 15 April 1993 (Season 19, Episode 3), Psychic Debunking.

5.^ NY Daily News. "SHE TOLD THEM BOY WAS DEAD. CRYSTAL BALL FAILS PSYCHIC IN MO. KIDNAP".

6.^ Shari Waxman (June 13, 2002). "Shooting crap:Alleged psychic John Edward actually gambles on hope and basic laws of statistics.", Salon.com.

7.^ FTC Charges "Miss Cleo" Promoters with Deceptive Advertising, Billing and Collection Practices

8.^ (1990) Science Framework for California Public Schools. California State Board of Education.

9.^ *Wheeler, J. A. (1979). "Point of View: Drive the Pseudos Out...". Skeptical Inquirer 3: 12–13.

10.^ Kurtz, P. (1978). "Is Parapsychology a Science?". Skeptical Inquirer 3: 14–32.

11.^ a b c Moulton ST, Kosslyn SM (January 2008). "Using neuroimaging to resolve the psi debate". Journal of cognitive neuroscience 20 (1): 182–92. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20.1.182. PMID 18095790. [

12.^ Druckman, D. and Swets, J. A. eds. (1988). Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and Techniques. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 22. ISBN 0-309-07465-7.

13.^ McConnell, R.A., and Clark, T.K. (1991). "National Academy of Sciences' Opinion on Parapsychology" Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 85, 333-365.

14.^ findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_n3_v56/ai_13771782/pg_5]Research in Parapsychology, 1990: Abstracts and Papers from the Thirty-Third Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association | Journal of Parapsychology, The | Find Articles at BNET. Retrieved February 4, 2007

15.^ Melton, J. G. (1996). Psychic. In Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0810394872.

16.^ a b Melton, J. G. (1996). Prophecy. In Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0810394872.

17.^ 1 Samuel Chapter 9/Hebrew - English Bible. Retrieved 19 September 2007.

18.^ Morgan 1990, p. 148.

19.^
Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, 1978. pp. 196-227

20.Maurizio, Lisa, The Voice at the Centre of the World: The Pythia's Ambiguity and Authority pp. 46-50 in Andre Lardinois and Laura McClure, eds., Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society, (Princeton University Press 2001). pp. 38-54.

21.^
Spiller, Henry A., John R. Hale, and Jelle Z. de Boer. "The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the Gaseous Vent Theory." Clinical Toxicology 40.2 (2000) 189-196.

22.de Boer, J.Z., J.R. Hale, and J. Chanton, "New Evidence for the Geological Origins of the Ancient Delphic Oracle," Geology 29.8 (2001) 707-711.

23.Hale, John R., Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Jeffrey P. Chandon and Henry A. Spiller, Questioning the Delphic Oracle, Scientific American August 2003.

24.^ Mason, Betsy. The Prophet of Gases in ScienceNow Daily News 2 October 2006. Retrieved 11 October 2006.

25.^ Chevignard, Bernard, Présages de Nostradamus 1999

26.^ Lemesurier, Peter, The Unknown Nostradamus, 2003

27.^ Melton, J. G. (1996). Dreams. In Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0810394872.

28.^ Carroll, Bret E. (1997). Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33315-6.

29.^ Podmore, Frank (1997). Mediums of the Nineteenth Century. University Books. ISBN 0-253-33315-6.

30.^ Melton, J. G. (1996). Theosophical Society. In Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0810394872.

31.^ findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_30/ai_n26718251]Find Articles 404 File not found

32.^ Britt, R.: "Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts" LiveScience, January 2006, Retrieved September 18, 2007.

33.^ Hargreaves, Julie: Psychics - myths & misconceptions, Nov 2002, Retrieved April 25, 2007.

34.^ FAQ of the Parapsychological Association

35.^ Myers, David G; Blackmore, Susan. "Putting ESP to the Experimental Test". Hope College. Retrieved on 2007-07-31.

36.^ Hyman, Ray (1995). "Evaluation of the program on anomalous mental phenomena". The Journal of Parapsychology 59 (1),

37.^ Akers, C. (1986). "Methodological Criticisms of Parapsychology, Advances in Parapsychological Research 4". PesquisaPSI. Retrieved on 2007-07-30.

38.^ Child, I.L. (1987). "Criticism in Experimental Parapsychology, Advances in Parapsychological Research 5". PesquisaPSI. Retrieved on 2007-07-30.

39.^ Wiseman, Richard; Smith, Matthew, et al. (1996). "Exploring possible sender-to-experimenter acoustic leakage in the PRL autoganzfeld experiments - Psychophysical Research Laboratories". The Journal of Parapsychology, Retrieved on 30 July 2007.

