The Pearce-Pratt Distance Series of ESP Tests

[amherst]

Though they were conducted over seventy years ago, the ESP experiments done with Duke University divinity student Hubert Pearce are still looked on today as strong evidence of psi. Below is a passage detailing the Pearce-Pratt series from Richard Broughton's book Parapsychology the Controversial Science. I've also given a link to a relevant paper authored by Rhine and Pratt. What explanation do you have for these results?

The classic example of these later experiments is the Pearce-Pratt series, which took place between different buildings on Duke's West Campus. Pratt, the agent, was located in what was then the Physics Building. Once a minute he picked up a card from a precut and preshuffled pack. Without turning it up or looking at it, Pratt moved the card facedown on a book. (Since this experiment was meant to test clairvoyance, it was not necessary for Pratt to see the card.) At that very minute Pearce, located with a synchronized watch in the library one hundred yards away, tried to perceive the card on the book. Without meeting, both men deposited sealed records with Rhine-Pratt of the targets (which he recorded after the run) and Pearce of his calls-and then met to check results. Although Pearce started off with only chance scores, as was typical of him when confronted with a new situation, he quickly resumed his high scoring level and averaged 9.9 hits per run of 25 (where chance predicts 5 hits) over the 300 trials. Pearce was then moved to the medical school, over 250 yards away, and, after the customary adjustment period, continued his high scoring. Ultimately four separate experiments were done with a total of 558 hits out of 1,850 trials (where 370 would be expected by chance). The odds against chance for the series were literally astronomical, 22 billion-to-one.

http://www.psychicinvestigator.com/demo/ESPdoc.htm

amherst

[Ed]

Assuming no collusion and no lieing you have proof of the paranormal. Congrats. Now, where are the replications and the Nobel Prizes? Unfortunately this seems to be ever the case with these studies.

[The Don]

This illustrates some of the reasons why many "skeptics" find it difficult to believe that there is a wealth of PSI happening out there. Although only circumstancial, it's interesting to note that the kinds of effects documented in that study are rarely reproduced. Why are we relying on such old information, why haven't better studies been produced and reproduced ?

The issues noted with the study related to the relatively poor controls to prevent cheating. My explanation for the results are as follows:

- The participants somehow cheated
- The person collating the results somehow cheated
- The person analysing the results somehow cheated

All of the above are much more likely than the explanation "PSI was involved". From my perspective, the key phrase is
the data could not have been changed without collusion
Either the controls were not as tight as they had hoped or the collusion had indeed occurred

[Lucianarchy]

Don, you miss the possiblility that science simply does not yet (if ever) have all the answers, and that people perhaps aren't as dishonest as you would like to believe.

[The Don]

So why is the effect so hard to reproduce under properly controlled circumstances ? Why does it always go

- Initial study conducted
- Paranormal claim made
- Introduction of better controls
- Inability to reproduce effects

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ed
Assuming no collusion and no lieing you have proof of the paranormal. Congrats. Now, where are the replications and the Nobel Prizes? Unfortunately this seems to be ever the case with these studies.
Here's the answer to your replication question:
"Now jointly consider the results of the ganzfeld psi experiments, the dream telepathy experiments of the 1960's and 1970s, the ESP cards tests from the 1880s to the 1940s. Upton Sinclair's experiments in 1929, and earlier studies on thought transference. The same effects have been repeated again and again, by new generations of experimenters, using increasingly rigorous methods. From the beginning, each new series of telepathy experiments has met with its share of skeptical attacks. These criticisms reduced mainstream scientific interest in the reported effects, but ironically they also refined the methods used in future experiments to the point that today's ganzfeld experiments stump the experts."(Radin, 97)

And here's the answer to your Nobel Prize question:
http://www.tricksterbook.com/HomePage.htm#DescriptionsofBook

amherst

[amherst]

Originally posted by The Don
This illustrates some of the reasons why many "skeptics" find it difficult to believe that there is a wealth of PSI happening out there. Although only circumstancial, it's interesting to note that the kinds of effects documented in that study are rarely reproduced. Why are we relying on such old information, why haven't better studies been produced and reproduced ?
See my above response.
The issues noted with the study related to the relatively poor controls to prevent cheating. My explanation for the results are as follows:

- The participants somehow cheated
- The person collating the results somehow cheated
- The person analysing the results somehow cheated

All of the above are much more likely than the explanation "PSI was involved". From my perspective, the key phrase is

Either the controls were not as tight as they had hoped or the collusion had indeed occurred
This post exemplifies why skeptics are never going to accept any evidence of the paranormal no matter what. Even if the controls are excellent, even if the experimenters have never had their integrity doubted, skeptics, when faced with evidence this strong, can always claim fraud has occurred. This is a last resort, but it is always an out. Ray Hyman:

"Hansel has a tendency to believe that if any experiment can be shown to be susceptible to fraud, then that immediately means it no longer can be used as evidence for psi. I do sympathize with the parapsychologists who rebut this by saying, well, that can be true of any experiment in the world, because there's always some way you can think of how fraud could have gotten into the experiment. You cannot make a perfectly 100 percent fraud-proof experiment. This would apply to all science."

amherst

[Ed]

Originally posted by The Don
So why is the effect so hard to reproduce under properly controlled circumstances ? Why does it always go

- Initial study conducted
- Paranormal claim made
- Introduction of better controls
- Inability to reproduce effects

Don,

I agree with the specific points that you make but I feel that in this case, and in most others, the meta view provides the most damning evidence.

Suppose everything that they claim happened happened.

Soooooooooooooo..........

Last time I looked physics has not shook, nor are there benchmark experiments in High Schools and most importantly, there have been no glittering prizes. It is the implications that should follow from any success in this area that show it as a sham far better than a micro analysis of the specific experiments.

[steenkh]

Originally posted by Ed

Last time I looked physics has not shook, nor are there benchmark experiments in High Schools and most importantly, there have been no glittering prizes. It is the implications that should follow from any success in this area that show it as a sham far better than a micro analysis of the specific experiments.

Spot on! It is also interesting to note that parapsychologists struggle to produce evidence at all, let alone reproducible evidence, but outside the lab people are happily bending spoons with their minds, reading the future, talking to the dead and so on. Where evidence is so hard to get, believers seem to think that absence of evidence means that it must all be true!

And yet, in our world the welding apparatus has not been replaced by a psychic welder, no psychic has gone off with just a single lottery prize, and the police has been hindered, not helped, by the assistance of psychics!

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by The Don
So why is the effect so hard to reproduce under properly controlled circumstances ? Why does it always go

- Initial study conducted
- Paranormal claim made
- Introduction of better controls
- Inability to reproduce effects

It doesn't. :rolleyes: Come on, Don, you should know better. There is simply no excuse for anyone to make those sort of claims anymore. Get real.

[The Don]

Originally posted by amherst
This post exemplifies why skeptics are never going to accept any evidence of the paranormal no matter what. Even if the controls are excellent, even if the experimenters have never had their integrity doubted, skeptics, when faced with evidence this strong, can always claim fraud has occurred. This is a last resort, but it is always an out. Ray Hyman:

"Hansel has a tendency to believe that if any experiment can be shown to be susceptible to fraud, then that immediately means it no longer can be used as evidence for psi. I do sympathize with the parapsychologists who rebut this by saying, well, that can be true of any experiment in the world, because there's always some way you can think of how fraud could have gotten into the experiment. You cannot make a perfectly 100 percent fraud-proof experiment. This would apply to all science."

amherst
Which is why we reutrn to repeatability. If the same experiemnt can be repeated by many groups throughout the world (ideally some of these groups would be initially sceptical of the claims so that there is little incentive for collusion) then there is a greater tendancy for acceptance.

Furthermore of the experimental results can be demonstrated (quantitatively as well as qualititively) in terms of a set of theorietical models which either predicted the experimental outcome and/or have been used to describe other experimental results then so much the better.

Finally, no matter how good or principled the researcher there is always going to be experimental bias. Experiments are almost always conducted to test a particular expected outcome. Where the experiment does not match with expectations, the experiment is often repeated until either it does (because the "flaws" in the experiment have been eliminated) or until it becomes clear that it will never yield the results (in which case back to the drawing board). Experimenters are often less critical when the results match their initial hypothesis (which is why third parties need to repeat them).

[The Don]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


It doesn't. :rolleyes: Come on, Don, you should know better. There is simply no excuse for anyone to make those sort of claims anymore. Get real.
Show me the evidence of paranormal claims sunstantiated by other research groups repeating the experiments and having the results published in peer reviewed journals. Links to abstracts should be sufficient as a start

[Ed]

And I reiterate, where are the glittering prizes? A conspiracy mayhaps?

That is fine except for one rather inconvienient fact: People are greedy. Mafia guys snitch out their bosses for a book deal, people believe that the President sold out his country for oil revenues (don't matter if it's true, people look in their hearts and know that they would do it). Are you telling me that no one, on one ever in the history of humankind was able to commercialize anything that transpires from the paranormal? No one?

Sniff test raised to some very high power.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by The Don

Show me the evidence of paranormal claims sunstantiated by other research groups repeating the experiments and having the results published in peer reviewed journals. Links to abstracts should be sufficient as a start


Don' make me go and get them again. :mad:

~ groan ~ Whoever is going to lead the skeptical forum's migration must, must, must have a standard source and links kinda bibliography for these subjects.

[The Don]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Don' make me go and get them again. :mad:
Purleaze

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Don, you miss the possiblility that science simply does not yet (if ever) have all the answers, and that people perhaps aren't as dishonest as you would like to believe.

Now that is silly, humans are human there are ethical researchers and there are unethical researchers. Fraud, deception and collusion are common in all the sciences. There is such a pressure to publish and get results that there is a great deal of 'fudging' and 'misinterpretation' that occursa.


And any time there is a statistical value being generated, there is a need to repeat and verify the statistic. Enough runs and trials must occur to show that any demonstrable 'effect' is not just a fluke of random chance. Truely random events are only evenly distributed over a very large period of activity.
And given the abilty of chaotic systems to demonstrate clutering of semi random events, the larger the sample size the more apparent clustering becomes. This makes understanding the event a little easier.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


It doesn't. :rolleyes: Come on, Don, you should know better. There is simply no excuse for anyone to make those sort of claims anymore. Get real.

Get real yourself !XxRationalxX!.. You haven't got evidence that would convince me. There is no souind evidence for paranormal powers in controlled setting.

Hopefully someone will beat the Challenge, that would be so cool, but until then all paranormal powers are the result of the human brains need to put patterns and meaning on unrelated events.

[Dancing David]

posted by Amhearst
Hansel has a tendency to believe that if any experiment can be shown to be susceptible to fraud, then that immediately means it no longer can be used as evidence for psi.


And that my fellow traveller is the core of science!

Fraud, noise and other effects must be controlled for, that is the nature of science.

If you wish to do science then that is the way it is. Replication is the name of the game because isotropy is an axiom of the scintific method.

If you do not control for noise, other events and the potential for fraud, then your results are inconclusive and need to have 'follow up'.

This is an issue for all sciences everywhere all the time. Reseachers every day makes claims and they are subjected to replication, some claims pan out and others don't . Some fail under replication and cojntrol, some demonstrate unexpected results under control, some are replicated and verified.

BeQuerel was doubted by alot of people who didn't beleive that uranium could fog a photographic plate, they went and replicated it. Rutherford was doubted when he reported rays bouncing back from foil, poeple went and replicated. And so on, very every success full trial there are trials of heartache and emptyness.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Dancing David


And that my fellow traveller is the core of science!

Fraud, noise and other effects must be controlled for, that is the nature of science.

If you wish to do science then that is the way it is. Replication is the name of the game because isotropy is an axiom of the scintific method.

If you do not control for noise, other events and the potential for fraud, then your results are inconclusive and need to have 'follow up'.

This is an issue for all sciences everywhere all the time. Reseachers every day makes claims and they are subjected to replication, some claims pan out and others don't . Some fail under replication and cojntrol, some demonstrate unexpected results under control, some are replicated and verified.

BeQuerel was doubted by alot of people who didn't beleive that uranium could fog a photographic plate, they went and replicated it. Rutherford was doubted when he reported rays bouncing back from foil, poeple went and replicated. And so on, very every success full trial there are trials of heartache and emptyness.
You're misunderstanding the point. Hyman is saying that even if an experiment is conducted under the most rigorous controls (like the Pearce-Pratt series was) there are still going to be ways for skeptics to imagine how fraud caused the results. You only have to read Hansel's explanation of the Pearce-Pratt series to see that these fraud scenarios are implausible in the extreme. Yet, they will always offer a way for skeptics to continue in their disbelief.

As far as replication goes, perhaps you missed this Radin quote I posted:

The same effects have been repeated again and again, by new generations of experimenters, using increasingly rigorous methods.

Radin's statement is true. Contrary to popular belief, the field of parapsychology is not littered with masses of unsuccessful, highly flawed experiments. On the whole it has produced many highly significant, exceptionally well controlled and conducted ones. The success of these experiments would be sufficient to bring mainstream acceptance to any other phenomenon were it not psi. As Jessica Utts writes:

There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data.

I am confident in asserting that any impartial observer, after examining the experiments, would conclude that the evidence for psi is excellent. Very few are impartial though, (accepting the existence of something that contradicts core beliefs is not something most people are willing to contemplate) and this is a major reason why parapsychology will continue to stay marginalized.

amherst

[flyboy217]

Originally posted by amherst
I am confident in asserting that any impartial observer, after examining the experiments, would conclude that the evidence for psi is excellent. Very few are impartial though, (accepting the existence of something that contradicts core beliefs is not something most people are willing to contemplate) and this is a major reason why parapsychology will continue to stay marginalized.

amherst

But surely you weren't hoping to find impartial observers here? If your original question was an honest one ("why don't these experiments prove psi"), then you already knew the answer you'd receive: vague claims of deception and delusion.

More than a few psi cases have been dismissed as "undetected fraud," and they shall continue to be so for some time, I would guess. The most one can hope for ever (actually, in this generation) for such experiments is "undetectable fraud" :).

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

Here's the answer to your replication question:
"Now jointly consider the results of the ganzfeld psi experiments,

I thought we'd already gone over this.

Do you still think the ganzfeld is a replicable experiment?

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst
Contrary to popular belief, the field of parapsychology is not littered with masses of unsuccessful, highly flawed experiments. On the whole it has produced many highly significant, exceptionally well controlled and conducted ones.

amherst [/B]

Not "masses", no, but in the case of the ganzfeld, enough to bring the effect down to chance.

[Zep]

Yawn. Different on-ramp, same freeway.

[The Don]

Still waiting for evidence of the "masses" of repeatable experiements (from different reseach groups) published in peer review journals. As I said a link to the abstracts should be sufficient for a start.
I am confident in asserting that any impartial observer, after examining the experiments, would conclude that the evidence for psi is excellent.
Only of your definition of impartial is someone, who on reviewing the evidence determines that there is evidence of PSI in these experiments.

Most truly impartial people would look for evidence of the experiments being successfully repeated by other (ideally competing) research groups and for the results of these studies to have been published in reputable peer reviewed journals (and for these journals not to have retracted at a later date).

Your assertion is therefore absolutely false.

[Lucianarchy]

Most honest, informed sceptics these days accept that there is an effect.

In the face of the overallbody of evidence, it would be irrational, illogical and against occam to suggest each and every last peice of scientific evidence is a result of either self delusion, cheating or collusion of some sort. In fact it is extraordinary unlikely that that should account for every psi effect on record.

The liklihood is that the effect exists and current scientific thinking does not yet understand the mechanism of action.

People who study the phenomena agree that the effect shall be known as the 'Psi Effect'. You have to accept and remember that no known method of action has been found to account for the Ganzfeld. And if you are to assume that each and every last known recorded purported 'effect' is responsible to either delusion, fraud or error, in light of so many undeunked accounts, that is an extraordinary claim in itself, and as such requires extraordinary evidence.

The fact is, the method of action has not been identified, yet it fits so close to both common human experience and now the QM theories of non-local behaviour, that it is more likely that the effect is indeed non-local and therefore worthy of increased research and funding.

"[...]When 10 new studies published after the Milton Wiseman cut off date are added to their database, the overall ganzfeld effect again becomes significant, but the mean effect size is still smaller than those from the original studies. Ratings of all 40 studies by 3 independent raters reveal that the effect size achieved by a replication is significantly correlated with the degree to which it adhered to the standard ganzfeld protocol. Standard replications yield significant effect sizes comparable with those obtained in the past. " Bem, D.J, Palmer, J. and Broughton, R.S. (2001). Updating the Ganzfeld database: a victim of its own success? Journal of Parapsychology, 65, 207-218.

It was also covered in Science News:

"Since the metanalysis was completed, nine more ganzfeld studies have been published. Milton acknowledges that the psi effect would be statistically significant if the analysis were updated to include these studies."

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn..._31_99/fob4.htm

BTW, you may also not be aware of Bem's response to Hyman.

Here it is:

http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/dbem...e_to_hyman.html

BTW,BTW, I asked Dr Blackmore about the Ganzfeld experiments and she told me that:

"The Ganzfeld experiments at Edinburgh are getting highly
significant results. They appear to be well designed and
if they are carried out as stated, then the results are
very unlikely to be due to chance and therefore may be
evidence of ESP. "

[The Don]

Is that it ? The Ganzfeld experiements ?

The very self same experiments which were the subject of a detailed thread in which the weaknesses of the original experiments and of the meta-analysis were clearly pointed out.

The quote you provide from Dr Blackwood is quite equivocal
The Ganzfeld experiments at Edinburgh are getting highly significant results. They appear to be well designed and if they are carried out as stated, then the results are very unlikely to be due to chance and therefore may be evidence of ESP.
I've highlighted the key words for you. Your links don't work for me.

Is this the best evidence you have ?

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by The Don
Is that it ? The Ganzfeld experiements ?

The very self same experiments which were the subject of a detailed thread in which the weaknesses of the original experiments and of the meta-analysis were clearly pointed out.

The quote you provide from Dr Blackwood is quite equivocal

I've highlighted the key words for you. Your links don't work for me.

Is this the best evidence you have ?

:rolleyes:

Don, I am happy to provide you with details, sources and further contacts for your research. But dismissing them with silly, and simply wrong statements, like you have above, is hardly going to warrant me wasting any further time. The links work just fine.

[The Don]

The Ganzfeld experiments are being discussed elsewhere so unless you are a one trick pony, post more abstracts please where:

- Research is corroborated from more than one source
- The effects have been reproduced
- The papers are published in an independent peer reviewed journal

After all you claim that there's sooooooo much evidence out there

[Lucianarchy]

Don, please contact Dr Dean Radin: info@PsiResearch.org

He is an extrememly approachable chap and is more than able to supply you with the all the sources and references for the experiments we are talking about here and more than willing to address any of the issues you may have. Again, please report back here with your findings.

[Lucianarchy]

Bem, D. J. and Honorton, C. (1994). Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer, Psychological Bulletin, 115, 4-18. Here's the article online: psi in the ganzfeld. http://www.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/does_psi_exist.html

Child, I. L. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The question of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230.

Jahn, R. G. and Dunne, B. J. (1986). On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena. Foundations of Physics, 16, 721-772.

Jahn, R. G. (1982). The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective. Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, 136-170.

Radin, D. I. (1989). Searching for "signatures" in anomalous human-machine interaction research: A neural network approach. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3, 185-200.

Radin, D. I. & Nelson, R. D. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514.

Radin, D. I. (1994). On complexity and pragmatism. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8 (4), 523-534.

Rao, K. R. & Palmer, J. (1987). The anomaly called psi: Recent research and criticism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 539-551.

Utts, J. (1991). Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology. Statistical Science, 6, 363-378.


Jessica Utts' Report on Remote Viewing for the US government, critic Ray Hyman's Response to Utts' Report, and her Response to Hyman's Response. http://www-stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/response.html

[kieran]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


Don, I am happy to provide you with details, sources and further contacts for your research. But dismissing them with silly, and simply wrong statements, like you have above, is hardly going to warrant me wasting any further time. The links work just fine.

Sorry Luci, I am also having trouble accessing the links ...

http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/dbem...e_to_hyman.html & http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn..._31_99/fob4.htm

... from your previous message. While it is true that they look like they have been abbreviated, I'd have to agree with The Don that they don't work.

Now what was that about dismissing "with silly, and simply wrong statements"? :confused:

[The Don]

Well from the Science News link I get the "Sorry! The requested page could not be found" page.

For the Cornell link I got "The document name you requested (/dbem...e_to_hyman.html) could not be found on this server"

[The Don]

Have Dr. Radin's experiemental results been reproduced (by someone other than Dr Radin and his assocaites) and have these reproduced results been published ?

The information available on line indicates that this is not the case.

[Lothian]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Jessica Utts' Report on Remote Viewing for the US government, critic Ray Hyman's Response to Utts' Report, and her Response to Hyman's Response. http://www-stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/response.html
Link doesn't workI think we are finally getting the elusive replications that we have sought in PSI studies. Each time you get identical results. The page doesn’t exist :D

[Zep]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Bem, D. J. and Honorton, C. (1994). Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer, Psychological Bulletin, 115, 4-18. Here's the article online: psi in the ganzfeld. http://www.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/does_psi_exist.html

Child, I. L. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The question of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230.

Jahn, R. G. and Dunne, B. J. (1986). On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena. Foundations of Physics, 16, 721-772.

Jahn, R. G. (1982). The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective. Proceedings of the IEEE, 70, 136-170.

Radin, D. I. (1989). Searching for "signatures" in anomalous human-machine interaction research: A neural network approach. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 3, 185-200.

Radin, D. I. & Nelson, R. D. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514.

Radin, D. I. (1994). On complexity and pragmatism. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8 (4), 523-534.

Rao, K. R. & Palmer, J. (1987). The anomaly called psi: Recent research and criticism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 539-551.

Utts, J. (1991). Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology. Statistical Science, 6, 363-378.


Jessica Utts' Report on Remote Viewing for the US government, critic Ray Hyman's Response to Utts' Report, and her Response to Hyman's Response. http://www-stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/response.html The usual suspects...

[Ersby]

Although it’s an exercise in futility, let’s take a look at Lucian’s (assuming it is Lucian who wrote them) claims.


Most honest, informed sceptics these days accept that there is an effect.


Bearing in mind that it is Lucian who decides who qualifies as an “honest, informed sceptic”, this is hardly evidential. I would add that if there are honest sceptics who hold this view, then they do so with incomplete data.


In the face of the overall body of evidence, it would be irrational, illogical and against occam to suggest each and every last piece of scientific evidence is a result of either self delusion, cheating or collusion of some sort. In fact it is extraordinary unlikely that that should account for every psi effect on record.


This is, of course, a nonsense with regards to the ganzfeld experiments, since the overall body of evidence doesn’t show an effect. Thus there is no need to explain away each experiment’s results.


The likelihood is that the effect exists and current scientific thinking does not yet understand the mechanism of action.


There is no effect. There is no action. There is no mechanism.


People who study the phenomena agree that the effect shall be known as the 'Psi Effect'. You have to accept and remember that no known method of action has been found to account for the Ganzfeld. And if you are to assume that each and every last known recorded purported 'effect' is responsible to either delusion, fraud or error, in light of so many undebunked accounts, that is an extraordinary claim in itself, and as such requires extraordinary evidence.

There is no effect to be explained, neither with QM nor with magnetism or the ether or whichever scientific theory of the day you choose to co-opt.

As far as I can tell, the situation stands thusly. The Honorton meta-analysis of ’73-’81 was rendered effect-less by the following experiments (until circa ’91). Bierman showed this. Utts wrote without reference to this (Beirman’s) extra work, nor with the completed results of those four experiments that she mentioned in the SAIC paper as replications (she wrote about four, two of which (Beirman, Broughton) eventually reported chance results). I’m not at all convinced that Radin nor Utts is working from the complete dataset. The findings of the pre ’91 ganzfeld database really have very little to do with the most recent research.

I’m happy to drop the pre ’91 database and talk about the PRL results as a kind of year zero (and in doing so, you’d find a “psi” effect again), but in doing so, you’d have to drop Honorton’s m-a, Utts’ work and Radin’s findings too.

Let’s take a trip together into supposition-land. Honorton’s original m-a covered 762 sessions, at an average of 28 sessions per experiment. Let us suppose (and this is really the only supposition we’ll be making) for one moment that the experiments until Beirman’s addendum also had an average of 28 sessions per experiment. That makes 1238 sessions with zero effect size overall (ie approx 25% hit rate). Add this to the 1661 sessions of the Bem et al m-a and it’s 30% or so hit rate and you get (wait for it) 27% since the first ganzfeld experiment.

Is this the much vaunted psi effect I’ve heard so much about? I’d heard it was small, but I had no idea it was THIS small!

If anyone can offer better mathematics/better data to show where I’m going wrong, please do. Thanks.

