Sheldrake tests telephone telepathy

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Here is a recent paper by Sheldrake and Smart about telephone telepathy:

http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Telepathy/experiment_tests.html

Any statisticians care to take a look?

~~ Paul

[john_v_h]

They have to guess who the caller is before the caller says anything.

There's the problem. The caller may not have said anything but the microphone is on. Ambient sounds picked up by the mic, as well as the characteristic noise generated by the particular phone and line connection could signal the identity of the caller.

Additionally, this study suffers from problems of self-selection and self-reporting. The experimenters recruited persons who believed they had this telepathic ability. There was little attempt to verify the truthfulness of the subject's reports.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yup, my jaw dropped all the way to the floor when I read the second paragraph under "Test procedures." You get to pick up the phone before you have to record your guess. Astonishing.

~~ Paul

[davidsmith73]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Yup, my jaw dropped all the way to the floor when I read the second paragraph under "Test procedures." You get to pick up the phone before you have to record your guess. Astonishing.

~~ Paul


I have to agree. This is awful experimental design. I just don't understand how Sheldrake could not care about this leakage route. I might e-mail him and ask.

[CFLarsen]

Rupert Sheldrake is one of the participants in the experiment?

Guess who Pam Smart is? She's the one who owned the dog, JayTee, who Sheldrake claimed had psychic powers.

It's the same crappy, incredibly incompetent experimental design we also have seen Schwartz delve into. He also participated in the Arizona Experiment he conducted.

Incredible. Simply incredible. Sheldrake tests himself and his friends. :rolleyes:

[asthmatic camel]

Telepathy or telephony? That is the question.

Regards,

AC.

[juninho]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Here is a recent paper by Sheldrake and Smart about telephone telepathy:

http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Telepathy/experiment_tests.html

Any statisticians care to take a look?

~~ Paul

Ahhhhh! Why do we have so many nutters in my country. Its enough to make you want to emigrate, oh hang-on, I am:D

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Here is a recent paper by Sheldrake and Smart about telephone telepathy:

http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Telepathy/experiment_tests.html

Any statisticians care to take a look?

~~ Paul

I've just bought this book by Sheldrake called "The sense of being stared at". I'm only on page 15,but there's a chapter on telephone telepathy starting from page 95 (to 110).

[MRC_Hans]

The statistics look sound enough, but as already mentioned, there are faults in the procedure. The report does address those error sources, but the dismissals are not always credible.

In the discussion, it is obvious that the experimenters have a number of preconcieved ideas of how telepathy works, and their dismissal of other psi effects as possible reasons for the results betray their belief system.

I would rate this report as interesting, but it is not a sound scientific experiment. Since the experimenters, by their own admission, are biased for a positive result, the experiement should have been double-blinded.

As is often seen, they try to make several experiments at the same time, varying several paramters: Familiar/unfamiliar caller, distance, and also there are changes in protocol.

A more sound protocol would be:

One telephone connection, isolated from the normal system, to rule out unrelated calls.

ALL callers use the same phone. The sequence of callers is determined a priori.

Receiver does not answer call, but simply writes down his/her guess of the caller when the phone rings.

At each test, a random sequence of callers make calls at regular time intervals, e.g. 5 minutes.

Only after completion of the test series is the recorded guesses compared to the sequence of callers.

This protocol would eliminate the fault sources, be much more effective, and cheaper.

Hans

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by john_v_h


There's the problem. The caller may not have said anything but the microphone is on. Ambient sounds picked up by the mic,



They have to say immediately who the caller is.



as well as the characteristic noise generated by the particular phone and line connection could signal the identity of the caller.



Yes that seems at least remotely possible. I would have thought the 4 possible targets really must use the same phone.



Additionally, this study suffers from problems of self-selection and self-reporting. The experimenters recruited persons who believed they had this telepathic ability.


How is this a problem? One should only pick people who do not believe they have any telepathic ability?? :confused: :eek:



There was little attempt to verify the truthfulness of the subject's reports.

What do you mean? Either they "guess" correctly or don't "guess" correctly. Presumably this is verified. Explain please.

Anyway, I admit I have only read about the first 20% of the article, so better get down to further reading.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Yup, my jaw dropped all the way to the floor when I read the second paragraph under "Test procedures." You get to pick up the phone before you have to record your guess. Astonishing.

~~ Paul

Yes that seems bad.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by davidsmith73



I have to agree. This is awful experimental design. I just don't understand how Sheldrake could not care about this leakage route. I might e-mail him and ask.

Ah! You think so as well. I was thinking the exact same thing myself! (just read your response now) I was wondering if other non-skeptics would agree with me.

[Jeff Corey]

It strikes me that there have been too many cases where researchers in parapsychology studies are also their own subjects. It's even worse when the subjects are friends, colleagues or relatives of the primary researcher. I believe that Jahn at Princeton let one of his lab assistants take the binary generator home and collect her own data, unsupervised. (I might be mistaken and will try to track it down after two more cups of coffee).
Could this be a case of the Mendel's Gardiner Effect?