40.^ EBauer, berhard (1984) "Criticism and Controversy in Parapsychology - An Overview", Department of Psychology, University of Freiburg, European Journal of Parapsychology, 5, 141-166 (2007-02-09)

41.^ O',Keeffe, Ciarán and Wiseman Richard (2005) "Testing alleged mediumship: Methods and results", British Journal of Psychology, 96, 165–17

42.^ Rowland, Ian (2002) "The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading", Self-Published, ASIN

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Conclusion
More Red/Orange than Blue clearly means bias towards organized skeptic sources. Not a single link to the oldest scientific group - Society for Psychical Research (and the article has the audacity to mention no evidence in 130 years)

Just one green article to specific research and it is biased, 4 or 5 prior studies contradict it.

[Larry Boy]

One can only laugh at an article like this. What makes it even more ridiculous is that it is an encyclopedic article, and contains lines like: "[N]o compelling evidence of psychic phenomena has been found" and "The evidence presented for psychic phenomena is not sufficiently verified for scientific acceptance".

Encyclopedic articles are supposed to refrain from making judgments!

[Perig]

Congratulations, Open Mind, for this fine work.

In a related field, alternative medicine, several Crusaders have realized how important Wikipedia is in shaping public opinion. You can find wikipedians who are 24/7 on WP protecting the gullible masses against what they perceive as quack medicine. The psychological torments one may have to bear to succeed on CAM articles are greater than most people can possibly tolerate. My feeling is that, on talk pages of CAM or psi research, you are likely to find the usual tricks of the trade: hypocrisy, selective use of evidence, dismissal of non-mainstream peer-reviewed publications, etc.

But the most important to realize, I believe (with others), is that Wikipedia (in all topics that are called "controversial") is a nerdocracy; the most important is not to have the evidence, or good ideas about how to be neutral, but to have a lot of time to spend in front of your keyboard, to exhaust the opponent.

Another thing is that you need several like-minded people, who will enter the discussion to give the false impression that "most people" would agree with you. It can be so-called "sock puppets" (fictitious WP accounts), but usually, with "controversial" topics, you just need a couple of uninformed "neutral" Wikipedians to revert the article to a reworded version of the initial biased version. Many "neutral" Wikipedians will not read the evidence you present to them, they have better things to do...

I wondered if Citizendium, the new encyclopedia founded by WP's co-founder, Larry Sanger, could be better. Basically, the rule there is that you have to gather a sufficient number of experts (like Radin) to act as editors. Otherwise, they'll take any other academic in a loosely related field, because CZ is still small. From what I could see on the homeopathy page, things can go on and on for eons because there is no genuine curiosity about the topic. Scientists will kindly undermine your evidence, but won't enquire much by themselves.

Returning to Wikipedia, there is hope if we approach things differently:
look at
Dean Radin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rupert Sheldrake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My understanding is that Wikipedians can't go too far with living persons.
In addition, it is possible to store truth in wikipedia in a multitude of sub-articles, such as:
Global Consciousness Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The trick would be to introduce links to those (almost) neutral articles from within the highly popular articles such as parapsychology that are hijacked by pseudoskeptics.

But still, the parapsychology article (Parapsychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), although not as horrendous as Psychic, because it must include objective historical references, has the pseudoskeptic disclaimer right at the top:

The greater scientific community has not accepted that there exists evidence for psychic abilities.[6][7][8][9] In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences produced a report that concluded that there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena."[10] Some science educators and scientists have called the subject pseudoscience.[11][12][verification needed]

In other words: don't waste your time on this article, or jump directly to the Criticism section.

[kholdtare]

"One can only laugh at an article like this. What makes it even more ridiculous is that it is an encyclopedic article, and contains lines like: "[N]o compelling evidence of psychic phenomena has been found" and "The evidence presented for psychic phenomena is not sufficiently verified for scientific acceptance"."

Wikipedia does a good job of being non-biased and biased articles are constantly under review. It IS a fact that the vast majority of professionals in relevant fields have found NO compelling evidence of psychic phenomena! Sorry guys, NOBODY can read mind, or access anything otherworldly. Its just not real, and there are mountains of theory as to why psychics are not real. There is ZERO evidence for them. Obviously the tenants of falsifiability make if very hard to specifically DISPROVE things, but in this case the burden of proof falls on those making extraordinary claims. The ability to do ANYTHING outside of normal science is a million dollar skill, but nobody can claim the prize - because nobody can do anything outside of science!