[Ed]

And the question remains: To what extent do real scientists, physicists and the like, account for the forces that must somehow exist if this stuff is true? Are they sort of stumped and just simply refuse to admit their existance since they are so closeminded?

I am really curious, given the positing of new forces and alternate channels of communication and so on, how does modern physics accomplish anything without taking these hitherto undefined forces into account?

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Ed
And the question remains: To what extent do real scientists, physicists and the like, account for the forces that must somehow exist if this stuff is true? Are they sort of stumped and just simply refuse to admit their existance since they are so closeminded?

I am really curious, given the positing of new forces and alternate channels of communication and so on, how does modern physics accomplish anything without taking these hitherto undefined forces into account?

In short, because there's no evidence to support the existence of these previously unknown forces, and thus nothing needs to be changed. I can posit unicorns in your back garden, but that doesn't mean that you are necessarily convinced to put out unicorn chow.

If credible evidence were to be unearthed that there is actually a phenomenon that requires explanation, scientists would modify their theories to explain it. But there's no need to explain what doesn't exist in the first place.

[Ed]

Originally posted by drkitten


In short, because there's no evidence to support the existence of these previously unknown forces, and thus nothing needs to be changed. I can posit unicorns in your back garden, but that doesn't mean that you are necessarily convinced to put out unicorn chow.

If credible evidence were to be unearthed that there is actually a phenomenon that requires explanation, scientists would modify their theories to explain it. But there's no need to explain what doesn't exist in the first place.

My thought is that if they existed, scientists from a variety of other disciplines would be positing them. Wasn't the existance of Pluto inferred by orbitary perturberations long before it was "discovered"?

I see little point in debating the specifics of individual experiments. The question is a much broader one: What would we expect if these paranormal contentions were true? This approach is independent of silly designs or endless discussions of methodology. And the results here cannot be talked around very easily. The lack of any response to my speculations suggests to me that I have hit on something.

[Dancing David]

Amhearst and Lucianarchy:

Your posts are such wonderful parodies of themselves that they can not be debated.

I rest my case: science is science, when psi research practices science then it will be accorded as such. The history of psychology will show you a lot that you need to learn about the scientific method.

It is not a valid argument to change the limbo bar of science, either you can dance under the bar or you knock the bar down. You can't reset the bar.

Until then your claims and wishes are as strong as A. Conan Doyle's beleif in fairys, if it gives you comfort then more power to you.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


I thought we'd already gone over this.

Do you still think the ganzfeld is a replicable experiment?
Yes. I left the ganzfeld discussion because you and Paul C. Anagnostopoulos simply could not understand that on a seven point rating scale, 4.00 is the only midpoint. Though I explained this to you again and again, you and he kept trying to (absurdly) move it to 5.3 and other strange places on the scale. I am sure that you will continue to believe your ridiculous criticism, but the truth of the matter is, the Bem/Broughton/Palmer paper proves that ganzfeld studies conducted under conditions which comply with standardness, replicate the original findings.

amherst

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by amherst

the Bem/Broughton/Palmer paper proves that the ganzfeld experiments, when conducted under conditions which comply with standardness, are replicable.

amherst

You can'y answer simple questions about statistics and you expect us to accept a meta-analysis as proof of replecation?

Show me a hundred studies with proper protocols and I will believe you , but 'fudging' after the fact does not make science, it makes bad science.

ED'S Question: What level of inter-rater reliablity was given for the standardness score?

O the agony, the conspiracy theory, only used by people who can't show valid results under controlled conditions. Until the controls are in place the reasons for any effect are unknown.

[Ed]

Meta analysis.....

While I have never personally performed a formal analysis of this sort it seems to me that certain basic considerations mist be adhered to. For example, the protocols for the experiments under consideration must be the same, not close, the same. If not, the chain of causation is unknown and any interpretation of results is sorta silly. Now, one might, thru statistical legerdermain, one might "control" for differences between labs but that is pretty much lieing. The second point is that the mean and varience of the disparate results must be the same.

Does anyone know if these rather basic concers were addressed in the studies under discussion.

All of this is neither here nor there, of course, see my post above.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Dancing David




ED'S Question: What level of inter-rater reliablity was given for the standardness score?




If that was lower than the effect then you really don't got nothin'. They should have analysed with respect to lab/rater to demonstrate that this was not a source of significant error, did they? The point is that by the time you do all of the appropriate controls, you are pretty much left with looking for significance by experiment, a point I made ages ago.

I wonder if they should do the correction for repeated measures? Hoyt would know. Bill?

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Ed
Meta analysis.....

While I have never personally performed a formal analysis of this sort it seems to me that ....


No comment..

[Hellbound]

Just my opinon regarding the whole standardness score issue...

If the test was done to standard, it should get a 7. Period. Anything less than this indicates something nonstandard about the protocol.

Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that only the tests rated a seven should be considered. What does that do to the meta-analysis, I wonder?

I mean, if you tried to group 50 tests of relativity based on light bending, you'd only include the ones witht he controls all properly implemented. If you had one that, for example, didn't calibrate the time-pieces used, it should not be considered. Period. Even if a "standardness rating" gave it a 6.5 out of 7. Without knowing that the time-piece is accurate, the result is immediately in question.

[amherst]

Here's an interesting passage about skeptics taken from the paper Parapsychology and Its Critics by Douglas M. Stokes:
. . . prejudice and close-minded thought processes are not confined to believers in psychic phenomena. Consider for instance the following quotations of two eminent scientists, the psychologist Donald Hebb and the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, both taken from Collins and Pinch (1979, 244). First Hebb:

"Why do we not accept E.S.P. as a psychological fact? Rhine has offered us enough evidence to have convinced us on any other issue. . . I cannot see what other basis my colleagues have for rejecting it . . . My own rejection of [Rhine's] views is in a literal sense prejudice."

Now Helmholtz:

"I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses would lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible."

These quotations illustrate an unwillingness to consider the evidence on the part of skeptics that, if anything, exceeds that of the most ardent reincarnation enthusiast or UFO buff.

amherst

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Dancing David


You can'y answer simple questions about statistics and you expect us to accept a meta-analysis as proof of replecation?

Show me a hundred studies with proper protocols and I will believe you , but 'fudging' after the fact does not make science, it makes bad science.

ED'S Question: What level of inter-rater reliablity was given for the standardness score?

O the agony, the conspiracy theory, only used by people who can't show valid results under controlled conditions. Until the controls are in place the reasons for any effect are unknown.

There is no conspiracy, only ignorance of the evidence or cognitive dissonance due to a belief in the religion of 'Scientism'.

It used to be 'show me one', then 'show me two'. You may have put he fallacy of bar-rasing to remarkable extremes, David. But the thing is, some people will never accept something that threatens their personal faith / philosophical investment, and that applies to both sides of the 'true believer' / 'true unbeliever' paradigm.

The fact is the Psi effect exists. Current science doesn't yet understand the mechanism. Humans have been here before with the sun and the moon. No doubt, they will go much further in future times.

[flyboy217]

Originally posted by Ed
And the question remains: To what extent do real scientists, physicists and the like, account for the forces that must somehow exist if this stuff is true? Are they sort of stumped and just simply refuse to admit their existance since they are so closeminded?

I am really curious, given the positing of new forces and alternate channels of communication and so on, how does modern physics accomplish anything without taking these hitherto undefined forces into account?

You're not really serious are you? At every point in the history of science, this question could be asked about any not-yet-discovered theory.

If, for example, the PEAR results are true, and there is a very very small perturbation due to conscious observers, there seems to be very little scientists would need to do to account for it. Kind of like how physicists using Newtonian mechanics wouldn't have to account for time dilation or space contraction in most cases.

On that note, what exactly is the flaw with the PEAR experiments?

[Ed]

Originally posted by flyboy217


You're not really serious are you? At every point in the history of science, this question could be asked about any not-yet-discovered theory.

If, for example, the PEAR results are true, and there is a very very small perturbation due to conscious observers, there seems to be very little scientists would need to do to account for it. Kind of like how physicists using Newtonian mechanics wouldn't have to account for time dilation or space contraction in most cases.

On that note, what exactly is the flaw with the PEAR experiments?

Do a search here, it has been gone over ad nauseum.

[Pragmatist]

Originally posted by amherst

These quotations illustrate an unwillingness to consider the evidence on the part of skeptics that, if anything, exceeds that

of the most ardent reincarnation enthusiast or UFO buff.
amherst

That doesn't follow.

1. You cannot generalise from the statements of two people that "skeptics" (as a general class) are all prejudiced. You are entitled to say that at least two people who call themselves "skeptics" are admittedly prejudiced.

2. Someone who is TOTALLY prejudiced is not really entitled to call themselves a "skeptic".

3. I've known PLENTY of UFO buffs etc., who wouldn't accept ANYTHING that would contradict their ideas about UFO's etc.

Therefore there is no basis on which to say that the alleged "skeptics" are MORE prejudiced etc.

4. There are prejudiced people in both camps.

5. Prejudice is not necessarily a bad thing (as I will explain).

This kind of argument keeps arising. It's NOT just that there are two opposed groups of people who mutually disagree. There is a more fundamental difference. I believe that in part this is related to the "doctrine of falsifiability".

I explained falsifiability in another thread, I'll explain it again here. I believe I know certain things about the world I live in. There are some things I see happen every day. These things RELIABLY happen, there are NOT frequent anomalies that would lead me to question the truth of what I see. The same applies to everyone.

For example. Every day I notice in some way, that if an object is somehow left or projected unsupported into the air, it falls DOWN. Objects never fall UP. Well, almost never. On the rare instances when they do, I observe certain things that logically MAKE them disobey the usual rule. For example a gust of wind may make paper, effectively, "fall" UP. I notice that in the absence of the confounding factor (the wind) that the paper falls DOWN just like everything else. So I'm pretty
sure that it's true to say that in the absence of confounding factors (like the wind) that objects ALWAYS fall down. And when there IS some anomaly to that (a helium balloon for example) I am aware of good reasons WHY that doesn't explicitly break the general rule I call gravity.

Now someone proposes a hypothesis. They propose that objects always fall UP because of "transdimensional vortexes". How can I test that hypothesis? Well, I can throw something in the air and watch which way it goes. And it always falls DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). In fact, I don't even NEED to do the experiment. I've effectively been doing the experiment my whole life! I KNOW what will happen even before doing the experiment. So you could legitimately say that I am prejudiced in favour of the belief that things ALWAYS fall DOWN. My prejudice however, is based on legitimate experience.

It is not necessarily a bad thing. For example if I encounter a high cliff, my prejudice prevents me from stepping off that cliff in the hope that I will fly. That is why, to date, I have not been splatted on the rocks at the bottom! To me, that's a GOOD thing! :)

Let us now test an alternative "scientific" hypothesis. I NOW assert that objects always fall DOWN because of "transdimensional vortexes". Again I don't even need to do the experiment, I KNOW what the outcome will be. BUT - and here is where the big "BUT" comes in - the fact that I have established that things always fall down, does NOT in any way constitute evidence to the effect that it's DUE to "transdimensional vortexes"!

Can you see the logic of both cases? There is an implicit logical "AND" when I ascribe a cause to an effect. If either
condition is FALSE then the entire proposition is FALSE, and I don't even need to know the state of the other condition to be able to say that. But if either one is TRUE, and the other condition undetermined, then the entire proposition is INDETERMINATE. I cannot reasonably say that one "true" condition makes the whole proposition a truth.

And here you have the first difference between "skeptic/scientist" and "believer". The "believer" does NOT accept that the proposition is indeterminate. He insists (believes) that an element of truth, constitutes truth of the whole.

And that's where the conflict comes in (usually).

Real scientists and skeptics (and I accept that there are many who call themselves "scientists" or "skeptics" who don't deserve the title) try to design tests for truth based on FALSIFIABILITY. They know that if you test for "truth" of one state only, the result will ALWAYS be indeterminate. But they also know that if they can prove just ONE state false, then the entire proposition is false. The outcome is certain - and they can sleep at night! So in one sense they employ a particular "economy" of logic.

Ideally, in ANY situation, the true scientist/skeptic should always try to find the element that is false. They SHOULD try to "falsify" their own work as much as anything else. Richard Feynman once described this as the "necessary integrity" of a true scientist. To put it simply, when presented with an indeterminate proposition, try to shoot as many holes in it as possible! :) And if by any chance it SURVIVES that process, then it is probably (provisionally) true (until other evidence comes along to the contrary).

I think everyone will reasonably accept the truth that objects always fall DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). That "truth" is NOT certain, but it is provisionally acceptable given the sheer weight of natural evidence in its favour. Now if anyone asserts that it is NOT true then I invite them to demonstrate that by stepping off the nearest cliff! :) You see, if they do, and they DON'T go splat then they've just apparently falsified my provisional truth.

However, I also have to consider the WEIGHT of evidence as well. If one person steps off the cliff and just floats there, and EVERYONE else within reason goes splat, then I have a problem. Should I discard my provisional truth entirely? Clearly not, because if I do, I might be tempted to go stepping off cliffs - and for me at least, that is a BAD thing!

The person who floats is an anomaly. I don't quite know what to do with him. The most logical thing to do is to look for a hidden confounder, because in my overall truth I remember that sometimes confounders (like the wind and the paper) can cause apparent anomalies. I know in THOSE cases that the "anomalies" are NOT REALLY anomalies. They are simply a more complex situation that I haven't quite grasped. So I look for a confounder. How do I do that? I set up hypotheses as to how/why he could float like that - and then I apply my USUAL and CONSISTENT doctrine of trying to shoot holes in those hypotheses.

But what does the true believer do? The true believer accepts the same provisional truth as I do to start with. He does NOT want to step off that cliff any more than I do, because he accepts the common truth that he is likely to go splat! But when he sees one guy who DOESN'T go splat, he suddenly "believes". In other words, he immediately believes that the evidence of the floating anomaly PROVES my truth to be false. BUT, because he doesn't need to consider anything else to believe (since he already does) - he does NOT go looking for a confounder.

THERE is where the real parting of the ways occurs. The whole basis of who is right or wrong now seems irretrievably screwed up! It looks like the positions have reversed! The believer in the first instance is absolutely right, the "truth" has been falsified hasn't it? Say what?! The skeptic is ADMITTING that the believer is RIGHT?!!! Hallelujah! But hang on a moment, don't celebrate too soon! :) There is a catch, (what did you expect from a skeptic!) :) The believer is making a mistake. He is ignoring the possibility of a confounder. The skeptic on the other hand, knows that the "WHOLE truth" includes known confounders. He knows, on the basis of the weight of prior evidence, that not only is the confounder POSSIBLE, but also that its existence is PROBABLE. But hang on a moment, the believer protests, you said that to falsify just one condition of the "truth" is to falsify the whole thing!!!! And yes I did. Except that believer has overlooked the need to adjust the logic to maintain logical consistency.

Let me state it this way: If an object is in the air AND unsupported AND there is no confounder, it falls down.

Let's write that as logic.

Let A = "object in the air"
B = "unsupported"
C = "no confounder"
D = "falls down"

Therefore, A AND B AND C = D Which is logically correct. That is the provisional truth we ALL accept to start with.

In the case of the floating man however, D is FALSE, he doesn't fall down. A is true, there is an object. B is true, he's unsupported. But what about C? C is an example of a logical NEGATIVE. It's "NO confounder". That is where the difference occurs. The skeptic says condition C is FALSE (i.e. that there IS a confounder). The believer however assumes that C is TRUE (that there ISN'T a confounder). The believer overlooked the need to reverse the logic to maintain logical consistency.

Let's write out the equation for the case of the skeptic and the believer:

Skeptic: A AND B AND NOT C = NOT D

Believer: A AND B AND C = NOT D

Elementary logic proves that the skeptic is right and the believer is wrong. The "skeptic equation" conforms to the laws of logic. The "believer equation" doesn't.

O.K. so what does all this prove? Why go to all these lengths? Because if you apply basic logic to the situation you can see where and how and why the conflicts between the skeptic and believer arise.

Given the situation of the "floating man" anomaly. What does the skeptic naturally do? He tries to find the confounder. What could have possibly screwed the situation up so much, that we actually believe the truth to be false? We are clearly missing something.

What does the believer do in response? He offers alternative "truths" to replace the one he (wrongly) believes is "broken".

How does a skeptic react to an "alternative truth"? He does what he ALWAYS does, he tries to shoot holes in it! Because he can't accept that it IS true unless it survives falsification!

And then the believer gets upset because those nasty skeptics are always trying to shoot down his nice new theories! And on top of that, they are always looking for some sort of confounder in order to maintain their "broken" truth system!

What the believer fails to realise is that the truth is NOT broken at all. It is only broken if no confounder ACTUALLY
EXISTS. The only way the believer position can ever be proven (provisionally) right, is if he can falsify all reasonably possible confounders AND if his alternative theories have rigorously survived the most brutal falsification attempts. There is even a third condition as well, the believer theories have to be testable. If they are not they can never be falsified and there can be no resolution.

In general, all the believers ever seem to come up with is circumstantial evidence that there MIGHT be an anomaly! It's just not enough. And it barely begins to address step 1 of the 3 step logical process.

It seems unfair. I guess it is in one sense. But it's LOGIC! It's ALL WE HAVE TO WORK WITH! No believer ever has come up with an alternative system that works as well as, or better than, basic logic. Until they do, how can they expect the skeptics to abandon the one thing that we know actually WORKS?! The only significant fault on the part of some (real) skeptics is that they don't always try to shoot down their own confounders, but then again, nobody's perfect, and the believers are quite free to do so anyway!

So there you have it. THAT'S why the skeptics will never agree with the believers or vice versa. Call it unfair if you want, but its the SKEPTICS who built the working system we call logic. The believers have nothing to replace it. It's the skeptics who have put in the hard work so far in developing a working system. Until the believers get off their backsides and develop a feasible alternative, they are in a no-win situation.

Anyway, the skeptics are NOT trying to shoot things down because they are evil (well MOST aren't! :)). It's because that's the only thing we know actually WORKS. And if the believer wants to say it DOESN'T work, as before, I invite him to step off the cliff and falsify my logic! And I also remind him that the computer which he is probably viewing this on, the electricity that runs it, the house he is living in, the car that he drives, and so on, are ALL tangible products that have resulted from the form of pure skeptical enquiry we call "science". What do believers have to show? Crystals? Tarot Cards, bent spoons etc., all of which MAY sort of "work" OCCASIONALLY when nobody is actually looking? Yeah, right! :D

[amherst]

A minor correction. Instead of:

These quotations illustrate an unwillingness to consider the evidence on the part of skeptics that, if anything, exceeds that of the most ardent reincarnation enthusiast or UFO buff.

the sentence should read:

These quotations illustrate an unwillingness to consider the evidence on the part of certain skeptics that, if anything, exceeds that of the most ardent reincarnation enthusiast or UFO buff.

amherst

[flyboy217]

Originally posted by Ed


Do a search here, it has been gone over ad nauseum.

Fine. My point still stands: we have no way to conjecture how as-of-yet unknown forces affect our current theories and experiments. If it were a valid criticism, little progress would be made in the sciences.

[flyboy217]

(Apparently I do not have the ability to delete my post, so here is my empty post;))

[amherst]

Originally posted by Pragmatist


That doesn't follow.

1. You cannot generalise from the statements of two people that "skeptics" (as a general class) are all prejudiced. You are entitled to say that at least two people who call themselves "skeptics" are admittedly prejudiced.

2. Someone who is TOTALLY prejudiced is not really entitled to call themselves a "skeptic".

3. I've known PLENTY of UFO buffs etc., who wouldn't accept ANYTHING that would contradict their ideas about UFO's etc.

Therefore there is no basis on which to say that the alleged "skeptics" are MORE prejudiced etc.

4. There are prejudiced people in both camps.

5. Prejudice is not necessarily a bad thing (as I will explain).

This kind of argument keeps arising. It's NOT just that there are two opposed groups of people who mutually disagree. There is a more fundamental difference. I believe that in part this is related to the "doctrine of falsifiability".

I explained falsifiability in another thread, I'll explain it again here. I believe I know certain things about the world I live in. There are some things I see happen every day. These things RELIABLY happen, there are NOT frequent anomalies that would lead me to question the truth of what I see. The same applies to everyone.

For example. Every day I notice in some way, that if an object is somehow left or projected unsupported into the air, it falls DOWN. Objects never fall UP. Well, almost never. On the rare instances when they do, I observe certain things that logically MAKE them disobey the usual rule. For example a gust of wind may make paper, effectively, "fall" UP. I notice that in the absence of the confounding factor (the wind) that the paper falls DOWN just like everything else. So I'm pretty
sure that it's true to say that in the absence of confounding factors (like the wind) that objects ALWAYS fall down. And when there IS some anomaly to that (a helium balloon for example) I am aware of good reasons WHY that doesn't explicitly break the general rule I call gravity.

Now someone proposes a hypothesis. They propose that objects always fall UP because of "transdimensional vortexes". How can I test that hypothesis? Well, I can throw something in the air and watch which way it goes. And it always falls DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). In fact, I don't even NEED to do the experiment. I've effectively been doing the experiment my whole life! I KNOW what will happen even before doing the experiment. So you could legitimately say that I am prejudiced in favour of the belief that things ALWAYS fall DOWN. My prejudice however, is based on legitimate experience.

It is not necessarily a bad thing. For example if I encounter a high cliff, my prejudice prevents me from stepping off that cliff in the hope that I will fly. That is why, to date, I have not been splatted on the rocks at the bottom! To me, that's a GOOD thing! :)

Let us now test an alternative "scientific" hypothesis. I NOW assert that objects always fall DOWN because of "transdimensional vortexes". Again I don't even need to do the experiment, I KNOW what the outcome will be. BUT - and here is where the big "BUT" comes in - the fact that I have established that things always fall down, does NOT in any way constitute evidence to the effect that it's DUE to "transdimensional vortexes"!

Can you see the logic of both cases? There is an implicit logical "AND" when I ascribe a cause to an effect. If either
condition is FALSE then the entire proposition is FALSE, and I don't even need to know the state of the other condition to be able to say that. But if either one is TRUE, and the other condition undetermined, then the entire proposition is INDETERMINATE. I cannot reasonably say that one "true" condition makes the whole proposition a truth.

And here you have the first difference between "skeptic/scientist" and "believer". The "believer" does NOT accept that the proposition is indeterminate. He insists (believes) that an element of truth, constitutes truth of the whole.

And that's where the conflict comes in (usually).

Real scientists and skeptics (and I accept that there are many who call themselves "scientists" or "skeptics" who don't deserve the title) try to design tests for truth based on FALSIFIABILITY. They know that if you test for "truth" of one state only, the result will ALWAYS be indeterminate. But they also know that if they can prove just ONE state false, then the entire proposition is false. The outcome is certain - and they can sleep at night! So in one sense they employ a particular "economy" of logic.

Ideally, in ANY situation, the true scientist/skeptic should always try to find the element that is false. They SHOULD try to "falsify" their own work as much as anything else. Richard Feynman once described this as the "necessary integrity" of a true scientist. To put it simply, when presented with an indeterminate proposition, try to shoot as many holes in it as possible! :) And if by any chance it SURVIVES that process, then it is probably (provisionally) true (until other evidence comes along to the contrary).

I think everyone will reasonably accept the truth that objects always fall DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). That "truth" is NOT certain, but it is provisionally acceptable given the sheer weight of natural evidence in its favour. Now if anyone asserts that it is NOT true then I invite them to demonstrate that by stepping off the nearest cliff! :) You see, if they do, and they DON'T go splat then they've just apparently falsified my provisional truth.

However, I also have to consider the WEIGHT of evidence as well. If one person steps off the cliff and just floats there, and EVERYONE else within reason goes splat, then I have a problem. Should I discard my provisional truth entirely? Clearly not, because if I do, I might be tempted to go stepping off cliffs - and for me at least, that is a BAD thing!

The person who floats is an anomaly. I don't quite know what to do with him. The most logical thing to do is to look for a hidden confounder, because in my overall truth I remember that sometimes confounders (like the wind and the paper) can cause apparent anomalies. I know in THOSE cases that the "anomalies" are NOT REALLY anomalies. They are simply a more complex situation that I haven't quite grasped. So I look for a confounder. How do I do that? I set up hypotheses as to how/why he could float like that - and then I apply my USUAL and CONSISTENT doctrine of trying to shoot holes in those hypotheses.
If you had any real knowledge of parapsychology you would know that this is what scientists working in the field have been doing for years and years. Ancedotal reports of psi have been mentioned in nearly every age and culture. Becuase of this, (in 1882) the Society for Psychical Research was founded by a group of eminent scholars and scientists 'to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothethesis.' Since that time, a great deal of experiments have been conducted, the purpose of which has always been to:
1. elicit the phenomena and,
2. rule out natural explanations or "confounders".
Furthermore, many of these experiments have been designed with the input of prominent skeptics. For instance, in 1986 a leading parapsychologist and a leading skeptic authored a Joint Communique which detailed what standards the (ganzfeld) experiments would have to be conducted under in order to (presumably) satisfy the skeptics. This resulted in the auto-ganzfeld experiments. These experiments were highly successful and reported in a prominent psychology journal. The results forced the (more open minded than most) skeptic to admit that the "...experiments have produced intriguing results. If independent laboratories can produce similar results with the same relationships and with the same attention to rigorous methodology, then parapsychology may indeed have finally captured its elusive quarry" (Hyman p. 392). More recent meta-analyses show that independent labs have indeed replicated these experiments.
But what does the true believer do? The true believer accepts the same provisional truth as I do to start with. He does NOT want to step off that cliff any more than I do, because he accepts the common truth that he is likely to go splat! But when he sees one guy who DOESN'T go splat, he suddenly "believes". In other words, he immediately believes that the evidence of the floating anomaly PROVES my truth to be false. BUT, because he doesn't need to consider anything else to believe (since he already does) - he does NOT go looking for a confounder.
This is certainly the case for many people who believe in the paranormal, but this criticism does not apply to those who have been convinced by the experimental evidence. This evidence rules out all "confounders" as explanations.
THERE is where the real parting of the ways occurs. The whole basis of who is right or wrong now seems irretrievably screwed up! It looks like the positions have reversed! The believer in the first instance is absolutely right, the "truth" has been falsified hasn't it? Say what?! The skeptic is ADMITTING that the believer is RIGHT?!!! Hallelujah! But hang on a moment, don't celebrate too soon! :) There is a catch, (what did you expect from a skeptic!) :) The believer is making a mistake. He is ignoring the possibility of a confounder. The skeptic on the other hand, knows that the "WHOLE truth" includes known confounders. He knows, on the basis of the weight of prior evidence, that not only is the confounder POSSIBLE, but also that its existence is PROBABLE. But hang on a moment, the believer protests, you said that to falsify just one condition of the "truth" is to falsify the whole thing!!!! And yes I did. Except that believer has overlooked the need to adjust the logic to maintain logical consistency.
Lets look at the Pearce-Pratt series in regards to these remarks. The only explanation given by skeptics for the results is a bizzare scenario of fraud, detailed most famously by C.E.M. Hansel. Richard Broughton writes:

"One of parapsychology's better better-known skeptics is the British psychologist Prof. C.E.M Hansel. Although his critical attacks on parapsychology predate the formation of CSICOP, he has been one of CSICOP's fellows from the beginning, and CSICOP's publishing house, Prometheus Press, issued an update of Hansel's 1966 examination of parapsychology under the title ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation. Hansel makes no bones about his basic assumptions: ESP is impossible; therefore investigating an experiment simply means finding out how the trick was done or where the loophole occurred. His strategy is to devise "rational reconstructions" of how a given experiment took place and then suggest how the fraud was perpetuated.
Typical of Hansel's approach was his examination of the famous Pearce-Pratt series of ESP experiments conducted at Duke University in the late thirties, discussed in the preceding chapter. Before Hansel's visit to Duke University some twenty years after the Pearce-Pratt experiments there had never been even the slightest suggestion of fraud in this classically designed card-guessing experiment. Hansel looked over the layout of the two locations that had been used and subsequently claimed that he had found the manner in which Pearce, the subject, had probably cheated. Pearce had obviously left his assigned post in another building, returned to the building where Pratt, the experimenter, was recording the ESP cards by a timed schedule on the desk, and either peaked over two transoms or gained access to the attic and peaked through a trap door in the ceiling. Near the end of the session Pearce would have hustled back to his assigned station and turned in his record sheets in the expected manner. (Of course Pearce would have had to repeat this performance over thirty times without being detected and done this even though Rhine himself was present for many sessions.) It did not concern Hansel that there was never a shred of evidence that any part of this activity took place, nor did it bother him that the layout of the rooms upon which he had based his scenario had been substantially altered since the days of the experiment. Even the discovery of blueprints of the original layout that demonstrated that much of his scenario was simply impossible did not deter Hansel from standing by his accusations in the revised version of his book. From Hansels point of view, evidence is not needed. It is sufficient to demonstrate the merest possibility of fraud to allow one to dismiss an experiment altogether."

Are you comfortable with Hansel's explanation?
Let me state it this way: If an object is in the air AND unsupported AND there is no confounder, it falls down.

Let's write that as logic.

Let A = "object in the air"
B = "unsupported"
C = "no confounder"
D = "falls down"

Therefore, A AND B AND C = D Which is logically correct. That is the provisional truth we ALL accept to start with.

In the case of the floating man however, D is FALSE, he doesn't fall down. A is true, there is an object. B is true, he's unsupported. But what about C? C is an example of a logical NEGATIVE. It's "NO confounder". That is where the difference occurs. The skeptic says condition C is FALSE (i.e. that there IS a confounder). The believer however assumes that C is TRUE (that there ISN'T a confounder). The believer overlooked the need to reverse the logic to maintain logical consistency.

Let's write out the equation for the case of the skeptic and the believer:

Skeptic: A AND B AND NOT C = NOT D

Believer: A AND B AND C = NOT D

Elementary logic proves that the skeptic is right and the believer is wrong. The "skeptic equation" conforms to the laws of logic. The "believer equation" doesn't.
This is wrong when applied to people who have become believers based on the experimental evidence. Highly succesful psi experiments have been conducted under controls which virtually rule out mundane explanations. If you were to say that it is illogical to believe a phenomenon has been demonstrated when all normal explanations have been controlled for, and the phenomenon has been repeated time after time, this would itself be an illogical and closed-minded position.
O.K. so what does all this prove? Why go to all these lengths? Because if you apply basic logic to the situation you can see where and how and why the conflicts between the skeptic and believer arise.

Given the situation of the "floating man" anomaly. What does the skeptic naturally do? He tries to find the confounder. What could have possibly screwed the situation up so much, that we actually believe the truth to be false? We are clearly missing something.
This is exactly what has been done and the results are still significant.
What does the believer do in response? He offers alternative "truths" to replace the one he (wrongly) believes is "broken".
You have offered no evidence nor have you offered any argument to show that a believer who believes in psi based on the experimental evidence is wrong.
How does a skeptic react to an "alternative truth"? He does what he ALWAYS does, he tries to shoot holes in it! Because he can't accept that it IS true unless it survives falsification!
And when his gun is empty and the phenomenon is still there, what does he do? He still dismisses it!
And then the believer gets upset because those nasty skeptics are always trying to shoot down his nice new theories! And on top of that, they are always looking for some sort of confounder in order to maintain their "broken" truth system!
The believer gets upset when the skeptic no longer has a real explanation for the phenomenon but still continues to deny it.
What the believer fails to realise is that the truth is NOT broken at all. It is only broken if no confounder ACTUALLY
EXISTS. The only way the believer position can ever be proven (provisionally) right, is if he can falsify all reasonably possible confounders AND if his alternative theories have rigorously survived the most brutal falsification attempts. There is even a third condition as well, the believer theories have to be testable. If they are not they can never be falsified and there can be no resolution.
Again, if you were at all familiar with parapsychology you would know that all these conditions have been met.
In general, all the believers ever seem to come up with is circumstantial evidence that there MIGHT be an anomaly! It's just not enough. And it barely begins to address step 1 of the 3 step logical process.

It seems unfair. I guess it is in one sense. But it's LOGIC! It's ALL WE HAVE TO WORK WITH! No believer ever has come up with an alternative system that works as well as, or better than, basic logic. Until they do, how can they expect the skeptics to abandon the one thing that we know actually WORKS?! The only significant fault on the part of some (real) skeptics is that they don't always try to shoot down their own confounders, but then again, nobody's perfect, and the believers are quite free to do so anyway!

So there you have it. THAT'S why the skeptics will never agree with the believers or vice versa. Call it unfair if you want, but its the SKEPTICS who built the working system we call logic. The believers have nothing to replace it. It's the skeptics who have put in the hard work so far in developing a working system. Until the believers get off their backsides and develop a feasible alternative, they are in a no-win situation.

Anyway, the skeptics are NOT trying to shoot things down because they are evil (well MOST aren't! :)). It's because that's the only thing we know actually WORKS. And if the believer wants to say it DOESN'T work, as before, I invite him to step off the cliff and falsify my logic!
And I also remind him that the computer which he is probably viewing this on, the electricity that runs it, the house he is living in, the car that he drives, and so on, are ALL tangible products that have resulted from the form of pure skeptical enquiry we call "science". What do believers have to show? Crystals? Tarot Cards, bent spoons etc., all of which MAY sort of "work" OCCASIONALLY when nobody is actually looking? Yeah, right! :D
I believe in skepticism. True skepticism. Skepticism is not only about being willing to suspend belief, but also disbelief.

amherst

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

Yes. I left the ganzfeld discussion because you and Paul C. Anagnostopoulos simply could not understand that on a seven point rating scale, 4.00 is the only midpoint. Though I explained this to you again and again, you and he kept trying to (absurdly) move it to 5.3 and other strange places on the scale. I am sure that you will continue to believe your ridiculous criticism, but the truth of the matter is, the Bem/Broughton/Palmer paper proves that ganzfeld studies conducted under conditions which comply with standardness, replicate the original findings.

amherst

Yes, and I regret our impasse. I tried to explain, but you wouldn't or couldn't listen. And your new assertion that it is the only midpoint is very interesting! And I found it a bit rich that, after 12 pages of detailed discussions, you said that skeptics didn't want to talk about it.

It's especially sad that you could never bring yourself to comment on the ratings to any degree further than simply saying what was already written in the paper. I never could understand why Beirman's work was rated so lowly nor why Willin's experiments were treated likewise. Maybe you don't think these questions are important and that by doubting professionals I'm being insolent. As you wish.

Be that as it may, why do you rely on Radin's word now I've demonstrated that he isn't using all the data? Shouldn't your healthy scepticism (and I consider myself a Fortean, btw) be ringing alarm bells?

And lastly, I'm not at all convinced that the sums in the metaanalysis are correct. Can anyone explain how a 10 session experiment with results only slightly less than chance can get an effect size of -0.6? (Maybe this question is unimportant too, and that I'm simply offending the noble nature of the professionals in question.)

[Ersby]

If you were to say that it is illogical to believe a phenomenon has been demonstrated when all normal explanations have been controlled for, and the phenomenon has been repeated time after time, this would itself be an illogical and closed-minded position.

And here’s the fulcrum around which the debate pivots. The replicability is not so assured as Amherst has made out. The “time after time” could be construed as referring to some kind of regularity or predictability in the replications, but this would be the wrong interpretation. “Time after time” would better be defined as “on separate occasions with little rhyme or reason concerning when or by whom”. Amherst is still to explain why the strictest replication of the PRL results (“Autoganzfeld II” Broughton et al) got chance results, and I don’t believe he ever will. It is for sceptics to explain positive results, but believers are not obliged to explain negative results.

Parker’s work is the best current research into the ganzfeld, and his results seem pretty robust and constant. I’m happy to accept this as evidence (GOOD evidence, mind you!) for psi. Trouble is, most believers get greedy. They’re not happy with just 150 sessions pointing to a psi effect. They’re punch drunk on the meta-analyses of Honorton and Radin and the work of Utts. They want the thousands of sessions mentioned in those reports, their chances of millions to one against, and their hypothetical file drawer of thousands of failed experiments. They’re in love with these numbers, and there’s nothing that’ll shake their faith in them.

That’s why, it seems to me, that neither Lucian nor Amherst (our two residence True Skeptics! No one else has ever defined themselves thusly on this board, and funnily they both hold similarly intransigent ideas about their pre-existing world view) are willing to avow the early work. For them it remains evidence, not mater what figures you show them.

Perhaps I’m being harsh, but I have every right to be so. Amherst came to the board looking for a detailed discussion about the ganzfeld. This he got, during which he was beaten back on (i) response bias, (ii) Honorton’s meta-analysis, (iii) Radin’s meta-analysis, (iv) Pat Price and URDF-3. Not once on these issues did he ever admit that he was wrong, nor that he had a doubt, nor even that the arguments put to him had any merit. He merely changed the subject. While arguing against such a proverbial brick wall may have benefits (such as causing you to look at the data again) it is nevertheless a tiring business. Especially when the aforementioned brick wall then digs up the one sticking point in the debate and claims it is an example of a sceptical lack of reasoning!

There’s an amusing parallel between the ardent believer and the ardent skeptic. The extreme skeptic believes that unsuccessful psi experiments aren’t published because the experimenters are disappointed in their results and so do not publish them. The extreme believer believes that they’re not published because they don’t exist because psi is a fact. Both are wrong. Parapsychology isn't as woo woo as some skeptics wouldlike it to be, nor is it as watertight as some believers need it to be. Unsuccessful psi experiments are published. Masses of them. To ignore them is folly.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


Yes, and I regret our impasse. I tried to explain, but you wouldn't or couldn't listen. And your new assertion that it is the only midpoint is very interesting! And I found it a bit rich that, after 12 pages of detailed discussions, you said that skeptics didn't want to talk about it.

It's especially sad that you could never bring yourself to comment on the ratings to any degree further than simply saying what was already written in the paper. I never could understand why Beirman's work was rated so lowly nor why Willin's experiments were treated likewise. Maybe you don't think these questions are important and that by doubting professionals I'm being insolent. As you wish.

Be that as it may, why do you rely on Radin's word now I've demonstrated that he isn't using all the data? Shouldn't your healthy scepticism (and I consider myself a Fortean, btw) be ringing alarm bells?

And lastly, I'm not at all convinced that the sums in the metaanalysis are correct. Can anyone explain how a 10 session experiment with results only slightly less than chance can get an effect size of -0.6? (Maybe this question is unimportant too, and that I'm simply offending the noble nature of the professionals in question.)
1. When did I ever claim 4 wasn't the only midpoint? Go back and look, a good majority of our discussion centered around me trying to get you to understand that it was. Presented again for your dissonance:

4 is the midpoint because it is exactly midway between 1 and 7.

2. I do now agree with you that Radin's meta-analysis was not all inclusive. After our discussion, I came across a transcript of a ganzfeld debate which took place right after the Milton/Wiseman paper had been published (and before the Bem/Broughton/Palmer one had). Here is the part which dealt with Radin's analysis:

Radin's Meta-Analysis

#36 As an important purpose of the debate seems to be to answer the question of whether the PRL autoganzfeld has been successfully replicated, it would help focus the discussion, as well as provide useful information, if we could do a detailed comparison between Milton and Wiseman's negative meta-analysis and the positive one conducted by Radin....

#43, part (response to message #36) Dean Radin: Here's the approach I took for the analysis in my book, The Conscious Universe. Like Milton and Wiseman, I scanned the relevant journals and proceedings for ganzfeld studies, but unlike Milton and Wiseman, I (a) contacted all of the people I could think of who had conducted ganzfeld studies and had not published them yet, and (b) considered ganzfeld studies only using visual targets (thus excluding Willin's audio ganzfeld tests).

As I noted in my book (p. 87-88), the studies I considered were those from Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Cornell, Rhine Center, and Gothenburg. It appears from the Milton and Wiseman list that I missed the studies by Stanford and Frank, and McDonough et al. In all cases, I calculated hit rates from the published (or personally reported) number of hits and trials. I was able to retrieve a total of 1,432 trials (compared to Milton and Wiseman's 1,198): Edinburgh (331), Amsterdam (164), Cornell (25), Rhine Center (590), Gothenburg (90), Utrecht (232).

Bem's experiment was a differential ganzfeld study involving meditators (25 sessions) and nonmeditators (25 sessions). I did not include the nonmeditator data in my analysis because that group was predicted to not perform as well as the meditators (which is what happened), and I couldn't justify including in a proof-oriented meta-analysis a subset which was predicted to "not" perform.

Now if we completley disregard Radin's somewhat exclusive meta-analysis, what do we have? We of course have the original highly significant ganzfeld work. We also have the unsuccessful experiments Bierman reports in his 93 paper. And though you seem to want to think that these studies negate Honorton's original work, this is the opposite conclusion Bierman draws:
If we take a global look at the present series there is no clear sign of any paranormal effect in the data. As argued in the results-section the direct scoring rates however do not invalidate previous meta-analysis. Actually, if we compare the present results with novice series from other laboratories the global chance results are to be expected. So it seems too early to draw negative conclusions from this chance result.
And then we have the PRL work, which you admit to not having an explanation for.

Next is the Milton/Wiseman meta-analysis which was nonsignificant at first but when,
a. Ten more studies (which didn't meet their original cut-off date) were added, the results again became significant and when,
b. Completely blind raters scored each study for standardness, it was found that studies which complied with the PRL work, achevied results similar to it.

Finally we have the Storm/Ertel 2001 Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis which, according to the abstract, is much more inclusive than any of the analyses before it and also reveals highly significant results consistent with the early work:
Storm, L. & Ertel, S. (2001). Does Psi Exist? Comments on Milton and Wiseman's (1999) Meta-Analysis of Ganzfeld Research. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 424-433.
J. Milton and R. Wiseman (1999) attempted to replicate D. Bem and C. Honorton's (1994) meta-analysis, which yielded evidence that the ganzfeld is a suitable method for demonstrating anomalous communication. Using a database of 30 ganzfeld and autoganzfeld studies, Milton and Wiseman's meta-analysis yielded an effect size (ES) of only 0.013 (Stouffer Z = 0.70, p =.24, one-tailed). Thus they failed to replicate Bem and Honorton's finding (ES = 0.162, Stouffer Z 2.52. p = 5.90 x 10(-3), one-tailed). The authors conducted stepwise performance comparisons between all available databases of ganzfeld research, which were argued not to be lacking in quality. Larger aggregates of such studies were formed, including a database comprising 79 ganzfeld-autoganzfeld studies (ES = 0.138, Stouffer Z = 5.66, p = 7.78 x 10(-9)). Thus Bem and Honorton's positive conclusion was confirmed. More accurate population parameters for the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld domains were calculated. Significant bidirectional psi effects were also found in all databases. The ganzfeld appears to be a replicable technique for producing psi effects in the laboratory.
Basically, the ganzfeld experiments have been replicated.

3. You write: "I never could understand why Beirman's work was rated so lowly nor why Willin's experiments were treated likewise."

Ersby, the (let me emphasize once again)completely blind raters gave Willin's studies a low score because he used musical targets. And I think that there are three answers which would make a lot of sense as to why you don't understand this:

a. You are not very bright.

b. An extreme fear of psi being real makes you misunderstand simple and obvious things.

c. A combination of a and b.

Since I'm not interested in insulting you, I'll say that I believe the answer is b.

4. Finally, since you're here Ersby, why don't you give your explanation of the Pearce-Pratt series. Do you have one or are you going to admit that, like the PRL experiments, you don't?

amherst

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

4. Finally, since you're here Ersby, why don't you give your explanation of the Pearce-Pratt series. Do you have one or are you going to admit that, like the PRL experiments, you don't?

amherst

Let me see if I understand this. If I'm honest and say I don't have an explanation for a certain set of results, that is in some way a failing? Is this True Skepticism?

No, I can't explain the Pearce-Pratt results. It may be due to psi. Without any replications, it's difficult to say.

Now, what was I saying earlier about skeptics having to explain positive results, but believers not having to explain negative results? Hmm....

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

And though you seem to want to think that these studies negate Honorton's original work, this is the opposite conclusion Bierman draws:


If we take a global look at the present series there is no clear sign of any paranormal effect in the data. As argued in the results-section the direct scoring rates however do not invalidate previous meta-analysis. Actually, if we compare the present results with novice series from other laboratories the global chance results are to be expected. So it seems too early to draw negative conclusions from this chance result. [my emphases]

amherst [/B]

You know, it may be a good idea to read what your posting. I highlighted the relevant parts. If you read the paper it is clear that Beirman is writing about the Utrecht novice series, not the ganzfeld database as a whole, thus it doesn't reflect on Beirman's comments on the meta-analysis.

What is more interesting is that, when Beirman was writing, it was a given that novices do badly, hownever since then the general trend of thinking as turned about face, and now it is established that novices do very well. Interesting, isn't it?

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

Finally we have the Storm/Ertel 2001 Psychological Bulletin meta-analysis which, according to the abstract, is much more inclusive than any of the analyses before it and also reveals highly significant results consistent with the early work:

amherst

Actually, we only have the abstract. I'd like to see more details before I make a decision one way or the other.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
Perhaps I’m being harsh,
No, just ridiculous.

but I have every right to be so. Amherst came to the board looking for a detailed discussion about the ganzfeld. This he got, during which he was beaten back on (i) response bias, (ii) Honorton’s meta-analysis, (iii) Radin’s meta-analysis, (iv) Pat Price and URDF-3. Not once on these issues did he ever admit that he was wrong, nor that he had a doubt, nor even that the arguments put to him had any merit. He merely changed the subject. While arguing against such a proverbial brick wall may have benefits (such as causing you to look at the data again) it is nevertheless a tiring business. Especially when the aforementioned brick wall then digs up the one sticking point in the debate and claims it is an example of a sceptical lack of reasoning!

1. You agreed with me that response bias could not explain the results! Am I going to have to go all the way back through that thread to get your quote??

2. Please explain how I was beaten back on Honorton's meta-analysis.

3. I now agree that Radin's analysis was not all inclusive. This doesn't affect anything though.

4. From the paper you referenced
The controlled session at SRI lasted for one hour (11 a.m. until noon). The rest of the session was conducted over the telephone with only the voice of the experimenter recorded on tape. -Price- commented that he was seeing a lot of things he hadn't seen the previous day and supplied the most positive evidence yet for remote viewing with his sketch of the rail-mounted gantry crane. It seems inconceivable to imagine how he could draw such a likeness to the actual crane at URDF-3 unless:

1) he actually saw it through remote viewing, or
2) he was informed of what to draw by someone
knowledgeable of URDF-3

I only mention this second possibility because the experiment was not controlled to discount the possibility that -Price- could talk to other people- such as the Disinformation Section of the KGB. That may sound ridiculous to the reader, but I have to consider all possibilities in the spectrum from his being capable to view remotely to his being supplied data for disinformation purposes by the KGB.
You never did answer me. Is it your position that Price got his information from the KGB?

amherst

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst
3. You write: "I never could understand why Beirman's work was rated so lowly nor why Willin's experiments were treated likewise."

Ersby, the (let me emphasize once again)completely blind raters gave Willin's studies a low score because he used musical targets. And I think that there are three answers which would make a lot of sense as to why you don't understand this:

amherst

Why would music cause the raters to remove 5+ points fromt he standardness scale? I've read Willin's paper. It's a pretty standard ganzfeld set up.

What is it about music that makes it an uacceptable target?

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
What is it about music that makes it an uacceptable target?
The fact that the only targets ever used in proof oriented work were film clips and static pictures!

amherst

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

No, just ridiculous.



1. You agreed with me that response bias could not explain the results! Am I going to have to go all the way back through that thread to get your quote??

2. Please explain how I was beaten back on Honorton's meta-analysis.

3. I now agree that Radin's analysis was not all inclusive. It doesn't affect anything.

4.
You never did answer me. Is it your position that Price got his information from the KGB?

amherst [/B]

1. My point was that response bias would not guarantee a 25% hit rate. While you search the thread, maybe you could dig that quote up to.

2. Because of Beirman's addendum. You quote refers to Beirman's Utrecht work, not the ganzfeld database as a whole, and so doesn't apply.

3. Well done, although you could perhaps be a little quicker and more gracious in defeat. If Radin's work is incomplete, there's little point in mentioning it in future.

4 . No, Price didn't get his information from the KGB. As regards to the crane, Pat Price drew two, thus doubling his chances. And in a session as lengthy as the URDF-3 sessions (several days, not one hour as in the quote), he was bound to get something right sooner or later.

The rest of the paper details miss after miss. Doesn't this bother you.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

The fact that the only targets ever used in proof oriented work were film clips and static pictures!

amherst

But in a broader sense, quite apart from the replication issue, why isn't music a suitable subject for psi experiments?

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


But in a broader sense, quite apart from the replication issue, why isn't music a suitable subject for psi experiments?
It is a suitable subject. It just isn't suitable to lump these experiments together with experiments which were conducted in order to replicate the original proof oriented research.

amherst

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Pragmatist

That doesn't follow.

1. You cannot generalise from the statements of two people that "skeptics" (as a general class) are all prejudiced. You are entitled to say that at least two people who call themselves "skeptics" are admittedly prejudiced.



Oh yes you can. You can say that all Skeptics are prejudiced if you define them thus. That is to say being prejudiced is one of the defining characteristics of Skeptics (although not of course of sceptics).

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Pragmatist
[4. There are prejudiced people in both camps.

5. Prejudice is not necessarily a bad thing (as I will explain).

This kind of argument keeps arising. It's NOT just that there are two opposed groups of people who mutually disagree. There is a more fundamental difference. I believe that in part this is related to the "doctrine of falsifiability".