[CKava]

While your on about this I suggest you organise a re-edit of the creationist page. Apparently it's not an accepted scientific theory yet there are actually a number of scientists who are creationists so that can't be right.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by kholdtare

Wikipedia does a good job of being non-biased and biased articles are constantly under review.

Report mentioned by New Science magazine 'Wikipedians are 'closed' and 'disagreeable' ....

'....Yair Amichai-Hamburger at the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Herzliya, Israel, and his team gave a personality test to 69 Wikipedia contributors. As he expected, the "Wikipedians" were more comfortable online than in the "real world". But he was surprised that contributors scored low for agreeableness and openness to new ideas, given that contributing to the website is based on sharing knowledge (CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol 6, p 679). ... Amichai-Hamburger speculates that Wikipedians make their contributions online because they struggle to express themselves in social situations.

Wikipedians are 'closed' and 'disagreeable' - 31 December 2008 - New Scientist


I was actually on the Randi forums when a bunch of badly informed skeptics were arranging for each other to write articles .... hence the dominance of information taken directly from the biased 'Skeptics Dictionary' which the author admitted on his website (at least in past) it wasn't an attempt to present both sides of the debate i.e. biased reporting.

It IS a fact that the vast majority of professionals in relevant fields have found NO compelling evidence of psychic phenomena!

Great ...that means you will have no problem quoting their lab research ...Please do .....

Sorry guys, NOBODY can read mind, or access anything otherworldly. Its just not real, and there are mountains of theory as to why psychics are not real. There is ZERO evidence for them.

You are displaying 100% total disbelief ..... no doubts = no skepticism. What you have is faith in whatever, whoever has shaped your opinion.

The ability to do ANYTHING outside of normal science is a million dollar skill, but nobody can claim the prize - because nobody can do anything outside of science!

Randi/JREF on website presents/counts failed applications as tests ... over 500 applications seem to have been rejected and just 2 no-hopers per year on average have been tested during the years of the 1 million prize. (according to former JREF challenge Kramer who also claimed those failed at the worse than chance levels - which is an odd statement)

Randi has never conducted any experiment capable of detecting weaker psi effects, he has moved the bar far, far above the threshold of statisitical significance.... In the past Randi has requested odds of 1000 to 1 in a *short* preliminary trial followed by 1 million to 1 in test to win prize.

And you think the above is science? ... it has more in common with a fairground challenge

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by CKava

While your on about this I suggest you organise a re-edit of the creationist page. Apparently it's not an accepted scientific theory yet there are actually a number of scientists who are creationists so that can't be right.

CKava, you must stop associating Psi research with creationism .... the two having nothing in common, except in the minds of badly informed skeptics...... many psi researchers believe in natural selection .... if you want to attack religion, you are on the wrong forum, hardly anyone in here is puts religious belief before scientific investigation

[CKava]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

CKava, you must stop associating Psi research with creationism .... the two having nothing in common, except in the minds of badly informed skeptics...... many psi researchers believe in natural selection .... if you want to attack religion, you are on the wrong forum, hardly anyone in here is puts religious belief before scientific investigation

The problem arises when you use exactly the same kind of arguments that creationists use. I'm not suggesting that you are a creationist I'm saying by using the logic you have displayed in this thread to be consistent you should also be supportive of a re-edit of the creationist pages. As there are a number of scientists who are creationists or intelligent design supporters.

As far as the association between psi and religion. I don't think there is any big connection aside from very similar arguments being used to argue against science (i.e. you will find the same kind of comments about mainstream science from psi advocates and ID proponents). I would also note that it is much more likely that a person who is swayed by psi research will also identify themselves as a spiritual person.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by CKava

The problem arises when you use exactly the same kind of arguments that creationists use. I'm not suggesting that you are a creationist I'm saying by using the logic you have displayed in this thread to be consistent you should also be supportive of a re-edit of the creationist pages. As there are a number of scientists who are creationists or intelligent design supporters.

You are just making assumptions like materialism is the default position of science and materialists owns science and natural selection ....which is false ... history is full of leading scientists who were not materialists .... natural selection was co-discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace who was a dualist (who also claimed evidence of telepathy, survival etc.)

All materialists are really doing is shouting 'pseudoscience' at any phenomena or claim that contradicts materialism ... quantum physics has wrecked material realism as the fundamental structure of reality ....... no materialists have the slightest clue how consciousness/mind can evolve from material processes via natural selection.... but still the materialists are shouting 'pseudoscience' at anything that challenges materialism, they are behaving much like religious people shouting 'it is the devil' at any claim contradictory to the bible.