I explained falsifiability in another thread, I'll explain it again here. I believe I know certain things about the world I live in. There are some things I see happen every day. These things RELIABLY happen, there are NOT frequent anomalies that would lead me to question the truth of what I see. The same applies to everyone.

For example. Every day I notice in some way, that if an object is somehow left or projected unsupported into the air, it falls DOWN. Objects never fall UP. Well, almost never. On the rare instances when they do, I observe certain things that logically MAKE them disobey the usual rule. For example a gust of wind may make paper, effectively, "fall" UP. I notice that in the absence of the confounding factor (the wind) that the paper falls DOWN just like everything else. So I'm pretty
sure that it's true to say that in the absence of confounding factors (like the wind) that objects ALWAYS fall down. And when there IS some anomaly to that (a helium balloon for example) I am aware of good reasons WHY that doesn't explicitly break the general rule I call gravity.

Now someone proposes a hypothesis. They propose that objects always fall UP because of "transdimensional vortexes". How can I test that hypothesis? Well, I can throw something in the air and watch which way it goes. And it always falls DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). In fact, I don't even NEED to do the experiment. I've effectively been doing the experiment my whole life! I KNOW what will happen even before doing the experiment. So you could legitimately say that I am prejudiced in favour of the belief that things ALWAYS fall DOWN. My prejudice however, is based on legitimate experience.


It is not necessarily a bad thing. For example if I encounter a high cliff, my prejudice prevents me from stepping off that cliff in the hope that I will fly. That is why, to date, I have not been splatted on the rocks at the bottom! To me, that's a GOOD thing! :)



You fail to understand what the word prejudice means. Our background knowledge of the world does not equate to a prejudice.



Let us now test an alternative "scientific" hypothesis. I NOW assert that objects always fall DOWN because of "transdimensional vortexes". Again I don't even need to do the experiment, I KNOW what the outcome will be. BUT - and here is where the big "BUT" comes in - the fact that I have established that things always fall down, does NOT in any way constitute evidence to the effect that it's DUE to "transdimensional vortexes"!



This is because we already know that objects fall down.



Can you see the logic of both cases? There is an implicit logical "AND" when I ascribe a cause to an effect. If either
condition is FALSE



What conditions??



then the entire proposition is FALSE,



What proposition??




and I don't even need to know the state of the other condition to be able to say that. But if either one is TRUE, and the other condition undetermined, then the entire proposition is INDETERMINATE. I cannot reasonably say that one "true" condition makes the whole proposition a truth.



This conveys no meaning to me.




And here you have the first difference between "skeptic/scientist" and "believer". The "believer" does NOT accept that the proposition is indeterminate. He insists (believes) that an element of truth, constitutes truth of the whole.



What proposition??

Be so good as to inform me what proposition I do not accept as being indeterminate.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


1. My point was that response bias would not guarantee a 25% hit rate. While you search the thread, maybe you could dig that quote up to.
If I remember correctly, Broughton et. al, updated Bem's response bias analysis and the corrected chance hit rate was found to be 25.9?. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you agreed with me that this proves that the PRL results could not be due to receiver content bias. Do you not agree that it also indicates that any future successful studies will not be due to it either? If you disagree, then why?
2. Because of Beirman's addendum. You quote refers to Beirman's Utrecht work, not the ganzfeld database as a whole, and so doesn't apply.
You're right.
3. Well done, although you could perhaps be a little quicker and more gracious in defeat. If Radin's work is incomplete, there's little point in mentioning it in future.
Considering where we are now in the discussion, I don't see why it would need to be mentioned any more.
4 . No, Price didn't get his information from the KGB. As regards to the crane, Pat Price drew two, thus doubling his chances. And in a session as lengthy as the URDF-3 sessions (several days, not one hour as in the quote), he was bound to get something right sooner or later.
First off, have you seen the drawing? If you think he was bound to get something that accurate and specific then I think I can safely say that you are deluded. And how does drawing two cranes double his chances of perceiving the target correctly? You do realize that your position on this is in conflict with the author of the paper you referenced?

The rest of the paper details miss after miss. Doesn't this bother you.
The result is so impressive and the ability to get the information from normal sources so implausible that I fail to see how he could have drawn the crane had psi not been involved.

amherst

[Interesting Ian]

Pragmatist

Real scientists and skeptics (and I accept that there are many who call themselves "scientists" or "skeptics" who don't deserve the title) try to design tests for truth based on FALSIFIABILITY.



Why? What makes you think falsifiability is a defining characteristic of science? How would you propose to "falsify" some theory anyway?? The main thrust of the theory could be saved by the introduction of auxiliary hypotheses. Or the observations supposedly refuting the theory could simply be called into question, or even ignored (eg paranormal phenomena)



They know that if you test for "truth" of one state only, the result will ALWAYS be indeterminate. But they also know that if they can prove just ONE state false, then the entire proposition is false. The outcome is certain - and they can sleep at night! So in one sense they employ a particular "economy" of logic.



You mean that a theory comprises many elements, and "falsifying" any one of those elements will supposedly "falsify" the whole theory? Well DUH!!

Is there any purpose to your rather long post at all?? You talk a lot but effectively say nothing.

[Interesting Ian]

Pragmatist
Ideally, in ANY situation, the true scientist/skeptic should always try to find the element that is false. They SHOULD try to "falsify" their own work as much as anything else. Richard Feynman once described this as the "necessary integrity" of a true scientist.



I guess there's no true scientists then :rolleyes:



To put it simply, when presented with an indeterminate proposition, try to shoot as many holes in it as possible! :) And if by any chance it SURVIVES that process, then it is probably (provisionally) true (until other evidence comes along to the contrary).



Pragmatist, could you kindly inform me what your silly ideas regarding the notion of how science progresses has to do with the topic of this thread??



I think everyone will reasonably accept the truth that objects always fall DOWN (in the absence of known confounders). That "truth" is NOT certain, but it is provisionally acceptable given the sheer weight of natural evidence in its favour. Now if anyone asserts that it is NOT true then I invite them to demonstrate that by stepping off the nearest cliff! :) You see, if they do, and they DON'T go splat then they've just apparently falsified my provisional truth.



No-one is denying that objects fall down (although I myself would deny the existence of gravity). Again I invite you to inform people what your post has to do with the topic of this thread.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

If I remember correctly, Broughton et. al, updated Bem's response bias analysis and the corrected chance hit rate was found to be 25.9?. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you agreed with me that this proves that the PRL results could not be due to receiver content bias. Do you not agree that it also indicates that any future successful studies will not be due to it either? If you disagree, then why?



It was Beirman who did the update, and the response bias you quoted was for all the PRL work. For Study 302 the expected hit rate by chance was 30something%. While the results remained significant, it is a nice example of how far (in the short term) response bias can throw the expected hit rate by chance. And if it has done so in the past, I see no reason why it cannot do so in the future.



First off, have you seen the drawing? If you think he was bound to get something that accurate and specific then I think I can safely say that you are deluded. And how does drawing two cranes double his chances of perceiving the target correctly? You do realize that your position is in conflict with the author of the paper you referenced?

The result is so impressive and the ability to get the information from normal sources so implausible that I fail to see how he could have drawn the crane had psi not been involved.

amherst [/B]

He drew two cranes, but only one drawing is ever shown as evidence. Why not both? Don't you think people should have all the data to hand before they make their decision? Have you seen the other drawings he did? Were they impressive?

And I'm only disagreeing with the author on this one point. His overall conclusion of the worthlessnes of the "data" Pat Price gave is a conclusion I happily agree with.

[Interesting Ian]

Pragmatist
However, I also have to consider the WEIGHT of evidence as well. If one person steps off the cliff and just floats there, and EVERYONE else within reason goes splat, then I have a problem. Should I discard my provisional truth entirely? Clearly not, because if I do, I might be tempted to go stepping off cliffs - and for me at least, that is a BAD thing!

The person who floats is an anomaly. I don't quite know what to do with him. The most logical thing to do is to look for a hidden confounder, because in my overall truth I remember that sometimes confounders (like the wind and the paper) can cause apparent anomalies. I know in THOSE cases that the "anomalies" are NOT REALLY anomalies. They are simply a more complex situation that I haven't quite grasped. So I look for a confounder. How do I do that? I set up hypotheses as to how/why he could float like that - and then I apply my USUAL and CONSISTENT doctrine of trying to shoot holes in those hypotheses.



Ah! I think I understand. You're saying that all parapsychological research is overwhelmingly likely to have an artifact of some nature skewing the results. Why didn't you just say so instead of spewing forth all this irrelevant cr@p??

As it happens, parapsychological research just confirms the phenomena which has been witnessed throughout history and across all cultures. Therefore it is unlikely for there to be unknown artifacts skewing the results in a positive direction all the time if extraordinary precautions are taken to ensure this doesn't happen. And I mean unlikely, I certainly am not saying it's impossible.

[Ersby]

Oh, and I just realised this:


Storm, L. & Ertel, S. (2001). Does Psi Exist? ... Larger aggregates of such studies were formed, including a database comprising 79 ganzfeld-autoganzfeld studies


So, is this exhaustive? Let's do the maths.

Honorton's m-a, 28 studies
PRL work, 11 studies
Bem et al m-a, 40 studies

Add them up you get the 79 studies in Storm and Ertel's work. Beirman's addendum is still missing from the overall body of data.

I shall try to email Storm or Ertel in the next few days to ask for details. Perhaps even the paper itself. All-inclusive or not, it seems very interesting.

[The Don]

Ian,

It's amazing how someone with absolutely no experience conducting scientific research is such an expert on the subject.

Some of the most embarassing episodes in academic research have resulted from scientists being unwilling to assess critically experimental results which match entirely with their expectations. Other researchers have then attempted to reproduce their results and in so doing have identified the errors (accidental or deliberate) in the design and execution of their experiments.

As a result, before work is accepted it has to be reproduced and peer reviewed. Ideally this should be done by someone who opposes the view of the experimenter thus ensuring that the reviewer is try to "break" the experimental results.

The problem with parapsychological research is that this critical assessment either does not take place OR the critical studies are just eliminated from the model by those proposing PSI.

[Interesting Ian]

Pragmatist
But what does the true believer do? The true believer accepts the same provisional truth as I do to start with. He does NOT want to step off that cliff any more than I do, because he accepts the common truth that he is likely to go splat! But when he sees one guy who DOESN'T go splat, he suddenly "believes".


Uhh??!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: Please give me some evidence that I will believe people will not generally fall because one person happens not to do so. Are you off your f*cking rocker??

A*sehole.





In other words, he immediately believes that the evidence of the floating anomaly PROVES my truth to be false.



Well it proves the assertion that all objects when released will inevitably fall down is false.



BUT, because he doesn't need to consider anything else to believe (since he already does) - he does NOT go looking for a confounder.



You complete and unbelievable idiot. :rolleyes: If there are "confounders" in all paranormal phenomena ever witnessed then spell out what they are and prove that they exist. Or tell you what, just spell out how they might exist.



THERE is where the real parting of the ways occurs. The whole basis of who is right or wrong now seems irretrievably screwed up! It looks like the positions have reversed! The believer in the first instance is absolutely right, the "truth" has been falsified hasn't it? Say what?! The skeptic is ADMITTING that the believer is RIGHT?!!! Hallelujah! But hang on a moment, don't celebrate too soon! :) There is a catch, (what did you expect from a skeptic!) :)



I expect to read the cr@p that I'm reading now. You still have failed to say anything of any substance.



The believer is making a mistake. He is ignoring the possibility of a confounder.



And you are a despicable liar





The skeptic on the other hand, knows that the "WHOLE truth" includes known confounders. He knows, on the basis of the weight of prior evidence, that not only is the confounder POSSIBLE, but also that its existence is PROBABLE. But hang on a moment, the believer protests, you said that to falsify just one condition of the "truth" is to falsify the whole thing!!!! And yes I did. Except that believer has overlooked the need to adjust the logic to maintain logical consistency.

Let me state it this way: If an object is in the air AND unsupported AND there is no confounder, it falls down.

Let's write that as logic.

Let A = "object in the air"
B = "unsupported"
C = "no confounder"
D = "falls down"

Therefore, A AND B AND C = D Which is logically correct. That is the provisional truth we ALL accept to start with.

In the case of the floating man however, D is FALSE, he doesn't fall down. A is true, there is an object. B is true, he's unsupported. But what about C? C is an example of a logical NEGATIVE. It's "NO confounder". That is where the difference occurs. The skeptic says condition C is FALSE (i.e. that there IS a confounder). The believer however assumes that C is TRUE (that there ISN'T a confounder). The believer overlooked the need to reverse the logic to maintain logical consistency.



{sighs}

It rhymes with "clucking bell". One doesn't just assume there is no confounding factor. If extraordinary measures are employed to rulke out confounding factors, and no confounding factors are ever discovered, and the phenomena continues to exhibit constant particular characteristics, then one makes the tentative judgement that in most probability the phenomena is paranormal.



Let's write out the equation for the case of the skeptic and the believer:

Skeptic: A AND B AND NOT C = NOT D

Believer: A AND B AND C = NOT D

Elementary logic proves that the skeptic is right and the believer is wrong. The "skeptic equation" conforms to the laws of logic. The "believer equation" doesn't.



Elementary logic proves you're talking out of your a*sehole.

Attacking strawmen shows absolutely nothing, least of all proves it.



O.K. so what does all this prove?



That you're an idiotic Skeptic who understands f*ck all.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby

It was Beirman who did the update, and the response bias you quoted was for all the PRL work. For Study 302 the expected hit rate by chance was 30something%. While the results remained significant, it is a nice example of how far (in the short term) response bias can throw the expected hit rate by chance. And if it has done so in the past, I see no reason why it cannot do so in the future.
Wrong. The reason study 302's chance hit rate was inflated was because:
(Does Psi Exist, Bem, Honorton)
The experimental design called for this study to continue until each of the clips had served as the target 15 times. Unfortunately, the premature termination of this study at 25 sessions left an imbalance in the frequency with which each clip had served as the target. This means that the high hit rate observed (64%) could well be inflated by response biases.
Do you now agree that successful studies which aren't prematurely terminated are not likely to be the result of content bias? (Keeping in mind of course, that study 302 was still significant even after it's hit rate was adjusted).
He drew two cranes, but only one drawing is ever shown as evidence. Why not both? Don't you think people should have all the data to hand before they make their decision? Have you seen the other drawings he did? Were they impressive?
The fact that he drew a crane at all is impressive. Whether the first drawing was as detailed as the second is irrelevant. Drawing two cranes in no way explains the remarakable accuracy of the "best" drawing.
And I'm only disagreeing with the author on this one point. His overall conclusion of the worthlessnes of the "data" Pat Price gave is a conclusion I happily agree with.
I'm curious, why are you happy about it?

amherst

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Pragmatist

Why go to all these lengths? Because if you apply basic logic to the situation you can see where and how and why the conflicts between the skeptic and believer arise.



Nope I'm afraid I don't. The conflict arises because for some reason Skeptics have this bizarre emotional attachment to the prevailing modern western Zeitgeist.



Given the situation of the "floating man" anomaly. What does the skeptic naturally do? He tries to find the confounder. What could have possibly screwed the situation up so much, that we actually believe the truth to be false? We are clearly missing something.

What does the believer do in response? He offers alternative "truths" to replace the one he (wrongly) believes is "broken".

How does a skeptic react to an "alternative truth"? He does what he ALWAYS does, he tries to shoot holes in it! Because he can't accept that it IS true unless it survives falsification!



And trying to shoot holes is good. But what is not so good is claiming that such criticisms refute the phenomenon under investigation, especially when such criticisms have been shown to have no substance.



And then the believer gets upset because those nasty skeptics are always trying to shoot down his nice new theories!



Trying to shoot down theories is absolutely fine. Again you are attacking a strawman in claiming that I get upset. How the f*ck would you know?? You don't know me. It's clinging to extremely implausible explanations for the phenomenon concerned which is irritating; and then having the effrontery to claim they are being rational!

Even if they turned out to be right and that no paranormal phenomena exists whatsoever, this does not vindicate their "reasoning". That's kinda like arguing that rolling a dice will almost certainly result in a 6, and when it happens to do so, to then claim their reasoning must have been correct :rolleyes:



What the believer fails to realise is that the truth is NOT broken at all. It is only broken if no confounder ACTUALLY
EXISTS.



Try to get it through your mental retarded skull that intelligent believers do not a priori rule out "confounders".




The only way the believer position can ever be proven (provisionally) right, is if he can falsify all reasonably possible confounders



Yup this has been done.


AND if his alternative theories have rigorously survived the most brutal falsification attempts.



You cannot falsify paranormal phenomena.



There is even a third condition as well, the believer theories have to be testable. If they are not they can never be falsified and there can be no resolution.



If there can be no resolution, how does this square with your position that paranormal phenomena cannot possibly exist?? :rolleyes:



In general, all the believers ever seem to come up with is circumstantial evidence that there MIGHT be an anomaly! It's just not enough.



Plus all the scientific evidence. And the circumstantial evidence is enough for me even if no research had ever been carried out. It's only not enough for Skeptics




It seems unfair. I guess it is in one sense. But it's LOGIC! It's ALL WE HAVE TO WORK WITH!



The question of the existence of paranormal phenomena has got nothing to do with logic.



No believer ever has come up with an alternative system that works as well as, or better than, basic logic.



Idiot. Where the f*ck have I ever suggested something works better than logic.






Until they do, how can they expect the skeptics to abandon the one thing that we know actually WORKS?!



What is it they believe in which f*cking works?? Please enlighten me :rolleyes:



The only significant fault on the part of some (real) skeptics is that they don't always try to shoot down their own confounders, but then again, nobody's perfect, and the believers are quite free to do so anyway!



No-ones f*cking perfect, but to sink to the levels of stupidity and arrogance that the Skeptic exhibits is no mean achievement.



So there you have it. THAT'S why the skeptics will never agree with the believers or vice versa.



They will never agree because they have been hopelessly "brainwashed" into an unthinking acceptance of the tenets of the modern western metaphysic.



Call it unfair if you want, but its the SKEPTICS who built the working system we call logic.



Jesus Christ :rolleyes:



The believers have nothing to replace it.



Ummm . .no . ."subjective idealism" replaces it. This metaphysic would, if anything, expect the existence of paranormal phenomena.



It's the skeptics who have put in the hard work so far in developing a working system.



Yeah like Newton etc :rolleyes:


Until the believers get off their backsides and develop a feasible alternative, they are in a no-win situation.


Look up "subjective idealism".



Anyway, the skeptics are NOT trying to shoot things down because they are evil (well MOST aren't! :)). It's because that's the only thing we know actually WORKS.



What is this thing you know??



And if the believer wants to say it DOESN'T work, as before, I invite him to step off the cliff and falsify my logic! And I also remind him that the computer which he is probably viewing this on, the electricity that runs it, the house he is living in, the car that he drives, and so on, are ALL tangible products that have resulted from the form of pure skeptical enquiry we call "science".



Sure, and science is more consonant with subjective idealism then it is materialism.

[The Don]

So apart from the Ganzfeld tests (which are once again being hotly debated here) where are the

- repeatable
- independently verified
- peer reviewed
- published in a reputable journal

Studies to which Lucianarchy referred, implying that there were simply loads ? The links provided were not independently verified.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by The Don
Ian,

It's amazing how someone with absolutely no experience conducting scientific research is such an expert on the subject.

Some of the most embarassing episodes in academic research have resulted from scientists being unwilling to assess critically experimental results which match entirely with their expectations. Other researchers have then attempted to reproduce their results and in so doing have identified the errors (accidental or deliberate) in the design and execution of their experiments.

As a result, before work is accepted it has to be reproduced and peer reviewed. Ideally this should be done by someone who opposes the view of the experimenter thus ensuring that the reviewer is try to "break" the experimental results.

The problem with parapsychological research is that this critical assessment either does not take place OR the critical studies are just eliminated from the model by those proposing PSI.

Please provide references which confirm your claims ie that it doesn't happen in parapsychology.

[amherst]

Originally posted by The Don
So apart from the Ganzfeld tests (which are once again being hotly debated here) where are the

- repeatable
- independently verified
- peer reviewed
- published in a reputable journal

Studies to which Lucianarchy referred, implying that there were simply loads ? The links provided were not independently verified.
If you are truly interested in looking at the evidenc for psi, I suggest you first read these books:

1. Mental Radio by Upton Sinclair

2. Parapsychology the Controversial Science by Richard Broughton

3. The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin.

After reading these books you will have a good basic understanding of the laboratory evidence, the spontaneous evidence, the responses to critical attacks on the evidence, and a decent understanding of the field and its history.

amherst

[The Don]

Please provide references which confirm your claims ie that it doesn't happen in parapsychology.
For a while now I have been asking for references to byblished works. To date all I have recieved are:

- Links to Ganzfeld
- Links to abstracts for which there isn't supporting independent research
- References to books and essays

The abscence of independently confirmed, peer reviewed and published studies leads me to believe that parapsychology does not investigate in this way.

I would be delighted to be proved wrong. All I need are a set of references to studies which were:

- repeatable
- independently verified
- peer reviewed
- published in a reputable journal

And please not Ganzfeld - it's being analysed to death

[The Don]

Originally posted by amherst
After reading these books you will have a good basic understanding of the laboratory evidence, the spontaneous evidence, the responses to critical attacks on the evidence, and a decent understanding of the field and its history.

amherst
I'm not interested in anecdotes.

I'm not interested in work which is produced by a single person or group but not independently repeated and reviewed

I'm not interested in work which has not been published in a reputable peer reviewed journal

I'm not interested in essays, opinion pieces or editorials


And the reason why I'm not interested is that anything else is just opinion and story - not science.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ersby


But in a broader sense, quite apart from the replication issue, why isn't music a suitable subject for psi experiments?

My own feeling would be that it is because, of our 5 senses, about 90% of all information comes through via vision. It seems to me likely that there is a connection to psi ability here.

I don't understand the problem you have anyway. Are you saying that if psi exists it should be as easy to hit auditory targets as visual ones? This would be an a priori judgement on your part, and from a Skeptic to boot!

No, it is surely best to find out these things from research. If experiments tend to show visual moving targets are met with some success, but auditory targets aren't; then subsequent research is carried out to confirm this pattern and is vindicated; then in the context of the authenticity question those experiments where auditory targets are employed should be excluded. Yes?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by The Don

For a while now I have been asking for references to byblished works. To date all I have recieved are:

- Links to Ganzfeld
- Links to abstracts for which there isn't supporting independent research
- References to books and essays

The abscence of independently confirmed, peer reviewed and published studies leads me to believe that parapsychology does not investigate in this way.

I would be delighted to be proved wrong. All I need are a set of references to studies which were:

- repeatable
- independently verified
- peer reviewed
- published in a reputable journal

And please not Ganzfeld - it's being analysed to death

WOW!! So you actually admit you just made it up or were simply guessing what is the case; that in short you were talking out of your a*se. Thanks for your admission.

[amherst]

Originally posted by The Don

I'm not interested in anecdotes.

I'm not interested in work which is produced by a single person or group but not independently repeated and reviewed

I'm not interested in work which has not been published in a reputable peer reviewed journal

I'm not interested in essays, opinion pieces or editorials


And the reason why I'm not interested is that anything else is just opinion and story - not science.
Both Radin and Broughton summarize work which has been published in reputable peer reviewed journals. The addendum to Upton Sincalir's book was originally a paper published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

I noticed that you were given this reference before:

Radin, D.& Nelson, R. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514

Do you not consider Foundations of Physics a reputable journal?

amherst

[The Don]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


WOW!! So you actually admit you just made it up or were simply guessing what is the case; that in short you were talking out of your a*se. Thanks for your admission.
No, I was asking for the evidence you pathetic individual.

Once again "your lot" have failed to provide it

Once again I conclude that it doesn't exist

I see your reading comprehension is up to its usual levels. At least I can assure people that there's nothing wrong with the education system in the North East and that your lack or reasoning, comprehension and debating skills are down to your own qualities rather than the deficiencies of your education.

Now shut up and stop giving us smoggies an undeserved reputation for stupidity.

[The Don]

Originally posted by amherst

Both Radin and Broughton summarize work which has been published in reputable peer reviewed journals. The addendum to Upton Sincalir's book was originally a paper published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

I noticed that you were given this reference before:

Radin, D.& Nelson, R. (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems. Foundations of Physics, 19, 1499-1514

Do you not consider Foundations of Physics a reputable journal?

amherst
No, this reference would be ignored on the grounds that the effects were not repeated by an independent research group it was a meta analysis
A well-defined body of empirical evidence from this domain was reviewed using meta-analytic techniques

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


No comment.. [/B]

Ain't that the beauty of science Tai? A person who has never done a meta-analysis can definitly point out the flaws in the ganfeld one. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to point out the rrors in methodology.

I think you are trying a reverse appeal to authority.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by The Don

No, I was asking for the evidence you pathetic individual.



Well let's see now. Here is what you said:


Some of the most embarassing episodes in academic research have resulted from scientists being unwilling to assess critically experimental results which match entirely with their expectations. Other researchers have then attempted to reproduce their results and in so doing have identified the errors (accidental or deliberate) in the design and execution of their experiments.

As a result, before work is accepted it has to be reproduced and peer reviewed. Ideally this should be done by someone who opposes the view of the experimenter thus ensuring that the reviewer is try to "break" the experimental results.

The problem with parapsychological research is that this critical assessment either does not take place OR the critical studies are just eliminated from the model by those proposing PSI.


It doesn't seem to me you're asking for evidence. You are making yourself out to be an authority on parapsychological research and that the integrity of the research falls well behind other areas of science. I asked you to substantiate your claim. You came back asking me for evidence that this ain't so! :eek:



Once again "your lot" have failed to provide it

Once again I conclude that it doesn't exist



I could provide it, but it is a non-sequitur to the subject under discussion ie that you justify your claim.



I see your reading comprehension is up to its usual levels. At least I can assure people that there's nothing wrong with the education system in the North East



Don and I both live in the NE of England. Just a few days ago there was a report on the educational level of people in the Teesside area (where I live in the North-East, and possibly Don as well), and how much worse we are compared to the rest of the country, especially southerners.



and that your lack or reasoning, comprehension and debating skills are down to your own qualities rather than the deficiencies of your education.



Certainly my education was appalling. I never even passed English language "O" level. However, my reasoning and debating skills are just fine thank you.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


There is no conspiracy, only ignorance of the evidence or cognitive dissonance due to a belief in the religion of 'Scientism'.

It used to be 'show me one', then 'show me two'. You may have put he fallacy of bar-rasing to remarkable extremes, David. But the thing is, some people will never accept something that threatens their personal faith / philosophical investment, and that applies to both sides of the 'true believer' / 'true unbeliever' paradigm.

The fact is the Psi effect exists. Current science doesn't yet understand the mechanism. Humans have been here before with the sun and the moon. No doubt, they will go much further in future times.

Lucianaarchy,

What do you do just parrot the debunking debunkers web site?

When you demostrate the ability of hydrogen to bond to oxygen, you alwsys get the same results, over and over and over. As soon as lavosier announced his theories every one ran out and tested them. That is science.

Every study that has been shown so far to date has serious methodological flaws. When people are questioned about flaws in methodology then people act as though we have raised the bar higher.

That is not science, that is wishful thinking, psychology is full fo results that are from small sample size and other sorts of bias. Get used to it get over it. The study in question may have been a valid result, but the methodology is open to flaw. therefore while the results may be considered , the source of the effect is inconclusive.

If you want to beleive on faith that is fine, I think it would be way cool if psi existed, but as of yet it has not been demostrated in a controlled setting with good methodology.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Please provide references which confirm your claims ie that it doesn't happen in parapsychology.

Ian you are a dolt, if you read the Ganzfeld Effect thread , you would see that at least ten serious flaws were pointed out in the methodology of the ganzfeld studies. Until such thing are addressed there is no conclusive result.

But no every one wants the psi reserachers to be treated with kid gloves, it doesn't matter how the scientific community treated the discovery of cold fusion. No we just want special treatment for psi research.

[The Don]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
It doesn't seem to me you're asking for evidence. You are making yourself out to be an authority on parapsychological research and that the integrity of the research falls well behind other areas of science.
I can hardly be held responsible for your poor reading comprehension skills.
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Don and I both live in the NE of England. Just a few days ago there was a report on the educational level of people in the Teesside area (where I live in the North-East, and possibly Don as well), and how much worse we are compared to the rest of the country, especially southerners.
I can hardly be held responsible for your inability to learn. My school education was exclusively in the North East (Cleveland and Co. Durham) and exclusively in the non-selective state sector. I also expect that it was at around the same time (1972-1985). [/B][/QUOTE]
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Certainly my education was appalling. I never even passed English language "O" level. However, my reasoning and debating skills are just fine thank you.
I think that given your debating approach, your inability to present a coherent argument, your aggressive and personal attacks and your unwillingness to consider any evidence which indicates the position which you have adopted either through arbitrary choice or deeply held irrational belief indicates otherwise.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


My own feeling would be that it is because, of our 5 senses, about 90% of all information comes through via vision. It seems to me likely that there is a connection to psi ability here.



This seems feasible.

But I'm a Fortean, not a sceptic/Skeptic/Sceptic/Skeptic/scheptiiiic/(insert meaningless label here).

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Dancing David


Ian you are a dolt, if you read the Ganzfeld Effect thread , you would see that at least ten serious flaws were pointed out in the methodology of the ganzfeld studies. Until such thing are addressed there is no conclusive result.


I cannot recall any flaws being pointed out in that thread.
Please provide a list of at least 10 flaws, otherwise I shall be forced to conclude that you're fibbing.

[amherst]

Originally posted by The Don

No, this reference would be ignored on the grounds that the effects were not repeated by an independent research group it was a meta analysis

Do you even know what a meta-analysis is? Doesn't seem like it. The paper is a quantitative review of 800 studies conducted by 68 different researchers with 152 references. But maybe you are saying that you will not look at evidence produced by parapsychologists period. You want evidence done by skeptics, people independent of the field of parapsychology? Is this what you're saying? You do know that most skeptics don't conduct research and that CSICOP has an official policy against it, don't you? Anyway, here's the Foundations abstract for all to read:

D. I. Radin, R. D. Nelson
Foundations of Physics, Vol 19, No 12, pp 1499-1514, December 1989

Speculations about the role of consciousness in physical systems are frequently observed in the literature concerned with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. While only three experimental investigations can be found on this topic in physics journals, more than 800 relevant experiments have been reported in the literature of parapsychology. A well-defined body of empirical evidence from this domain was reviewed using meta-analytic techniques to assess methodological quality and overall effect size. Results showed effects conforming to chance expectation in control conditions and unequivocal non-chance effects in experimental conditions. This quantitative literature review agrees with the findings of two earlier reviews, suggesting the existence of some form of consciousness-related anomaly in random physical systems.

amherst

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Dancing David


Lucianaarchy,

What do you do just parrot the debunking debunkers web site?

When you demostrate the ability of hydrogen to bond to oxygen, you alwsys get the same results, over and over and over. As soon as lavosier announced his theories every one ran out and tested them. That is science.

Every study that has been shown so far to date has serious methodological flaws. When people are questioned about flaws in methodology then people act as though we have raised the bar higher.

That is not science, that is wishful thinking, psychology is full fo results that are from small sample size and other sorts of bias. Get used to it get over it. The study in question may have been a valid result, but the methodology is open to flaw. therefore while the results may be considered , the source of the effect is inconclusive.

If you want to beleive on faith that is fine, I think it would be way cool if psi existed, but as of yet it has not been demostrated in a controlled setting with good methodology.

That, David is complete, and utter, bollox.

All you have done, ever, during any of these debates is supply your purely subjective, and at times, quite misleading (as above) opinions about a subject you appear to either be willfuly ignoring or are experiencing a clinical level of denial over.

Now, stop talking bollox and do something constructive. Please list the 'serious methodological flaws' you are making claims about in respect of the evidence you have already been given. Otherwise, it is you, David, who is parroting. You provide no evidence what so ever to support your opinions. Not a shred. And the fact that you just say silly things like the above only goes to reinforce the theory that you are simply an intransigent 'flat earth' type, in denial.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Dancing David

Ain't that the beauty of science Tai? A person who has never done a meta-analysis can definitly point out the flaws in the ganfeld one. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to point out the rrors in methodology.

I think you are trying a reverse appeal to authority.

That's the beauty of wishful thinking, that someone who has no experience with meta analysis thinks they understand the fine points of meta analysis...

[Ersby]

Just to finish off the debate on URDF-3 and Pat Price...

I was wrong about the Pat Price/crane sketch. Price DID draw two cranes, true, but he labelled them as to which was the largest and which was the smallest. So no chance of mixing the two up.

Anyway, this is the pdf regarding Pat Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st36.pdf

amherst said:
You do realize that your position on this is in conflict with the author of the paper you referenced?

Actually, I’m not in disagreement with the author at all. He writes (on page 3):

“One explanation of this discrepancy [between Pat Price’s accuracy with the crane and his inaccuracy with everything else]could be that if he mentioned enough specific objects, he would surely hit on one object that is actually present”

Which is just what I said!

Just so everyone can see what we’re talking about and doesn’t care to wade through the pdf I’ve listed all the points that Pat Price made regarding URDF-3. This way, the crane gains a little context and everyone can decide for themselves how likely/unlikely it is. Remember, Pat Price was given the co-ordinates, shown where it was on a map and was told it was a Russian base.

The whole thing was carried out over four days (9-11 and 15 July 1974). To put things into a clearer order, timewise, items 1-16 are from the first day. Items 17-30 are from day two. Only items 31-34 come from day three. Day four is given only two paragraphs in the report and is summed up: “the discussions did nothing towards supplying any new evidence (that could be checked) to establish validity for Price’s remote viewing ability”

One last thing: This is not really covered in the pdf, but I’m not at all sure that Targ and Puthoff (the people questioning Price about what he saw) were completely target blind. On two occasions they certainly gave leading questions (re. The crane and the headframes) concerning what Price should be seeing.

This is what Price saw, with direct quotes from the pdf in “quotation marks”, or my comments in [brackets]:

1. low one-storey buildings, short squatty buildings “could very well describe a first look at URDF-3”
2. a peculiar type of helmet “gets bogged down in the specifics and purpose”
3. identifies the base as being 30 miles south of a river “this information had been given to him earlier”
4. the road from the river passes through a gorge [incorrect]
5. he sketched the layout of URDF-3 “the layout of the buildings and they area they cover as shown in sketch are incorrect for URDF-3”
6. describes antennas “although there are some antennas at URDF-3, none are as tall as the 500 ft antenna he described”
7. describes an outdoor pool, 60 feet by 150 feet “in reality, there is no outdoor pool at URDF-3”
8. drew a military complex 3/8ths of a mile NE of URDF-3 “there is a military complex at URDF-3, located at about 2 1/2 miles NW of the Operations Area, but this data was given to him earlier”
9. describes a radar/communications building to the north “fits the description of the probable laboratory/administration building located about 2 1/2 miles NW” [ie, from the same information given to him earlier]
10. describes an array of telegraph poles “there is no such array”
11. sketches the general landscape as seen from 50,000 feet “nothing in this figure is correct, except the area is arid and has low hills to the south. Specifically, he is incorrect in his locations of a small village, and airstrip, a cluster of pine trees, and a city 60 miles to the SW. There is, however, an airfield at the main support complex 30 miles north of URDF-3”
12. is asked about railways. The closest railroad he saw was 60 miles away “in reality there is a railroad at the main support complex (about 30 miles north of URDF-3) with a railway spur under construction down to URDF-3”
13. the area had a cyclone fence “in reality the Operations Area of URDF-3 has four security fences, not just one cyclone fence”
14. again he describes the non-existent telegraph pole array
15. saw low-boy trucks and a gantry crane [more on this later, it is worth noting that Hal Putoff, while speaking to Pat Price after the first session, asked if Price could focus on the crane, so there’s a chance that Pat Price could deduce that he’d stumbled upon a hit.]
16. described Building 1: three floors, flat roof, 80 feet by 160 feet “there is no building at URDF-3 that matches the above description”
17. he talks about the gantry crane, and how big it is [doesn’t give figures yet, more on this later]
18. talks about the security fence being electrified, doesn’t mention “the fact that there are really four perimeter fences at URDF-3”
19. talks about the crane, and how it relates to the non-existent telegraph array, swimming pool and Building 1.
20. mentions the crane goes into a sunken building “the gantry crane at URDF-3 operates on rails that go over a sunken building”
21. describes the rails that the crane rides on “that description compares quite closely with one of the most distinctive observables at URDF-3”
22. describes two gantry cranes that enter building 1 “his description of the interaction between the crane and building 1 is incorrect”
23. decides building one as having five stories, not three [incorrect]
24. talks about welding operations south of building 1 [?]
25. describes an electric substation east of the building “in reality there is no substation near the gantry crane or building 1 at URDF-3”
26. gives dimensions of crane: 50 feet wide, 150 feet tall
27. gives dimensions of building 1: 50 feet tall. When asked how the crane could fit inside building 1, he describes two smaller gantry cranes that actually enter the building “this complicated relationship of three gantry cranes does not exist at URDF-3”
28. is asked to scan to the west to look for another structure of similar size to the crane. The experimenters want to see if Price can see the four headframes [nothing immediate is noted: possibly the dome shaped building later on]
29. sketches the two cranes “the sketch of the taller gantry crane is remarkably close in detail to the actual gantry crane”
30. describes a dome shaped building about 200 feet SW of building 1 [?]
31. talks about and sketches a cement silo-like building [?]
32. describes the outdoor pool “at one time during this discussion I thought the pool he was looking at might well be the underground building”
33. incorrectly describes the distance to the nearest railroad
34. is shown a sketch of URDF-3, with the headframes included. He is asked if he can now see the headframes. He says only one is still present. “That proved to be untrue, since all four headframes are still there”
35. is asked if the buildings labelled A, B, C, and D on the sketch are actually parts of one larger underground building. He says they aren’t. They are. “This description is the most negative evidence yet and tends to discredit Price’s ability to remotely view URDF-3”


More recently I read an article by Targ (don’t seem to have a link to hand) in which he described a further hit concerning (if memory serves, please correct me if I’m wrong) large spherical structures in one of the buildings. This was confirmed only years after the experiment, and years after Price’s death. Unfortunately this statement is not mentioned in the pdf. It’s possible it was one of the things mentioned in the sessions from days three or four, since they are rather underrepresented. Then again, the same article repeated the old mistake of saying that Pat Price was only working from map co-ordinates, so I’ll leave it to you to decide how reliable it is.

As to the crane and its size, it’s worth noticing that whenever Price mentioned size, it was always to do with grandeur. The swimming pool, Building 1, the domed building and the crane. It could be (just supposition, mind you) that he thought that since the US Intelligence only had aerial photos to work with, that the targets most easily identifiable would have to be big. So when he got the prompt for more information about the crane, would it have been such a leap of logic to make?

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

Wrong. The reason study 302's chance hit rate was inflated was because:

Do you now agree that successful studies which aren't prematurely terminated are not likely to be the result of content bias? (Keeping in mind of course, that study 302 was still significant even after it's hit rate was adjusted).

amherst

You've posted that quote before. It actually agrees with what I'm saying. Bem accepts that Study 302 was effected by response bias so the hit rate was adjusted. Only you seem to think otherwise.

Whether a session is prematurely terminated or not doesn't mean anything. In the case of Study 302 it was decided to have a psuedo-random selection choice so that each target was chosen an equal number of times (NB, Beirman's series 4 had the same criteria, and it was relegated to the lower part of the standardness scale!). However, not all ganzfeld experiments have this criteria. Some are happy to let randomness run its course. So, no, I can't assume that response bias will not play a part in future experiments (prematurely terminated or not) since it's clearly played a part in the past.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


That's the beauty of wishful thinking, that someone who has no experience with meta analysis thinks they understand the fine points of meta analysis...

Tai,

Any one can critique any research, it is well established fact that meta-analysis that is done between studies that have different methodologies and a lack of demographic matching are meaningless. they hace so many sources of noice and error they can not be meaningful, sorry that is the truth.

The Ganzfeld meta-analysis is a joke. You can hide behind your alleged credentials in statistics but with those credentials, you should be the one pointing out that it is a meaningless meta-analysis.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Dancing David

The Ganzfeld meta-analysis is a joke.

Why do you say that?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Dancing David

The Ganzfeld meta-analysis is a joke.

No David, you are the joke.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


That, David is complete, and utter, bollox.

All you have done, ever, during any of these debates is supply your purely subjective, and at times, quite misleading (as above) opinions about a subject you appear to either be willfuly ignoring or are experiencing a clinical level of denial over.

Now, stop talking bollox and do something constructive. Please list the 'serious methodological flaws' you are making claims about in respect of the evidence you have already been given. Otherwise, it is you, David, who is parroting. You provide no evidence what so ever to support your opinions. Not a shred. And the fact that you just say silly things like the above only goes to reinforce the theory that you are simply an intransigent 'flat earth' type, in denial.

the evidnce is in the lack of control in the research study, my critique is based solely upon the research as presented. You present the research, I will critique it. there are some huge flaws in the ganfeld studies, which were repeated endlessly on the thread of the Ganzfeld Effect.

take for example the assertion that there will be a 25% hit rate in the study. they do not run control groups to match for 'random match to reciever statement', so it is bullflop to assert that the hit rate would be 25% by chance, when given pictures with a 'higher random response to reciever statement match', the hit rate would be considerably higher from 'random chance'.

This is a serious mthodological flaw, of the papers and reviews presented the researcher does not present how this was controlled for.

And here is the science part, if it is not controlled for then it is a possible source of the 'effect', and therefore you can't conclude that there is a psi effect, because the 'effect' could be just from 'random macth to reciever response' that generates the seen effect.

There may well be effect, so far I haven't seen a standard devi9ation for results of the ganzfeld studies run without actualy having a sender and reciever. This would establish a baseline response rate and then you could determine the random match rates, response bias and other confounding factors.

Then if you showed me a 33% hit rate , we could decide if it was meaningful.

I am just as sceptical of non-psi reseach as well, especialy if we talk about IQ testing and it's lack of meaning.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


No David, you are the joke.

Oh, touche. I am mortally wounded.

(Takes one to know one Ian)

Some response Ian, I can't believe that you haven't got something pithy to say. And that certainly isn't the best debate you have mustered.

Show me decent science and I will be the first to beleive Ian, I don't believe in cold fusion yet either.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


Why do you say that?

Uh, because it is a misapplication of the tool?

I would like very much to beleive in psi, spirit and god. I have had experience of all three, but as of yet, I seen no reason to believe that they were more than a personal experience.

It is like people saying "There is a twenty five percent coorelation between IQ and job salary", and I say, well that is pretty much meaningless, show me a 60% coorelation and I think there might be a causal relationship.

The personal part of me beleieves in a lot of wierd stuff that i find is not replicated by the scientific method. So I distinguish between personal belief and scientific evidence.(I really believe that Iwas a giant sea clam in a past life. But it is just a personal belief I can't 'prove' it.)

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
You've posted that quote before. It actually agrees with what I'm saying. Bem accepts that Study 302 was effected by response bias so the hit rate was adjusted. Only you seem to think otherwise.

(???) No I don't. As the paper clearly demonstrates, Study 302 was affected by response bias because there were not enough trials run to ensure that an imbalance in the frequency of the clips used as targets did not interact with receivers content preference. This is why the hit rate had to be adjusted to such a significant degree. And it is not a problem for studies which didn't have 302's unique problems:

Bem and Honorton
In the 10 basic autoganzfeld experiments, 160 film clips were sampled for a total of 329 sessions; accordingly, a particular clip would be expected to appear as the target in only about 2 sessions. This low expected frequency means that it is not possible to statistically assess the randomness of the actual distribution observed. Accordingly, Honorton et al. (1990) ran several large-scale control series to test the output of the random number generator. These control series confirmed that it was providing a uniform distribution of values through the full target range. Statistical tests that could legitimately be performed on the actual frequencies observed confirmed that targets were, on average, selected uniformly from among the four film clips within each judging set and that the four possible judging sequences were uniformly distributed across the sessions.

Whether a session is prematurely terminated or not doesn't mean anything.

That is false and an opposite conclusion of the paper.

In the case of Study 302 it was decided to have a psuedo-random selection choice so that each target was chosen an equal number of times (NB, Beirman's series 4 had the same criteria, and it was relegated to the lower part of the standardness scale!). However, not all ganzfeld experiments have this criteria. Some are happy to let randomness run its course. So, no, I can't assume that response bias will not play a part in future experiments (prematurely terminated or not) since it's clearly played a part in the past.
You need to understand that Study 302 was unique. This is why it was analyzed seperatetly. You can go on believing that the reason its hit rate needed to be adjusted so significantly was because of some unknown reason, but this is false. The reason isn't unknown. It has to do with the studies early termination. And analyses of the 10 basic auto-ganz studies have shown that their results were not affected by response bias.

amherst

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
Just to finish off the debate on URDF-3 and Pat Price...

I was wrong about the Pat Price/crane sketch. Price DID draw two cranes, true, but he labelled them as to which was the largest and which was the smallest. So no chance of mixing the two up.

Anyway, this is the pdf regarding Pat Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st36.pdf



Actually, I’m not in disagreement with the author at all. He writes (on page 3):

“One explanation of this discrepancy [between Pat Price’s accuracy with the crane and his inaccuracy with everything else]could be that if he mentioned enough specific objects, he would surely hit on one object that is actually present”

Which is just what I said!
It seems that the author of the paper is in disagreement with himself. In the passage I quoted he gives only two possibilities as to how Price could have drawn the crane so accurately. You are not in agreement with him there. Yet, in the sentence you quote, he does in fact give an explanation which you are in agreement with and I am not. This is odd, but it doesn't sway my conclusion. Again, look at the drawing he made:

http://www.lfr.org/csl/practical/ops_3.html#crane

As the author of the paper writes later on, it is inconceivable that Price could be so accurate without actually having information about the target.

amherst

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Dancing David

I would like very much to beleive in psi, spirit and god.


I'm not talking about belief here, but examining the data from experiments.


It is like people saying "There is a twenty five percent coorelation between IQ and job salary", and I say, well that is pretty much meaningless, show me a 60% coorelation and I think there might be a causal relationship.


But if any correlation exists, that should be something. Just like in
'psi' stuff, it shouldn't matter if the effect sizes are small, just as long as they exist. Maybe it could be trained, etc.

[Ersby]

Amherst said:
You can go on believing that the reason its hit rate needed to be adjusted so significantly was because of some unknown reason, but this is false.


Hmmm… Let’s have another look at what I said…


Study 302 was effected by response bias so the hit rate was adjusted.


Where did this "unknown reason" come from?


Study 302 was affected by response bias because there were not enough trials run to ensure that an imbalance in the frequency of the clips used as targets did not interact with receivers content preference.

In the case of Study 302 it had been decided to run the experiment until all four clips had been chosen 15 times. But the study was ended prematurely, so that only 25 sessions had been completed. This left, as you said, an imbalance in the clips that happened to reflect the typical responses of people in the ganzfeld (in that they talk about people and water much more than sex or snakes).

But if, according to you, 25 sessions isn’t enough sessions to iron out this problem, then that leaves a further 4 PRL studies which have this potential problem.

However, the number of sessions completed won’t necessarily solve the issue of response bias (and the number of sessions planned but not completed certainly won’t make a difference!). Sure, response bias would probably start to level out over a larger number of runs, but this is not definite.

The fact that Study 302 only had one set of targets is not important, if that’s what you’re getting at with your reference to “unique problems”, since water and people would probably have feature regularly across the entire target set.

You seem to think that because, in this case, response bias wasn’t enough to render the results insignificant then it’ll never be enough to render the results insignificant. This seems rather optimistic. The next time you read about an experiment with around 25 sessions that got a hit rate of 34% are you really going to tell yourself there are no mundane methods to achieve that result?

Lastly you’ll have to explain why Study 302 was so unique (or should that be “non-standard”?) that its issues with response bias cannot be applied to the ganzfeld as a whole.

[Ersby]

This is odd, but it doesn't sway my conclusion. Again, look at the drawing he made:

Okay, you take one part of the data and use it to bolster your worldview, I’ll take the entirety of the data and use it to bolster mine. Is that a deal? (and I notice the web site mentions nothing about Price being given the type of target he was viewing and shown the location on the map, nor, oddly, does it give a link to the full pdf. I can't imagine why!)

How do you explain all the mistakes Price made? If he could see the crane, why couldn’t he see anything else?

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


[quote][b]Hmmm… Let’s have another look at what I said…



Where did this "unknown reason" come from?
You don't seem to know why response bias was a problem for Study 302 and not the rest of the PRL studies. The paper explains why, but you don't seem to understand.
In the case of Study 302 it had been decided to run the experiment until all four clips had been chosen 15 times. But the study was ended prematurely, so that only 25 sessions had been completed. This left, as you said, an imbalance in the clips that happened to reflect the typical responses of people in the ganzfeld (in that they talk about people and water much more than sex or snakes).

But if, according to you, 25 sessions isn’t enough sessions to iron out this problem, then that leaves a further 4 PRL studies which have this potential problem.

However, the number of sessions completed won’t necessarily solve the issue of response bias (and the number of sessions planned but not completed certainly won’t make a difference!). Sure, response bias would probably start to level out over a larger number of runs, but this is not definite.

The fact that Study 302 only had one set of targets is not important, if that’s what you’re getting at with your reference to “unique problems”, since water and people would probably have feature regularly across the entire target set.

You seem to think that because, in this case, response bias wasn’t enough to render the results insignificant then it’ll never be enough to render the results insignificant. This seems rather optimistic. The next time you read about an experiment with around 25 sessions that got a hit rate of 34% are you really going to tell yourself there are no mundane methods to achieve that result?
Come on Ersby, Study 302 had an original hit rate of 64%. Its adjusted hit rate was 34%.
Lastly you’ll have to explain why Study 302 was so unique (or should that be “non-standard”?) that its issues with response bias cannot be applied to the ganzfeld as a whole.
I already have. Unlike the other studies, Study 302 only sampled from a single four clip set (". . .that had yielded a particularly high hit rate in the previous studies"). Because of this, the study was designed to run until each clip had been a target 15 times. Since the experiment was ended before this could occur, some clips ended up being targets significantly more than others and so receiver response bias was a problem. And as you know, Bem, and then later Bierman, performed the same response bias analysis that had been performed on Study 302 on the other studies and the bias was so low that (unlike Study 302) the hit rates didn't even need to be adjusted a whole percentage point.

amherst

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ersby


How do you explain all the mistakes Price made? If he could see the crane, why couldn’t he see anything else?

How come Price didn't didn't use the effect to do a full analysis of the metals used in construction and count the number of rivets too! *shock*

:rolleyes: Just because we have now established that the effect works, doesn't mean we know how it works. But, evidently, it does.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby


Okay, you take one part of the data and use it to bolster your worldview, I’ll take the entirety of the data and use it to bolster mine. Is that a deal?
You're not really taking the entirety of the data into consideration. You're taking the majority (I'll give you that) but not everything (though I am). The only explanation you have given for Price's amazingly accurate drawing, (and will you not admit that it is amazingly accurate?) has been to say that since he mentioned a lot of specific details which related to nothing that particular session, he was bound to mention something which did relate to the target. Considering the drawing he made, I find this explanation very desperate and absurd. It shows that you haven't thought very deeply about the situation. Just look at the sketch! Do you really believe he could draw something that accurate by chance alone? He even got the number of wheels right!
(and I notice the web site mentions nothing about Price being given the type of target he was viewing and shown the location on the map, nor, oddly, does it give a link to the full pdf. I can't imagine why!)

How do you explain all the mistakes Price made? If he could see the crane, why couldn’t he see anything else?
No one thinks that a star baseball player will hit a home run, or even get a hit, each and every time he goes up to bat. Analogously, a psychic shouldn't be expected to get a "hit" every time either.

amherst

[amherst]

This is a bit misleading:
Come on Ersby, Study 302 had an original hit rate of 64%. Its adjusted hit rate was 34%.

It should read:

Come on Ersby, Study 302 had an original hit rate of 64%. Its adjusted chance hit rate was 34% (as opposed to 25%).

amherst

[Ladewig]

There has been a claim that when it comes to things like psi, skeptics are just too closed-minded to accept useful experiments showing its existence. The claim stretches to the majority of mainstream scientists as well. Let's assume that the claim is true and psi does exist in levels to show positive results in experiments. My question is where are all the practical applications that should have reached the marketplace in the past 70 years.

Capitalists are not so closed-minded as to turn away profitable ideas that disagree with established science. Shouldn't there be psychic mining engineers, psychic medical diagnosticans, psychic petroleum engineers, psychic archeologists, psychic quality control technicians, psychic military scouts, psychic private detectives, and a host of other psychic employees? There are industries where companies would pay huge sums to someone who could demonstrate pratical applications of psi on even a partial basis. Why did the U.S. military stop all psychic research when a success rate of even 15% would have provided amazingly valuable information?

Why hasn't psi power side-stepped the arrogant, close-minded field of science and gone directly to the marketplace to prove its worth?



----------------------

Also, when is psi power going to come up with a demonstration that cannot be replicated by magicians? Remote viewing, card identification, identification of the contents of sealed envelopes are all popular illusions frequently used by stage illusionsists.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ladewig
There has been a claim that when it comes to things like psi, skeptics are just too closed-minded to accept useful experiments showing its existence. The claim stretches to the majority of mainstream scientists as well. Let's assume that the claim is true and psi does exist in levels to show positive results in experiments. My question is where are all the practical applications that should have reached the marketplace in the past 70 years.

Capitalists are not so closed-minded as to turn away profitable ideas that disagree with established science. Shouldn't there be psychic mining engineers, psychic medical diagnosticans, psychic petroleum engineers, psychic archeologists, psychic quality control technicians, psychic military scouts, psychic private detectives, and a host of other psychic employees? There are industries where companies would pay huge sums to someone who could demonstrate pratical applications of psi on even a partial basis. Why did the U.S. military stop all psychic research when a success rate of even 15% would have provided amazingly valuable information?

Why hasn't psi power side-stepped the arrogant, close-minded field of science and gone directly to the marketplace to prove its worth?


Under a capitalist sysytem / State Capitalist, don't you think there would be a national security issue which would completely make any 'marketing' null and void, at least until they knew how to control it?

Think about it.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


Under a capitalist sysytem / State Capitalist, don't you think there would be a national security issue which would completely make any 'marketing' null and void, at least until they knew how to control it?

Think about it.

Right. And you don't hear about the government restricting research. Regardless of the experiments there has been no impact, a damning fact.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ed


Right. And you don't hear about the government restricting research.

If the hypothesis were correct, you wouldn't. It would be restricted through the mainstream educational and research establishments. There would be no official acceptance of 'psi'. It would most likely be discouraged via the most effective means, disinformation and the 21stC. equivalent of 'witch burning'. This would be most efectively carried out through inhibitory methods via agents of the State already ensconced within the system / Establishment*. Of course, mentioning such things as conspiracy would be regarded as 'woo-woo' and not worth even considering. Thus, you have in place a highly effective illusion.

Crazy, I know. But if Psi existed to the level it appears to exist, then it would be quite easy (and in terms of social control, probably seen as necessasry) to keep that illusion in place for most of human history.

*Religion, Education, Science. etc.

[Ladewig]

Under a capitalist sysytem / State Capitalist, don't you think there would be a national security issue which would completely make any 'marketing' null and void, at least until they knew how to control it?

Think about it.

Thanks for adding a bit of levity to a thread that has included acrimonious name calling.

On the remote chance that you were serious. Are you suggesting that every government in the world is suppressing practical psychic abilities in the marketplace?

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ladewig


Thanks for adding a bit of levity to a thread that has included acrimonious name calling.

On the remote chance that you were serious. Are you suggesting that every government in the world is suppressing practical psychic abilities in the marketplace?

If it was something which was not yet undestood in terms of control, wouldn't you expect that to be the case? How could any State allow such a dangerous National Security risk to officialy exist? They'd have to go and round up all the 'mind-readers' and lock them down or buy them out, otherwise, the rest of mankind'd probably lynch 'em anyway. Disinformation and social / cultural / academic ridicule would be far more effective and desirable in such a situation.

[TheBoyPaj]

So the government leave Gary Schwartz alone because he is a harmless fool with no credibility and he distracts us from the REAL evidence?

You might be on to something.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi

I'm not talking about belief here, but examining the data from experiments.

the data is inconclusive at best due to the lack of control and poor methodology. Until you refine your results with adequate controls, it could be random chance, it could be experiementer error, it could be psi. But until you have decent control you can't conclude there is psi.

But if any correlation exists, that should be something. Just like in
'psi' stuff, it shouldn't matter if the effect sizes are small, just as long as they exist. Maybe it could be trained, etc.

Like the correlation between ice cream sales and death by drowning? A coorelation is very rarely useful, except in marketing! A coorelation may indicate a causal relationship but I chose the one about IQ and salary deliberately, IQ does not predict high salary, despite what some people would like to believe. So if it was a coorelation in the sixties I would think there might be somesort of causal relationship.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy


If it was something which was not yet undestood in terms of control, wouldn't you expect that to be the case? How could any State allow such a dangerous National Security risk to officialy exist? They'd have to go and round up all the 'mind-readers' and lock them up, otherwise, the rest of mankind'd probably lynch 'em anyway. Disinformation and social / cultural / academic ridicule would be far more effective and desirable in such a situation.

Only to a point in a capitalist system the ability to make money through psychic powers is very real, with a good ability you could really rake in the dough.

I have always felt that if psi exists if would have a very high evolutionary value, despite the literary elements of the persecution of psi. In most of human history anything that remotely looks like psi becomes crucial to survival.

[Lucianarchy]

and therefore, crucial to control.

[Ed]

Impossible to control.

There is no discernable impact of any of this stuff. That is the clearest evidence that it is bunk.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Dancing David

the data is inconclusive at best due to the lack of control and poor methodology. Until you refine your results with adequate controls, it could be random chance, it could be experiementer error, it could be psi. But until you have decent control you can't conclude there is psi.


Please define what you mean by adequate controls. I wouldn't want to point to a study that had controls, only for you to say it wasn't adequate.

:)

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi
Please define what you mean by adequate controls. I wouldn't want to point to a study that had controls, only for you to say it wasn't adequate.

:)

It's quite alright for you to ask other people to clarify what they mean. It's not alright for you never to state what you yourself mean.

[Ed]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


Please define what you mean by adequate controls. I wouldn't want to point to a study that had controls, only for you to say it wasn't adequate.

:) [/B]

No control is possible with the silly PEAR stuff. They state it.

[flyboy217]

Originally posted by Ed


No control is possible with the silly PEAR stuff. They state it.

PEAR says they cannot have sufficient controls to guard against deception / cheating? I think I missed that part. Do you have a link?

So far, the only definition I can see for "adequate controls" on the part of many of these skeptics is:

Any controls that, when implemented, demonstrate that psi does not exist.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by CFLarsen

It's quite alright for you to ask other people to clarify what they mean.

Well that is why I asked.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Ed


No control is possible with the silly PEAR stuff. They state it.

Well that aside, I'm asking what a poster meant by 'adequate' controls. What does adequate mean specifically? Double blind? Leakage prevention? Randomized? What specifically?

[Ed]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


Well that aside, I'm asking what a poster meant by 'adequate' controls. What does adequate mean specifically? Double blind? Leakage prevention? Randomized? What specifically?

It is experiment specific. I thought you knew omething about science. Formally it is to provide stimulus control over the variable in question.

[Ed]

Originally posted by flyboy217


PEAR says they cannot have sufficient controls to guard against deception / cheating? I think I missed that part. Do you have a link?

So far, the only definition I can see for "adequate controls" on the part of many of these skeptics is:

Any controls that, when implemented, demonstrate that psi does not exist.

I understand the concern over deception and cheating in the world of the paranormal, but no, there is more to it than that. They say that they cannot have sufficient control to be able to ascribe a relationship between their dependent and independent variables. It makes their experiments a sham. Surely everyone sees that?

[Ed]

Originally posted by flyboy217


You're not really serious are you? At every point in the history of science, this question could be asked about any not-yet-discovered theory.



You are comparing science to Psi?

OK, so there is some odd and systematic error in some sort of data, what exactly is the respone of the paranormalists? Is it to generate cogent, testable hypotheses? Or is it hypothesis de jour, concocted to explain away failed results?

Why not read the PEAR stuff as a fine exercise in pot hoc rationalization.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


Please define what you mean by adequate controls. I wouldn't want to point to a study that had controls, only for you to say it wasn't adequate.

:) [/B]

Addressed a lenth already, very few of the studies I have been able to review have what I would consider to be adequate controls. I have written many posts, some on this thread about them. In the Ganzfeld lack of trials, small runs, lack of random match control, lack of response match control, on and on.

Do you think that the folks CERN and Fermilabm run from controls and calibration? They don't sit there and go "Well they are just going to raise the bar again, hmph". Controlling known and possible influeneces is part of investigation. If there is a possible source of error then they will persue it. And sometimes thats when you find the cool stuff.

Note: I only feel there should be controls for known and possible influences.

:p

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by flyboy217


PEAR says they cannot have sufficient controls to guard against deception / cheating? I think I missed that part. Do you have a link?

So far, the only definition I can see for "adequate controls" on the part of many of these skeptics is:

Any controls that, when implemented, demonstrate that psi does not exist.

Hi flyboy and welcome to the fray...

That is the most outrageous statement i have seen in a while. Maybe even worthy of a sig line.

It is also total crap.

In the Ganzfeld study, I ask only that there be adequate controls to calibrate the systems as it were. If there is apotential source of error or a possible source of error then it should be controlled for.

Why does every body who wants to believe in psi asct as though this is abnormal? THis is the nature of scince, Ye gods, in psychology this is the standard! Someone gets a result and everybody trieds to tear it apart and then they go and design more studies to figure out what is goping on. That is the nature of research.

When Linnehan advertises that her DBT for Borderline Personality Disorder has such and such a success rate, the first thing that happen is every body goes and disagree with it. Then they go and learn the method, they establish their own clinical practise , and they provide feedback to the makers of the model. This is science. That is why Skinner and Ellis pissed off so many people, they said "It doesn't matter what you think is working. Prove that it is working." Adler was like a god to psychotherapy, but he could not prove that it worked. So down it goes. Psychotherapists of the Adlerian school then started the "Well, it takes time to work , years and years.", now we know that most effective psychotherapies have thier effect in twelve weeks!

Bang another theory bites the dust and the herd moves on.

[Dancing David]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi


Well that aside, I'm asking what a poster meant by 'adequate' controls. What does adequate mean specifically? Double blind? Leakage prevention? Randomized? What specifically?

You so silly!

All of the above and enough to control for all possible influences that can be known. I don't think that you should control for astrological influences but the ones that you can think of should be controlled for.

Why do you act like it is such a big deal, 95% of research in human psychology gets thrown in the dust bin at some point. The neurobiology stuff is pure descriptive science and less experiemental, but in social, cognitive and the 'behavioral' psychology there is lot of research and a lot of it dosn't stand up to replication, so it gets modified or it gets canned.

What is the big deal about control? In psychology if someone mentions a possible source of error people don't just go:"Well hmph, those meanies are just raising the bar." You redisgn your study and you move on.

Why is it in psi discussion people always act as though the 'controls' are impossible. You can do exploratory reseach, fine. But when push comes to shove, then you have to refine your research.

Which is why say oh, "day treatment" has become "psychosocial rehab". Because somebody decided to see what actualy helps people with mental illness recover. And why say some people are asked to get more exercise and decrease their sodium intake.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

You don't seem to know why response bias was a problem for Study 302 and not the rest of the PRL studies. The paper explains why, but you don't seem to understand.
[/b]
Come on Ersby, Study 302 had an original hit rate of 64%. Its adjusted hit rate was 34%.

I already have. Unlike the other studies, Study 302 only sampled from a single four clip set (". . .that had yielded a particularly high hit rate in the previous studies"). Because of this, the study was designed to run until each clip had been a target 15 times. Since the experiment was ended before this could occur, some clips ended up being targets significantly more than others and so receiver response bias was a problem. And as you know, Bem, and then later Bierman, performed the same response bias analysis that had been performed on Study 302 on the other studies and the bias was so low that (unlike Study 302) the hit rates didn't even need to be adjusted a whole percentage point.

amherst [/B]

Are you deliberately misunderstanding my point? Is this some kind of joke? Some clever reference to the whole mid-point argument? Is this what you're doing?

The paper agrees with me: that response bias inflated the hit rate by chance.

I know it didn't affect the significance of the results in Study 302. I said as much in a previous post.

If you want an example where repsonse bias pushes significance into non-significance, how about the different scoring rates for static and dynamic targets. In the original paper the difference was 10% After adjustment it was a non-significant 6%.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

You're not really taking the entirety of the data into consideration. You're taking the majority (I'll give you that) but not everything (though I am). The only explanation you have given for Price's amazingly accurate drawing, (and will you not admit that it is amazingly accurate?) has been to say that since he mentioned a lot of specific details which related to nothing that particular session, he was bound to mention something which did relate to the target. Considering the drawing he made, I find this explanation very desperate and absurd. It shows that you haven't thought very deeply about the situation. Just look at the sketch! Do you really believe he could draw something that accurate by chance alone? He even got the number of wheels right!

No one thinks that a star baseball player will hit a home run, or even get a hit, each and every time he goes up to bat. Analogously, a psychic shouldn't be expected to get a "hit" every time either.

amherst [/B]

You're looking at the whole of the data? Until I gave you the pdf you didn't HAVE the whole of the data.

How did Price get the drawing right? I cannot give a water-tight explanation but I can suggest somethings that'd point the way.

i) everytime he spoke about size, it was always to do with grandeur.
ii) the questioners were not target blind and prompted him to talk about the crane, thus he knew he must be onto something
iii) how many different types of gantry crane were there in 1974 anyway? And by how great a margin did the number of wheels vary (since you seem to find that importnat)? Until you know that, you can't say how accurate/unlikely the hit was.

As for the baseball analogy, does a star baseball palyer only hit one in every 35 attempts?

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
Are you deliberately misunderstanding my point? Is this some kind of joke? Some clever reference to the whole mid-point argument? Is this what you're doing?
Since you've brought it up again, I've got to ask: Do you still believe 5.33, or 6.7, or anything other than 4.00 can be the MIDPOINT (think about that word for a moment) on a seven point scale? A further question is whether or not you now admit that Willin's studies (at least) were nonstandard? In our most recent correspondence about this you seemed to finally understand why using musical targets would affect the standardness of a study. Am I right? Or do you still not understand?
The paper agrees with me: that response bias inflated the hit rate by chance.

I know it didn't affect the significance of the results in Study 302. I said as much in a previous post.

And you've also said something to the effect that since response bias inflated the hit rate in Study 302, we should consider all other ganzfeld studies vulnerable in the same way. Because of your concern, I pointed out to you why Study 302's response bias problem was not a problem for the other studies. Despite my efforts, you continue to want to incorrectly generalize. Again, your whole response bias argument has been to say that since it was a factor in Study 302, it should be suspect in all other studies. This is clearly false.
If you want an example where repsonse bias pushes significance into non-significance, how about the different scoring rates for static and dynamic targets. In the original paper the difference was 10% After adjustment it was a non-significant 6%
So the difference in success between dynamic and static targets isn't as pronounced as originally thought. So what? We are debating whether response bias can explain the results or not. And the analyses performed on the ganzfeld studies clearly show that it can't.

amherst

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
You're looking at the whole of the data? Until I gave you the pdf you didn't HAVE the whole of the data.
(???) I obviously have it now.
How did Price get the drawing right? I cannot give a water-tight explanation but I can suggest somethings that'd point the way.

i) everytime he spoke about size, it was always to do with grandeur.
I don't think this was the case. But even if it was, I don't see how it could have been any real help to Price when he drew the crane.
ii) the questioners were not target blind and prompted him to talk about the crane, thus he knew he must be onto something.
According to the documents, the experimenters were blind to the crane. Here are two accounts of how Price's drawing came about. The first is taken from the document you referenced and the second from an article Puthoff wrote. The first:
During the first day's session -Price-,
1) accurately described the location and type of target (that information had been given to him by the experimenters) but failed on the layout and types of buildings.
2) saw a gantry crane for heavy lifting.
3) tended to spend too much time on specifics only to say, "I'll come back to that," but seldom did, and
4) successfully evaded drawing a perimeter of the area even though he was asked to do this twice.
Therefore, nothing positive to validate remote-viewing from the first day's session.
-Price- was contacted by phone that evening by one of the experimenters and was told to concentrate on the crane and its relationship to the dominant (three-story) building. (Building 1) that he had seen during the days first session. He was also told that they wanted a drawing of the perimeter of the fence.

On the second day, -Price- supplied the most positive evidence yet for the remote viewing experiment with his sketch of the rail mounted gantry crane.It seems inconceivable to imagine how he could draw such a likeness to the actual crane at URDF-3 unless:

1) he actually saw it through remote viewing, or
2) he was informed of what to draw by someone
knowledgeable of URDF-3

I only mention this second possibility because the experiment was not controlled to discount the possibility that -Price- could talk to other people- such as the Disinformation Section of the KGB. That may sound ridiculous to the reader, but I have to consider all possibilities in the spectrum from his being capable to view remotely to his being supplied data for disinformation purposes by the KGB.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st36.pdf
And then we have Puthoff's account:
Operational Remote Viewing (Semipalatinsk, USSR)
Midway through the second year of the program (July 1974) our CIA sponsor decided to challenge us to provide data on a Soviet site of ongoing operational significance. Pat Price was the remote viewer. A description of the remote viewing, taken from our declassified final report [2], reads as given below. I cite this level of detail to indicate the thought that goes into such an "experiment" to minimize cueing while at the same time being responsive to the requirements of an operational situation. Again, this is not a "best-ever" example from a series of such viewings, but rather the very first operational Soviet target concerning which we were officially tasked.

"To determine the utility of remote viewing under operational conditions, a long-distance remote viewing experiment was carried out on a sponsor-designated target of current interest, an unidentified research center at Semipalatinsk, USSR.

This experiment, carried out in three phases, was under direct control of the COTR. To begin the experiment, the COTR furnished map coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds. The only additional information provided was the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. The experimenters then closeted themselves with Subject S1, gave him the map coordinates and indicated the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. A remote-viewing experiment was then carried out. This activity constituted Phase I of the experiment.



Figure 3 - Subject effort at building layout Figure 4 - Subject effort at crane construction

Figure 3 shows the subject's graphic effort for building layout; Figure 4 shows the subject's particular attention to a multistory gantry crane he observed at the site. Both results were obtained by the experimenters on a double-blind basis before exposure to any additional COTR-held information, thus eliminating the possibility of cueing. These results were turned over to the client representatives for evaluation. For comparison an artist's rendering of the site as known to the COTR (but not to the experimenters until later) is shown in Figure 5...
http://www.irva.org/papers/CIA_RV_SRI.shtml
Puthoff (who was one of the experimenters) is claiming that they were given no information about the crane before Price had drawn it. I don't see where the other account contradicts this. If I'm missing something then please inform me.
iii) how many different types of gantry crane were there in 1974 anyway? And by how great a margin did the number of wheels vary (since you seem to find that importnat)? Until you know that, you can't say how accurate/unlikely the hit was.
Though I'm no crane expert I think it's safe to say that the crane at URDF-3 was unique. Also note what Price said:
There's the most amazing thing. There's a giant gantry crane moving back and forth over my head. ...As I drift up in the air and look down, it seems to be riding on a track with one rail on each side of the building. I've never seen anything like that.
And again, as the author of the pdf writes:
It seems inconceivable to imagine how he could draw such a likeness to the actual crane at URDF-3 unless:

1) he actually saw it through remote viewing, or
2) he was informed of what to draw by someone
knowledgeable of URDF-3
As for the baseball analogy, does a star baseball palyer only hit one in every 35 attempts?
I thought you knew that Price had another significant hit which wasn't realized until after his death. Targ:
One of the most interesting things that Price saw was not in the CIA drawing, because it was inside the building that he was psychically lying on top of, and unknown to anyone in our government at the time. In this June, 1974 experiment he described a large interior room where people were working on the assembly of a giant, "sixty-foot diameter metal sphere." He said that it was being assembled from "thick metal gores," like sections of an orange peel. But, they were having trouble welding it all together, because the pieces were warping. Price said that they were looking for a lower-temperature welding material. We didn't get any feedback on this for more than three years. We discovered how accurate Price's viewings were when this sphere-fabricating activity at Semipalatinsk was eventually described in Aviation Week magazine, May 2, 1977:

'SOVIETS PUSH FOR BEAM WEAPON - The U.S. used high resolution photographic reconnaissance satellites to watch soviet technicians dig through solid granite formations. In a nearby building, huge extremely thick steel gores were manufactured. These steel segments were parts of a large sphere estimated to be about 18 meters (57.8 feet) in diameter. US officials believe that the spheres are needed to capture and store energy from nuclear driven explosives or pulse power generators. Initially, some US physicists believed that there was no method the Soviets could use to weld together the steel gores of the spheres to provide a vessel strong enough to withstand pressures likely to occur in a nuclear explosive fission process, especially when the steel to be welded was extremely thick.'

Although we were happy to receive this confirmation, unfortunately, Pat Price had already died two years earlier. So, from the point of view of the experiment, he made his perception of the sixty-foot spheres and "gores" without any feedback at all. Price's drawing of the sections of a sphere he psychically saw are shown in Figure 6. This shows that Price's remarkable perception was a direct experience of the site. He was not reading the mind of the sponsor, because no one in the United States knew of the spheres. Nor could Pat have been precognitively looking at his feedback from the future, because he received none.
http://www.irva.org/papers/RV_SRI_Memoir.shtml
In conclusion, yes, Price was, on the whole, innacurate in his viewing of URDF-3. He mentioned many things which were incorrect, and had more misses than hits. Yet, arguably his most significant hit; his drawing of the crane was the equivalent of a home run (if we apply the baseball analogy). And just because a baseball player strikes out in a game disproportionately more than he hits the ball, this doesn't mean he never hit the ball at all. That is the case here. Price struck out many times during the sessions but he also got a very significant "home run" hit. The dispute is over whether this hit was "fair" or "foul". I believe the evidence is sufficient for us to conclude it was the former.

amherst

[Ersby]

My opinion re "standardness" remains the same: that the value of “standardness” where standard becomes non-standard need not be at the median.

Talking about standardness, it’s a flaw in the original paper that the PRL experiments themselves weren’t included in the rating procedure. While I’m sure most of them would’ve probably scored highly on the scale, but without them having been graded we simply cannot say. And I don’t see how Willin’s experiment lost so many points on subject matter. It strikes me that although the people who graded the experiments were blind to the source, the people who chose the criteria were not.

As for Study 302. I’ll try again, though my hopes aren’t high.


We are debating whether response bias can explain the results or not.


No, we’re not. Now I see your confusion. My point about response bias is (and has been from the very start) that it cannot guarantee a 25% hit rate. That is all. I chose to illustrate this with reference to Study 302 because it was (a) well documented, (b) a sizeable difference and (c) easy to understand. Or so I thought. I was wrong, and for that I apologise.

You asked: Why would response bias come into play in all experiments?

Study 302 ran for 25 sessions. There had been a plan to continue the sessions until each video clip had been chosen at least 15 times, but it was cut short and so this criteria never came into play. In effect, it was a normal GESP experiment with no limit on the random choice of targets. And response bias came into play.

So there really was no difference in the set up of Study 302, other than having just one target set, to any other ganzfeld experiment you care to mention. So of course response bias can be a factor in any ganzfeld experiment.

The quote about the RNG chosing targets 1, 2, 3, and 4 with equal frequency doesn’t matter (well, it does with respect to judging bias). What matters is the content of the target. If the PRL experiments were set up so that target 1 always had people, target 2 had water, target 3 had countryside and target 4 had urban images, then that’d be fine. But I can’t see that described in the paper. The four targets in each set were all markedly different, but were they all arranged according to the set’s numbers? I.e, it’s possible that target 1 on one sessions would have water in it, while in the next session it’d be target 3. Do you see?

Now I’d like you to explain why response bias wouldn’t come into play in the other experiments.

[Ersby]

About URDF-3

Amherst said (Re: Price’s bias towards describing things as big):
I don't think this was the case.


Why do you think that?

As for whether the experimenters were blind to the target, maybe they knew nothing but they were certainly receiving prompts from people who did know.

From the pdf:
Price was contacted by phone that evening by one of the experimenters and was told to concentrate on the crane and its relationship to the dominant (three-story) building.

This jars with Putoff’s version; that the drawing was produced before he’d been given any additionally information. To whit:


Both results were obtained by the experimenters on a double-blind basis before exposure to any additional COTR-held information, thus eliminating the possibility of cueing.

Also on the second day, the experimenter asks if Price can see anything to the west of the crane. The author of the pdf writes ”(The experimenter is obviously trying to see if Price can see the four headframes that exist at URDF-3)” so they’ve also been told about these features.

In order to assess the probabilities of a correct guess, we need to know some things. First, how much information the guesser was given to start with. And, of course, how unlikely was the guess itself (in other words, if a psychic medium were to say to you “Is your grandfather called John?” and it was true, then that wouldn’t be nearly as improbable as “Is your grandfather called Nubert?”).

We know that Price was prompted to talk about the crane (so it was not a spontaneous outpouring of information, he needed to be lead to it) and he then drew a pretty bog-standard gantry crane. In fact, he wasn’t even spot on, if we compare it to the US’s own sketch. The real gantry crane has slanted legs, and so has the appearance of a truncated A-frame. Price’s crane is all right-angles and very square, and it has a supporting cross beam towards the top which doesn’t exist in the original.

Doing a search for images in google on “gantry crane” came up with a number of variations on a theme, but a frequent enough occurrence of the bare bones of Price’s guess to make it look like it was a pretty safe guess. An unremarkable gantry crane. (We only have Price’s word that he’d never seen anything like it. I take it there were no docks where he lived.)

Lastly, about the sphere (Price’s other hit). It’s not mentioned in the pdf (our only first hand contemporary source) so I’d need more corroboration. In fact, it may have been something he mentioned in the two weeks of further investigation mentioned by Puthoff. If that’s the case, then it’d be instructive to know how much other “information” Price produced before stumbling on that hit.

As for the “fair” or “foul” part at the end of your post, this is setting up a false dichotomy. To say the results were either by psi or by deliberate fraud misses the point entirely. Why couldn’t it be a lucky guess? Price was told to talk about the crane and drew a standard gantry crane that bore a passing resemblance to the Soviet’s. You can repeat the two options of the author as much as you like (whilst conveniently leaving out the third!), but from where I’m sitting, I’m not so impressed.

[amherst]

Originally posted by Ersby
My opinion re "standardness" remains the same: that the value of “standardness” where standard becomes non-standard need not be at the median.
Maybe one day you'll be able to understand how absurd your comments have been. I posted this in the ganzfeld thread and post it again here (though not for your sake of course):

1. On a seven point scale 4 is the midpoint. 4 is the midpoint because there are 3 equal spaces on each side of it. So nonstandard= 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 and standard= 4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 7. If you were to move the midpoint somewhere else such as at 5 (as Paul and Ersby have suggested) there would be one extra space available for nonstandard ratings and one less space available for standard. You wouldn't be able to get a correct rating and the MIDPOINT would no longer be MID-POINT.

2. Contrary to what Ersby thinks, each of the places on the seven point scale has a meaning. They'd each have to have one in order for the raters to rate the studies in the first place:

1-2= highly non-standard, 2-3= largely more non-standard than standard, 3-4= slightly more non-standard than standard. 4.00=neither standard or non-standard. 4-5=slightly more standard than non-standard, 5-6= largely more standard than non-standard, 6-7= highly standard.
Talking about standardness, it’s a flaw in the original paper that the PRL experiments themselves weren't included in the rating procedure. While I’m sure most of them would’ve probably scored highly on the scale, but without them having been graded we simply cannot say. And I don’t see how Willin’s experiment lost so many points on subject matter. It strikes me that although the people who graded the experiments were blind to the source, the people who chose the criteria were not.
First off, if you believe (most) of the PRL experiments would have been rated at high standardness then what problem could you have with the critera? The criteria called for studies which were similar to the PRL ones to be rated highly, and those which were dissimilar low. Second, you've never shown a thing that was wrong with the criteria. There was nothing presented to the raters which would make them rate Willin's studies as nonstandard if in fact they were actually standard:
Bem, Palmer, Broughton
The Internet debate implied that parapsychologists actively involved in ganzfeld research would be unlikely to agree on a single definition of the standard ganzfeld procedure. Rather than provide our own ad hoc definition, we had the raters read the general description from the section labeled "The Ganzfeld Procedure" in Bem and Honorton's (1994, pp. 5-6) report as well as most of the detailed method section describing the computer-controlled autoganzfeld procedure used in Honorton's Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) published in the the Journal of Parapsychology (Honorton et al., 1990, pp. 102-110).
As for Study 302. I’ll try again, though my hopes aren’t high.



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are debating whether response bias can explain the results or not.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



No, we’re not. Now I see your confusion. My point about response bias is (and has been from the very start) that it cannot guarantee a 25% hit rate. That is all. I chose to illustrate this with reference to Study 302 because it was (a) well documented, (b) a sizeable difference and (c) easy to understand. Or so I thought. I was wrong, and for that I apologise.

Again, it is you and not me who has been confused. If we take response bias into consideration when we think about ganzfeld studies, we can not guarantee a chance hit rate of exactly .25, but we can guarantee a chance hit rate that is very close to it and not a "sizable difference". You obviously do not understand this. The analysis done by Bierman et. al. showed an adjusted chance hit rate of .2598 and this "conservative correction" only results in a "slight reduction of the overall significance. . ."

And I've already explained why referring to Study 302 when trying to show response bias "cannot guarantee a 25% hit rate" was confused and wrong. Study 302 had unique problems which caused its hit rate to be elevated significantly. According to the analyses done, other ganzfeld studies which do not have Study 302's problems can only reasonably be expected to have their chance hit rate elevated slightly by response bias.
You asked: Why would response bias come into play in all experiments?

Study 302 ran for 25 sessions. There had been a plan to continue the sessions until each video clip had been chosen at least 15 times, but it was cut short and so this criteria never came into play. In effect, it was a normal GESP experiment with no limit on the random choice of targets. And response bias came into play.

So there really was no difference in the set up of Study 302, other than having just one target set, to any other ganzfeld experiment you care to mention. So of course response bias can be a factor in any ganzfeld experiment.
Having just one target set is a big difference and is the reason study 302 had its problems. All the other ganzfeld studies sampled from a pool containing 160 different targets. Study 302 only sampled from one set of 4. And again, the design of the study called for it to continue until all four clips had been used 15 times. The study was terminated prematurely and so this couldn't happen. Therefore, there was an imbalance in the frequency of clips which were targets. The clips which were targets more than decoys interacted with the receivers content preference and inflated the hit rate. This was corrected and instead of a hit rate of 64% the correct hit rate was found to be 54%.
The quote about the RNG chosing targets 1, 2, 3, and 4 with equal frequency doesn’t matter (well, it does with respect to judging bias). What matters is the content of the target. If the PRL experiments were set up so that target 1 always had people, target 2 had water, target 3 had countryside and target 4 had urban images, then that’d be fine. But I can’t see that described in the paper. The four targets in each set were all markedly different, but were they all arranged according to the set’s numbers? I.e, it’s possible that target 1 on one sessions would have water in it, while in the next session it’d be target 3. Do you see?
I have no idea about what you're getting at. I'm sure it's just another in a long line of your absurd criticisms. So the target located in the first spot of the first session might have water in it and then in its next session that target may have been located in the third spot. So???
Now I’d like you to explain why response bias wouldn’t come into play in the other experiments.
It's obvious that you are simply unable to understand anything which conflicts with your belief system. I've already gone into great detail about why,
1) The midpoint of 4 is the only place where a line between standard and nonstandard can be drawn and,
2) The problems with response bias in Study 302 can not be applied to the other studies.

Despite this, you continue with absurd criticisms which have done nothing except waste my time. I am now entirely convinced that you are beyond being able to understand even the most simple matters. Therefore, I will no longer address your posts.

amherst

[Dancing David]

You wouldn't be able to get a correct rating and the MIDPOINT would no longer be MID-POINT.


Spoken as a catecism this just shows your religous bias.

Who cares that it is the midpoint on the scale, it is an arbitrary point on an ARTIFICIAL scale. What Ersby is pointing out is that the MEANING of the scale may lie at some other point!

And what about inter rater reliability? How does someone know that the scale is meaningful, could not another person say that they feel that the 'standard' should be set higher or lower?

You know Amhearst, scientists do that all the time, check to see what happens to the data when you change an ARBITRARY CRITERIA.

[Ersby]

Oh no, not again.

Originally posted by amherst

2. Contrary to what Ersby thinks, each of the places on the seven point scale has a meaning. They'd each have to have one in order for the raters to rate the studies in the first place:

1-2= highly non-standard, 2-3= largely more non-standard than standard, 3-4= slightly more non-standard than standard. 4.00=neither standard or non-standard. 4-5=slightly more standard than non-standard, 5-6= largely more standard than non-standard, 6-7= highly standard.

amherst

Where did this come from, by the way? (And I don't accept these spurious definitions as having a meaning either. After all, what does "slightly more standard than non-standard" mean?)

I didn't want to bring this subject up. I only mentioned it because of your intransigence earlier. I'm happy to disagree and move on to other topics.

Suffice to say, I consider that the median, mean and mode averages are all equally "meaningful".

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

First off, if you believe (most) of the PRL experiments would have been rated at high standardness then what problem could you have with the critera?

amherst

Nevertheless, they should have been included to make sure that the raters DID score them highly on the standardness scale.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

Again, it is you and not me who has been confused. If we take response bias into consideration when we think about ganzfeld studies, we can not guarantee a chance hit rate of exactly .25, but we can guarantee a chance hit rate that is very close to it and not a "sizable difference". You obviously do not understand this. The analysis done by Bierman et. al. showed an adjusted chance hit rate of .2598 and this "conservative correction" only results in a "slight reduction of the overall significance. . ."

And I've already explained why referring to Study 302 when trying to show response bias "cannot guarantee a 25% hit rate" was confused and wrong. Study 302 had unique problems which caused its hit rate to be elevated significantly. According to the analyses done, other ganzfeld studies which do not have Study 302's problems can only reasonably be expected to have their chance hit rate elevated slightly by response bias.

Having just one target set is a big difference and is the reason study 302 had its problems. All the other ganzfeld studies sampled from a pool containing 160 different targets. Study 302 only sampled from one set of 4. And again, the design of the study called for it to continue until all four clips had been used 15 times. The study was terminated prematurely and so this couldn't happen. Therefore, there was an imbalance in the frequency of clips which were targets. The clips which were targets more than decoys interacted with the receivers content preference and inflated the hit rate. This was corrected and instead of a hit rate of 64% the correct hit rate was found to be 54%.

amherst

You're not paying attention.

Study 302 was nonstandard in that it only had one target set, sure, yet response bias will come into play with those experiments that have a large target pool, if the pool has similar features repeating throughout (and this is almost inevitable). And if the selection of those targets with certain features happens to coincide with the already know tendencies for people to talk about certain things, then that'll be your response bias. And it effects every single ganzfeld experiment. Maybe in a positive direction, maybe negative, but it's there and should be taken into account.

You've said yourself that 25% can't be expected by chance due to response bias. Especially not on experiments with a small number of sessions. I consider this something of a breakthough, even if you seem to think you've proved a point.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by amherst

I have no idea about what you're getting at. I'm sure it's just another in a long line of your absurd criticisms. So the target located in the first spot of the first session might have water in it and then in its next session that target may have been located in the third spot. So???

It's obvious that you are simply unable to understand anything which conflicts with your belief system. I've already gone into great detail about why,
1) The midpoint of 4 is the only place where a line between standard and nonstandard can be drawn and,
2) The problems with response bias in Study 302 can not be applied to the other studies.



My point about 1,2,3, and 4 was in reply to something you quoted earlier, in which Bem explains how they were happy with their RNG's randomness. Maybe I should have made it clearer.

1) I believe the mean, mode and median are all acceptable averages to take. As I explained before, the midpoint on the Beaufort Scale doesn't describe the average wind speed etc. and "standardness" is, like the Beaufort Scale, just a method of rating one type of something to another.

2) Yes they can. Simple as that. Response bias occurs when targets chosen just so happen to coincide with the already known propensity of people to talk about certain subjects in the ganzfeld. One target set or a hundred target sets makes no difference.


Despite this, you continue with absurd criticisms which have done nothing except waste my time. I am now entirely convinced that you are beyond being able to understand even the most simple matters. Therefore, I will no longer address your posts.

amherst

As you wish.

[dharlow]

I'm not sure why so much fuss is being generated over the Bem et al. paper over standardness. This was clearly a post-hoc study and it was even admitted in the paper that this "standardness" rating system was not applied to the original database. As a result, it does very little to resurrect the recent database in terms of replicability. The fact is that the database consists of a number of results which conform with the null hypothesis, while a smaller, yet significant number of experiments do achieve results which suggest something else. These experiments should be carefully scrutized with respect to potential flaws, particularly Dalton's, as well as the two studies from the mid-70s in which the effect size was over +1, and the Chari study which was nearly -1.

In addition, it seems clear that if Bem et al. consider the Ganzfeld to be process-oriented work, then steps need to be taken for it to become proof-oriented. A researcher interested in the proof-type experiment should classify it as such before undertaking it, so that a database of only "proof-oriented" studies be created for meta-analysis. This would be particularly useful for outsiders interested in conducting Ganzfeld research, of which there are unfortunately none that I am aware of attm. Parker has suggested, however, that he and Alcock may be working towards a joint experiment of some sort...this could be a step in the right direction.

If I may also chime in with my 2-cents...I notice that there has been a certain level of attack on Ersby and some of the questions he raises. I am not unsympathetic to the psi-hypothesis (though I do not, right now, believe it proven), and I don't think Ersby is either. He has clearly done some homework on this topic, and his points should be considered. My impression is that some worthy points get lost in this forum because of posters believing the opponent is certain that psi is either true or false. I would also not put much faith in Radin's analysis (or others) simply because of his standing. For anyone who thinks that psi has been proven, or that the case is very strong, I would highly recommend obtaining a copy of Charles Akers' Methodological Criticisms of Parapsychology, published in the Advances in Parapsychogical Research Vol 4. This paper should sow seeds of doubt.

[Lucianarchy]

With respect, Harlow, I don't think anyone is attacking Ersby, anymore than anyone is attacking Amherst.

Both have raised some good points, it's just that Ersby's is based on supposition. The problem with supposition is that when it is applied to the entire body of evidence it looks extraordinarily unlikely that such grasped straws could rationaly be thought to account for each and every last piece of scientific evidence.

[dharlow]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
The problem with supposition is that when it is applied to the entire body of evidence it looks extraordinarily unlikely that such grasped straws could rationaly be thought to account for each and every last piece of scientific evidence.

You tend to take the fagot approach, in which each stick serves to strengthen the bundle. Others, tend to want to examine each experiment in isolation. I've seen defenses of both points of view with regard to experimentation, and while I support the later, some compelling arguments can be made of the former as well.

However, with ESP experiments, one is simply analysing a deviance from the chance hypothesis. This is what is being "observed", and it can be brought about by a variety of factors. As a result, simply because one experiment rules out chance as the operating factor does not rule it out in regard to another experiment, or body of experiments, such as the Ganzfeld. Cheating, of course, is also a possibility, especially when dealing with special subjects. The experiment that started this thread (to bring things, at least temporarily, full circle) is one such example...and we cannot prove that Pierce did or did not cheat. As a result, while I think that one can reasonably view such data as prima facie evidence for anomalous transfer of information, I don't think that the case can really be made any stronger than that. On the other hand, I do think that there are some people who are not happy about prima facie evidence of psi, and sometimes make fallacious arguments that end up falsely strengthening the evidential value of experiments for those who have studied them. Perhaps they have, in effect and ironically, perpetuated the interest in the paranormal amongst serious scholars by creating easily-demolished straw-men. This, I believe was the way Marcello Truzzi's position trended and is my opinion as well.

[Dancing David]

Huzzah dharlow!

I feel that the studies would be more convincing if they were more rigorous, it would be cool if they were truely well designed and the effect size was very high.

It is just that there are too many confounding variables to say that psi is the reason for the effect.

[CapelDodger]

Although Pearce started off with only chance scores, as was typical of him when confronted with a new situation ...
That sets alarm bells ringing straight off.

History is full of generals, priests, charismatics, scientists, merchants, industrialists, charlatans ... where is the footprint of the wizard or the mind-reader? Nowhere. That's the biggest meta-study you could ask for, surely.

[Ed]

Originally posted by dharlow


You tend to take the fagot approach, in which each stick serves to strengthen the bundle. Others, tend to want to examine each experiment in isolation. I've seen defenses of both points of view with regard to experimentation, and while I support the later, some compelling arguments can be made of the former as well.

However, with ESP experiments, one is simply analysing a deviance from the chance hypothesis. This is what is being "observed", and it can be brought about by a variety of factors. As a result, simply because one experiment rules out chance as the operating factor does not rule it out in regard to another experiment, or body of experiments, such as the Ganzfeld. Cheating, of course, is also a possibility, especially when dealing with special subjects. The experiment that started this thread (to bring things, at least temporarily, full circle) is one such example...and we cannot prove that Pierce did or did not cheat. As a result, while I think that one can reasonably view such data as prima facie evidence for anomalous transfer of information, I don't think that the case can really be made any stronger than that. On the other hand, I do think that there are some people who are not happy about prima facie evidence of psi, and sometimes make fallacious arguments that end up falsely strengthening the evidential value of experiments for those who have studied them. Perhaps they have, in effect and ironically, perpetuated the interest in the paranormal amongst serious scholars by creating easily-demolished straw-men. This, I believe was the way Marcello Truzzi's position trended and is my opinion as well.

I agree. We are firmly in the realm of the phenomenological and the situation with Pierce is no different from that of multitudes of widely experienced (and investigated) "miracles". It is quite easy to knee jerk accounts by priests from the 15th or 16th century and say "pious nonsence" but not all of them were complete dolts. Some, I venture to say, were as cynical as I am at times. Since these thing are "phenomena" there is not much more to do than to remark them and move on.

[Ersby]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
With respect, Harlow, I don't think anyone is attacking Ersby, anymore than anyone is attacking Amherst.

Both have raised some good points, it's just that Ersby's is based on supposition. The problem with supposition is that when it is applied to the entire body of evidence it looks extraordinarily unlikely that such grasped straws could rationaly be thought to account for each and every last piece of scientific evidence.

Oh, Lucian, you are funny. The only time I've used supposition, I've signposted it clearly. Everything else has been based on documented evidence with references.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ersby


Oh, Lucian, you are funny. The only time I've used supposition, I've signposted it clearly. Everything else has been based on documented evidence with references.

You miss the point. Even supposition based on evidence and sources is still supposition if you are unable, as you are, to show a concrete, rather than supposed, causual link.

Your example about Price's direct hit on the crane, for instance, draws you simply suppose that he was reallly, really, really, just fricken lucky!

Like I say, those straws become unreasonable and irrational when grasped on the overall body of evidence.

Abstract - In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release, documents revealing its sponsorship in the 1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to determine whether such phenomena as remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection" [1]. Thus began disclosure to the public of a two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director (1972 - 1985) is the early history of the program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified, results that drove early interest.

http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/P...nitiatedRV.html

[The Don]

Yet another link that doesn't work for me. I get a HTTP 404 error. I'm starting to get a complex.

Dos the link work for anyone else ?

[Ersby]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
You miss the point. Even supposition based on evidence and sources is still supposition if you are unable, as you are, to show a concrete, rather than supposed, causual link.

Your example about Price's direct hit on the crane, for instance, draws you simply suppose that he was reallly, really, really, just fricken lucky!


You are misrepresenting my position regarding Price's crane hit. First, do you agree with me when I say "In order to assess the probabilities of a correct guess, we need to know some things. First, how much information the guesser was given to start with. And, of course, how unlikely was the guess itself"?

Given that, the fact that Price was lead to talk about and draw the crane is suddenly evidential. Add the fact that neither the Soviet's nor Price's gantry crane differed greatly from a typical standard gantry crane, I'd say that he needn't be that lucky at all.

Add in all the other reams of information that simply had no basis in fact, and I'm happy that this one hit could occur by chance, given the circumstances.

[The Don]

Never mind, I'll just post my own link to it then....

http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Ed


I agree. We are firmly in the realm of the phenomenological and the situation with Pierce is no different from that of multitudes of widely experienced (and investigated) "miracles". It is quite easy to knee jerk accounts by priests from the 15th or 16th century and say "pious nonsence" but not all of them were complete dolts. Some, I venture to say, were as cynical as I am at times. Since these thing are "phenomena" there is not much more to do than to remark them and move on.

I don't understand this post at all. What do you mean "move on"? Are you suggesting we should not bother trying to establish whether alleged paranormal phenomena actually takes place or have more "mundane" explanations??

[Dancing David]

I must say that again I agree with Ian, I shan't make a habit of it!

If it is phenomena related, then I feel it would still be an interesting study in perception and knowledge.
If it is psi related then the phenomenalogical aspect would be very important to undertsand, so it can be controlled for.

The fact that something is 'strange, wierd or delusional' in nature does not mean it can't be studied, there are many good anthroplogical explorations of shamanism and journeys to the 'spirit world'. A private experience can be studied.

And in fact to scientificaly understand 'pai' such is totaly nessecary.

Ed: By move I take it that you mean "Stop talking about the same old psi research , make some new studies to talk about."

[Ed]

Originally posted by Dancing David
I must say that again I agree with Ian, I shan't make a habit of it!

If it is phenomena related, then I feel it would still be an interesting study in perception and knowledge.
If it is psi related then the phenomenalogical aspect would be very important to undertsand, so it can be controlled for.

The fact that something is 'strange, wierd or delusional' in nature does not mean it can't be studied, there are many good anthroplogical explorations of shamanism and journeys to the 'spirit world'. A private experience can be studied.

And in fact to scientificaly understand 'pai' such is totaly nessecary.

I see no point in discussing a one off. My feeling is that you pay your money and take your choice.

Ed: By move I take it that you mean "Stop talking about the same old psi research , make some new studies to talk about."


Yes. I would like to see research where clarity is the goal. There really is not one piece of research that is not equivical. Look at the discussion on Ganzfeld. Any nugget is hopelessly lost in a discussion of method and interpretation. We also need a new crew with less baggage and ego involvement. In short, we need science. We also need an attitude on the part of researchers in this area that is self policing so that rottem designs, bad statistics and so on have professional consequences.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by The Don
Never mind, I'll just post my own link to it then....

http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html

Thanks. Sorry about that.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Ersby


You are misrepresenting my position regarding Price's crane hit. First, do you agree with me when I say "In order to assess the probabilities of a correct guess, we need to know some things. First, how much information the guesser was given to start with. And, of course, how unlikely was the guess itself"?

Given that, the fact that Price was lead to talk about and draw the crane is suddenly evidential. Add the fact that neither the Soviet's nor Price's gantry crane differed greatly from a typical standard gantry crane, I'd say that he needn't be that lucky at all.

Add in all the other reams of information that simply had no basis in fact, and I'm happy that this one hit could occur by chance, given the circumstances.

sorry, I missed your reply. First off, let me say this: You have my utmost respect for actually doing some research on such awide range of parapsy issues. I may disagree with you sometimes, but you are one of the most credible thinkers I have had the pleasure to read in these forums.

I respect your opinion that Price may have been lucky.

I believe that it is highly unlikely that Price was simply 'lucky', and having read the evidence I am inclined to think this is a clear case of RV. It's also worth considering that the CIA would be quite stupid in validating any intelligence modality which actually gave them the edge. The fact that I have experienced RV myself leads me to think that not only does it exist, but that the 'proving' data is buried for reasons of national security. When you look at the academia issues, the politics, the socio/cultural issues and the overall body of evidence, the answer is self evident. Psi simply cannot officially exist. But it does never the less.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
I believe that it is highly unlikely that Price was simply 'lucky', and having read the evidence I am inclined to think this is a clear case of RV.

Prove it.

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
The fact that I have experienced RV myself...

Prove that you have experienced RV yourself.

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
...leads me to think that not only does it exist, but that the 'proving' data is buried for reasons of national security.

Male bovine manure. Are you a national security threat now?

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
When you look at the academia issues, the politics, the socio/cultural issues and the overall body of evidence, the answer is self evident. Psi simply cannot officially exist. But it does never the less.

Show the evidence, then. Or, do you refuse, because you are afraid you will be whisked away by MIB to Area 51?

Fool.

[steenkh]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
The fact that I have experienced RV myself leads me to think that not only does it exist, but that the 'proving' data is buried for reasons of national security. When you look at the academia issues, the politics, the socio/cultural issues and the overall body of evidence, the answer is self evident. Psi simply cannot officially exist. But it does never the less.

I think this reasoning does not hold water. It smacks of conspiracy theory when it is claimed that psi is kept under wraps by CIA or whoever. The world is a big place, and CIA is not able to locate or control all remote viewers, if such ability exists. (I thought you were British, BTW, so it must be MI5 or some such agency in your case). Contrary to what believers think, the world view of skeptics, or of science, will not collapse if it turned out that psi was for real.

But I agree, that when the overall body of evidence is considered, psi cannot exist, offically or unofficially.

I find the various tidbits that you provide intriguing but so far not convincing.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by steenkh


I think this reasoning does not hold water. It smacks of conspiracy theory when it is claimed that psi is kept under wraps by CIA or whoever. The world is a big place, and CIA is not able to locate or control all remote viewers, if such ability exists. (I thought you were British, BTW, so it must be MI5 or some such agency in your case). Contrary to what believers think, the world view of skeptics, or of science, will not collapse if it turned out that psi was for real.


Information is power. Do you not think that there are critical issues for all the major religions? Stocks and shares? Legal evidence? National security.? There's just a few issues, there are many, many more.

No one needs locate all remote viewers in order to control them. All you need to do is put in place systems which will not recognise it and others which discredit and disinform.

That's not a conspiracy. It is a logical and safe social and cultural management system.

[Dancing David]

Luvianarchy, given the amount of skullduggery that goes on in stock trading and politics, there would be tremendous advantage to someone who could utilise psionic powers.

Reading that most psi is bunk is not going to stop an unscrupulous individual from wanting to take advantage of it. Given the amount sheer chicanery in bussiness and politics, I think power people would jump at the chance to exploit psi, they don't let other cultural beliefs and values stop them from getting what they want.

The general public in fact does believe in angels, psi and god, they dismiss the sceptics for not sharing thier beliefs. Most people feel that they can talk to god, I don't think there is a world wide conspiracy to supres psi, not when there is usch economic exploitation to be had. Think about day trading stocks, being able to predict the closing price at the end of the day of a single stock could be very profitable.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Information is power. Do you not think that there are critical issues for all the major religions? Stocks and shares? Legal evidence? National security.? There's just a few issues, there are many, many more.

No one needs locate all remote viewers in order to control them. All you need to do is put in place systems which will not recognise it and others which discredit and disinform.

That's not a conspiracy. It is a logical and safe social and cultural management system.

Very well: In what ways are your claims controlled? Are you in any way suppressed on this forum? Are there forces that work to stop you from showing evidence of these powers of yours?

Or are you met with continuous claims to provide evidence of your paranormal abilities?

[steenkh]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy

No one needs locate all remote viewers in order to control them. All you need to do is put in place systems which will not recognise it and others which discredit and disinform.

That's not a conspiracy. It is a logical and safe social and cultural management system.

Then the battle to hide the truth about psi is already lost. Most people I know believes in it in some form.

Governments in the democratic world changes over the years, and former civil servants (and some still in the service) spill the beans about dark things that happened at their work. How come that nobody during the last 100 years have come forward to say that they have conducted a disinformation campaign against psi? Or when opposition politicians come to power, that they have not exposed such dealings of their predecessors?

We know that the U.S. and the former Soviet Union has dealt in psi. You can find released documents about this in the U.S.. This seems strange, if they are at the same time trying to hide that psi exists. We see from the documents that either psi does not work at all, or when it works, it is close to useless. We know that neither Saddam Hussein nor Osama bin Laden have been found through the use of psi powers.

No, I still think that we are talking conspiracy theory here. Psi may exist or not exist, but I do not believe in a cover up. But then, I may be a part of it ;)

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Dancing David
Think about day trading stocks, being able to predict the closing price at the end of the day of a single stock could be very profitable.

And how do you know that they aren't? You certainly wouldn't expect them to disclose it.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by steenkh


We know that the U.S. and the former Soviet Union has dealt in psi. You can find released documents about this in the U.S.. This seems strange, if they are at the same time trying to hide that psi exists. We see from the documents that either psi does not work at all, or when it works, it is close to useless.

Thank you for making my point.

[CFLarsen]

Lucianarchy,


In what ways are your claims controlled?
Are you in any way suppressed on this forum?
Are there forces that work to stop you from showing evidence of these powers of yours?
Or are you met with continuous claims to provide evidence of your paranormal abilities?

[Hellbound]

Claus:

Didn't you get the latest memo?

Dang, try to run a decent conspiracy and you just can't get good help. I'm firing the Anti-Psi Illuminati mail boy.

We're supposed to be the ones oppressing, it's in section 4 paragraph b of the new weekly memo.

By the way, this weeks coded message:

The monkey is bald, and there's no one in the freezer.

[steenkh]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Thank you for making my point.
Happy to oblige!

[Spiderboy]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Oh yes you can. You can say that all Skeptics are prejudiced if you define them thus. That is to say being prejudiced is one of the defining characteristics of Skeptics (although not of course of sceptics).

I fail to see how you could think this could possible help your cause.

No, wait, I'm going to have a go. "You can say that all Skeptics are mouse shaped balloons if you define them thus". Hmm. It's certainly liberating.

[flyboy217]

Originally posted by Spiderboy


I fail to see how you could think this could possible help your cause.

No, wait, I'm going to have a go. "You can say that all Skeptics are mouse shaped balloons if you define them thus". Hmm. It's certainly liberating.

You'll notice that's why he uses a different typeface, capitalization, and spelling for it. You are free to define "Skeptic" as a mouse shaped balloon if it saves you the trouble of typing it out whenever you're trying to use your particular defintion.

[Lucianarchy]

Spiderboy, are you related perchance to Huntsman?

[CFLarsen]

Lucianarchy,


In what ways are your claims controlled?
Are you in any way suppressed on this forum?
Are there forces that work to stop you from showing evidence of these powers of yours?
Or are you met with continuous claims to provide evidence of your paranormal abilities?

[Spiderboy]

Originally posted by flyboy217


You'll notice that's why he uses a different typeface, capitalization, and spelling for it.

I've never encountered differences in typeface and capitalization suddenly changing the meaning of words before. The difference in spelling due to US usage. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=70265&dict=CALD

You are free to define "Skeptic" as a mouse shaped balloon if it saves you the trouble of typing it out whenever you're trying to use your particular defintion.
I could, but it would make communication more difficult and I would look a bit of a loon.

[Spiderboy]

Originally posted by Lucianarchy
Spiderboy, are you related perchance to Huntsman?

No, "Spiderboy" refers to an old rock climbing nickname.

[amherst]

Originally posted by dharlow
I'm not sure why so much fuss is being generated over the Bem et al. paper over standardness. This was clearly a post-hoc study and it was even admitted in the paper that this "standardness" rating system was not applied to the original database. As a result, it does very little to resurrect the recent database in terms of replicability.
You are wrong, it does a great deal. The "Victim of Its Own Success" paper shows that the PRL experiments have been replicated, period. Though a standardness rating system was not applied to the original manual ganzfeld database, I don't see how you can think this means that the standardness ratings applied to the auto-ganzfeld do ". . . very little to resurrect the recent database in terms of replicability."
The fact is that the database consists of a number of results which conform with the null hypothesis, while a smaller, yet significant number of experiments do achieve results which suggest something else. These experiments should be carefully scrutized with respect to potential flaws, particularly Dalton's, as well as the two studies from the mid-70s in which the effect size was over +1, and the Chari study which was nearly -1.
16 of the 29 studies rated "standard" were significantly above chance. So there was in fact a larger proportion of standard successful studies than standard non-successful ones. And what two studies from the mid-70's are you referring to? The earliest studies included in the updated Milton/Wiseman meta-analysis are two by Kanthamani et al. from 88. And what Chari study?
In addition, it seems clear that if Bem et al. consider the Ganzfeld to be process-oriented work, then steps need to be taken for it to become proof-oriented. A researcher interested in the proof-type experiment should classify it as such before undertaking it, so that a database of only "proof-oriented" studies be created for meta-analysis. This would be particularly useful for outsiders interested in conducting Ganzfeld research, of which there are unfortunately none that I am aware of attm. Parker has suggested, however, that he and Alcock may be working towards a joint experiment of some sort...this could be a step in the right direction.
I agree, and the last paragraph of the "Victim of Its Own Success" paper indicates that future ganzfeld researchers will be doing just that:
Perhaps there is some merit in continuing to conduct exact replications of the ganzfeld procedure, but genuine progress in understanding psi rests on investigators' being willing to risk replication failures by modifying the procedure in any way that seems best suited for exploring new domains or answering new questions. (Milton, [1999], suggested the possibility of having researchers state in advance of conducting a study-and therefore not knowing the results-whether they wished the study to be part of a future proof-oriented meta-analysis.) In any case, future meta-analyses should distinguish "standard" replications from non-standard extensions of the ganzfeld procedure lest it become a victim of its own success.

amherst

[amherst]

Originally posted by dharlow
Cheating, of course, is also a possibility, especially when dealing with special subjects. The experiment that started this thread (to bring things, at least temporarily, full circle) is one such example...and we cannot prove that Pierce did or did not cheat. As a result, while I think that one can reasonably view such data as prima facie evidence for anomalous transfer of information, I don't think that the case can really be made any stronger than that.
Again, as Hyman and any other scientist will tell you, ". . . there's always some way you can think of how fraud could have gotten into the experiment. You cannot make a 100% fraud-proof experiment. This would apply to all science." Yet, if the experiments are run with stringent controls in place, as was done in the Pearce-Pratt series, we can have a very high confidence that the results are not due to deception. And you cannot claim that the Pearce-Pratt series is second class prima facie evidence just because it was done with a gifted subject. The experiment was conducted in a highly controlled setting which excludes every mundane explanation but the most absurd fraud scenarios. Plus, Pearce has never been shown to have ever cheated. Also of some note is the fact that he was a divinity student there at Duke.
On the other hand, I do think that there are some people who are not happy about prima facie evidence of psi, and sometimes make fallacious arguments that end up falsely strengthening the evidential value of experiments for those who have studied them. Perhaps they have, in effect and ironically, perpetuated the interest in the paranormal amongst serious scholars by creating easily-demolished straw-men. This, I believe was the way Marcello Truzzi's position trended and is my opinion as well.
Are you referring to Hansel's explanation of Pearce's success? If you believe Hansel's explanation to be fallacious (which any reasonable person would), then what other explanation do you have? How do you explain the results?

amherst

[dharlow]

Originally posted by amherst

You are wrong, it does a great deal. The "Victim of Its Own Success" paper shows that the PRL experiments have been replicated, period. Though a standardness rating system was not applied to the original manual ganzfeld database, I don't see how you can think this means that the standardness ratings applied to the auto-ganzfeld do ". . . very little to resurrect the recent database in terms of replicability."
[/b]amherst [/B]

No, it shows that some studies achieved significance individually while the majority did not. In particular, it is heavily influenced by the Dalton study, which has odds against chance well in excess of those produced from other Ganzfeld studies. This will have an incredible impact on the combined effect size of the database. I am quite confident that the "standard" studies, sans Dalton, would not replicate the earlier databases with regard to effect size...otherwise the authors would have been sure to mention it.
Originally posted by amherst


16 of the 29 studies rated "standard" were significantly above chance. So there was in fact a larger proportion of standard successful studies than standard non-successful ones. And what two studies from the mid-70's are you referring to? The earliest studies included in the updated Milton/Wiseman meta-analysis are two by Kanthamani et al. from 88. And what Chari study?
[/b]
amherst [/B]
I count 12 independently significant experiments (not 16), using the rather generous one-tailed test for positive z scores and negative z scores. Regardless of the "standard"/"nonstandard" designation, I would agree that this is nevertheless something that should be considered regarding whether the Ganzfeld is worth pursuing. However, I do not agree with the standard/non-standard designation...it is far too vague as to how studies were to be rated to be taken seriously. It is quite clear that the underlying cause for the results is still undetermined. If one supports the psi-hypothesis, then factors promoting larger effect sizes need to be isolated. That is why I recommend looking carefully into Dalton's experiment (aside from the obvious importance of finding an artifact).

The studies I mentioned are from the original Honorton database. Three of the experiments achieved appreciable effect sizes of 1 or greater (the Chari study actually being -1, i.e. significant "psi-missing")

[dharlow]

Originally posted by amherst

Again, as Hyman and any other scientist will tell you, ". . . there's always some way you can think of how fraud could have gotten into the experiment. You cannot make a 100% fraud-proof experiment. This would apply to all science." Yet, if the experiments are run with stringent controls in place, as was done in the Pearce-Pratt series, we can have a very high confidence that the results are not due to deception. And you cannot claim that the Pearce-Pratt series is second class prima facie evidence just because it was done with a gifted subject. The experiment was conducted in a highly controlled setting which excludes every mundane explanation but the most absurd fraud scenarios. Plus, Pearce has never been shown to have ever cheated. Also of some note is the fact that he was a divinity student there at Duke.

Are you referring to Hansel's explanation of Pearce's success? If you believe Hansel's explanation to be fallacious (which any reasonable person would), then what other explanation do you have? How do you explain the results?

[/B]

I think an experiment can certainly come closer to fraud-proof than this series can (see Schmidt's work with pre-recorded pk targets). Hansen has pointed out the importance of subject and target-based control in ESP experiments, with target control often being more essential. In this experiment, neither the targets nor the subject are controlled. No-one watched Pratt to make sure he was in the library. Nothing is stated in regard to whether someone could have seen the targets through the window. As such, Hansel's speculations are not at all impossible. Interestingly, when asked to list the most convincing studies for psi, J.G. Pratt did not list this one.

The fact that there is no evidence that Pratt cheated or that he was a divinity student is irrelevant. Since the experimenters did not seem to consider the possibility of Pratt being subject to controls to make sure he was in the library, I would have hardly expected them to be able to catch him in any potential cheating. Indeed, the results could be explained through the use of a confederate, in which case Pierce could remain in the library the whole time anyway. It must also be remembered that this took place during the Depression, and that Rhine awarded positive results with monetary means. Even a divinity student, facing a harsh financial situation, could rationalize their deception.

[amherst]

Originally posted by dharlow
No, it shows that some studies achieved significance individually while the majority did not. In particular, it is heavily influenced by the Dalton study, which has odds against chance well in excess of those produced from other Ganzfeld studies. This will have an incredible impact on the combined effect size of the database. I am quite confident that the "standard" studies, sans Dalton, would not replicate the earlier databases with regard to effect size...otherwise the authors would have been sure to mention it.
I agree that the Dalton study is an important component of the successful, standard, post PRL ganzfeld database. But I also note that 15 other "standard" studies had a hit rate well above 25%. For instance the Morris et al. (1995) study consisted of 97 trials which achieved a hit rate of 33%, and Broughton & Alexander (1997) (Emotionally Close Series) study achieved a hit rate of 37.3% with 51 trials. To reiterate, apart from the Dalton study, there were 15 studies which achieved a hit rate consistant with the PRL work. Surely this is more than expected by chance (I'm positive even 12 is). And I am fairly confident that excluding the Dalton study would still result in a significant hit rate, although I agree that the effect size would drop.
I count 12 independently significant experiments (not 16), using the rather generous one-tailed test for positive z scores and negative z scores.
16 studies had a hit rate well above 25%. If a study has a hit rate significantly above 25% (or I should say .2598) then it was "successful" regardless of whether, due to lack of trials, its overall result isn't highly significant.
Regardless of the "standard"/"nonstandard" designation, I would agree that this is nevertheless something that should be considered regarding whether the Ganzfeld is worth pursuing. However, I do not agree with the standard/non-standard designation...it is far too vague as to how studies were to be rated to be taken seriously.
What exactly do you find vague about this:
The Internet debate implied that parapsychologists actively involved in ganzfeld research would be unlikely to agree on a single definition of the standard ganzfeld procedure. Rather than provide our own ad hoc definition, we had the raters read the general description from the section labeled "The Ganzfeld Procedure" in Bem and Honorton's (1994, pp. 5-6) report as well as most of the detailed method section describing the computer-controlled autoganzfeld procedure used in Honorton's Psychophysical Research Laboratories (PRL) published in the the Journal of Parapsychology (Honorton et al., 1990, pp. 102-110).
It is quite clear that the underlying cause for the results is still undetermined. If one supports the psi-hypothesis, then factors promoting larger effect sizes need to be isolated. That is why I recommend looking carefully into Dalton's experiment (aside from the obvious importance of finding an artifact).
Since the Dalton study was presented at The Parapsychological Association 40th Annual Convention: Proceedings of Presented Papers (pp. 119-134), I believe it safe to say it already has been carefully examined. Unless there is some flaw found, there is no reason to exclude it from the database. To sum up, I think its clear that the 'Victim of Its Own Success" paper proves "Standard replications yield significant effect sizes comparable with those obtained in the past."

Finally, to digress a bit, I remember a brief correspondence we had a few months ago concerning a conversation you had with George Hansen about some security vulnerabilities the ganzfeld supposedly has. When I asked you to tell me what exactly these were you refused since you, as you said, were not at that time in possesion of your notes, and didn't want to misrepresent Hansen and his colleagues. Have you located those notes yet? If not, I'll go ahead and email him and ask him what it was you were talking about.

amherst

[amherst]

Originally posted by dharlow
I think an experiment can certainly come closer to fraud-proof than this series can (see Schmidt's work with pre-recorded pk targets).
Whether or not you think Schmidt's pre-recorded RNG work is closer to fraud-proof than this experiment (and I agree that those experiments are about as close to fraud proof as any can be) is irrelevant to the matter of the Pearce-Pratt controls.
Hansen has pointed out the importance of subject and target-based control in ESP experiments, with target control often being more essential. In this experiment, neither the targets nor the subject are controlled. No-one watched Pratt to make sure he was in the library.
You seem to have Pratt and Pearce mixed up. It was Pearce (the subject) who was in the library, Pratt(the experimenter) was in ". . .the old Physics Building on the West Campus," and then in a second subseries ". . .moved up to Dr. Rhine's laboratory in the Medical School and Hubert continued to work in the library." Also, the final subseries was done with Rhine himself present:

Professor McDougall had followed the results of the earlier stages of the experiment with great interest, but he had warned Dr. Rhine that some skeptical scientists would prefer to believe thay Hubert and I had been in collusion rather than accept the results as proof of ESP. Therefore, after a rest of several months, a final subseries was done with Dr. Rhine himself present to watch over my part of the testing procedure and to see that Hubert went to his station and did not return until after each day's work with his call record in his hands. In this final, two experiment part of the experiment, there were only six runs, but these gave the scores 12,3,10,11,10,10. these results were quite enough by themselves, considering the high average rate of success, to throw the chance hypothesis out the window. the likelihood that they occured merely as a lucky coincidence is less that 1 in 1,000,000!"(Pratt, Parapsychology: An Insider's view of ESP)
Nothing is stated in regard to whether someone could have seen the targets through the window.

Pratt:
Now Mr. Gardner prefers to place Pearce (or a collaborator) on a chair in a busy corridor peeking at me through my own transom as I recorded the cards. Is Mr. Gardner quite sure that the door to my room had a transom? If so, how did he learn it? And if he is not sure, would he not feel safer to have Pearce or his collaborator move the chair a few feet along the corridor and peek through the illumination window? But even Professor Hansel could not bring himself to propose such a daily public display of cheating, and that is why he relocated the windows to give the impression that someone could hide across the hall and peek without having to look around corners.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12350

Broughton:
Hansel looked over the layout of the two locations that had been used and subsequently claimed that he had found the manner in which Pearce, the subject, had probably cheated. Pearce had obviously left his assigned post in another building, returned to the building where Pratt, the experimenter, was recording the ESP cards by a timed schedule on the desk, and either peaked over two transoms or gained access to the attic and peaked through a trap door in the ceiling. Near the end of the session Pearce would have hustled back to his assigned station and turned in his record sheets in the expected manner. (Of course Pearce would have had to repeat this performance over thirty times without being detected and done this even though Rhine himself was present for many sessions.) It did not concern Hansel that there was never a shred of evidence that any part of this activity took place, nor did it bother him that the layout of the rooms upon which he had based his scenario had been substantially altered since the days of the experiment. Even the discovery of blueprints of the original layout that demonstrated that much of his scenario was simply impossible did not deter Hansel from standing by his accusations in the revised version of his book. From Hansels point of view, evidence is not needed. It is sufficient to demonstrate the merest possibility of fraud to allow one to dismiss an experiment altogether.
As such, Hansel's speculations are not at all impossible.
Hansel's explanations are almost impossible, and certainly, extremely improbable.
Interestingly, when asked to list the most convincing studies for psi, J.G. Pratt did not list this one.
Where is your reference? Decades after the experiments had been conducted Pratt and others in the field continuned (and continue) to write about how strong the series was. (see Pratt, 1964. for instance).
The fact that there is no evidence that Pratt cheated or that he was a divinity student is irrelevant.
There is no evidence that Pratt or Pearce ever cheated in any experiments. Both were involved in more than just the Pearce-Pratt series. This is relevant for obvious reasons which I shouldn't have to explain. And the fact that Pearce was a divinity student is relevant because it suggests that he was a man of high moral character. Cheating would have gone against his faith (Pearce became a Methodist minister after leaving Duke).
Since the experimenters did not seem to consider the possibility of Pratt being subject to controls to make sure he was in the library, I would have hardly expected them to be able to catch him in any potential cheating. Indeed, the results could be explained through the use of a confederate, in which case Pierce could remain in the library the whole time anyway.
Ofcourse you'll admit that you have absolutly no evidence that any of this occured. But it doesn't matter since you and every other "skeptic" believe that if you can show that fraud could have gotten into an experiment then that automatically means it must have gotten into the experiment! Read again the above Pratt and Broughton quotes in regards to the plausibility of these fraud scenarios.
It must also be remembered that this took place during the Depression, and that Rhine awarded positive results with monetary means. Even a divinity student, facing a harsh financial situation, could rationalize their deception.
Why didn't you provide a reference to this? I suspect you're just going on hearsay since the only account I've ever come across of Rhine paying money to a subject is this one from J.G Pratt's book Parapsychology: An Insider's view of ESP:

The climax of this period was the time when Hubert got all twenty-five cards right in one run. Dr. Rhine had offered him $100 if the first call was a hit, then another $100 for making a hit on each of the next twenty-four trials in turn. Hubert earned the full $2500! (There was a tacit understanding that the offer was only a figurative one; Hubert did not press his claim, and Dr. Rhine admits that he has never paid.)

amherst