[Interesting Ian]

Actually I might dip into that book now and read the relevant chapter. Just to see if he says anything of any relevance their which isn't mentioned on the web page.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:What do you mean? Either they "guess" correctly or don't "guess" correctly. Presumably this is verified. Explain please.
Sounds like I pick up the phone, state who is calling, and then the caller tells me who they are. When do I write down my guess? And who verifies what I write down?

Toward the end of the paper:One final possibility for a leakage of information remains. In all trials described in the present paper, the participants picked up the telephone before making their guesses. It is therefore possible that they heard characteristic background noises, electronic hisses or other sounds that enabled them to identify the caller. But in our filmed experiments this possibility was eliminated because the participants made their guesses before they picked up the telephone. If background noises and hisses could explain the results in the unfilmed trials, the positive effect we observed should have disappeared in the filmed trials, but it did not.
In other words: Yes, these experiments are a crock, but we did them another way later. Notice also that the subjects were better at guessing long-distance calls. Gee, I wonder if you can tell a call is long distance by the sound of the line?

Let's check out those later experiments:

http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Telepathy/calls_video.html

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Hmmmm, just started reading up on the actual experimental tests and there is a huge discrepancy already! It says here they "had to guess who the caller was before they picked up the phone". (emphasis added).

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Toward the end of the paper:
In other words: Yes, these experiments are a crock, but we did them another way later. [/B]

Ah right. Sorry, didn't read your post before my post above. Yes I agree with you about them being a "crock".

[Interesting Ian]

The book just seems to contradict what that web site said about whether the subjects guess before or after they pick up the phone. Yet it seems to be the same set of experiments. In appendix B it states: (using voice recognition utility for this! LOL)


my research associate Pam smart and I recruited subjects through advertisements in local newspapers or through Internet recruitment agencies. We paid subjects for taking part (usually at a rate of £10 per trial). They received the same payment whether or not their guesses were right. We asked people to take part in an initial series of 10 trials, and some subjects were then asked to take part in further (sic) series of 10 trials.

At a prearranged time, the subject received a call from one of these four people. Before answering the phone (emphasis added) he or she had to guess who was calling. In trials that were not videotaped, the caller answered the phone by saying "hello, [name]" before the other person had spoken. The caller reported immediately afterwards what this guess had been. In videotaped trials, the subject sat in a chair in the field of view of the camera and was filmed continuously on time-coded videotape for 15 minutes before the time prearranged for the call. The subject spoke to the camera what his or her guess was before picking up the telephone.

. . . In a total of 571 unfilmed trials completed by September 2002, 231 guesses were correct (40%) and 340 wrong.

. . . By the same date, we had completed a total of 283 videotaped trials, with 127 correct guesses (45%).


Anyway, there is nothing in the chapter or appendix B which states that with some of the trials the subject guessed the name of the caller after they had picked up the phone :confused:

So why is this?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Toward the end of the paper:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One final possibility for a leakage of information remains. In all trials described in the present paper, the participants picked up the telephone before making their guesses. It is therefore possible that they heard characteristic background noises, electronic hisses or other sounds that enabled them to identify the caller. But in our filmed experiments this possibility was eliminated because the participants made their guesses before they picked up the telephone. If background noises and hisses could explain the results in the unfilmed trials, the positive effect we observed should have disappeared in the filmed trials, but it did not.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In other words: Yes, these experiments are a crock, but we did them another way later. Notice also that the subjects were better at guessing long-distance calls. Gee, I wonder if you can tell a call is long distance by the sound of the line?


Paul,

The book states they had completed both filmed and unfilmed tests by the same date (Sep 2002). But why are some filmed and some unfilmed?? And although the web page and the book are in agreement with the filmed trials, why is there this contradiction with the unfilmed trials? (over the issue of when the subjects made the guesses).

And wouldn't the filmed tests be more reliable in any case?? (And the results are more statistically significant!).

[juninho]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
. Gee, I wonder if you can tell a call is long distance by the sound of the line?



Entirely true. When my fiancee calls me from Australia, I know that its her immediately without even having to speak a word. The line quality, delay, etc. immediately gives it away. That and I've got caller ID (only joking).

Actually, thinking about it, were time zones factored out of the equation in these experiments. I mean, its fairly easy to assume that when its say 3am in Nigeria (or whereever) its unlikely that they are going to be the ones ringing. Must admit I couldn't be bothered to read through the whole paper (I do have a job) so I may be talking rubbish.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The 571 trials agrees with the first paragraph under "Discussion" in the first paper cited:Combining the results of all our experiments, and adding in the trials conducted by Sam Bloomfield, there were 63 participants altogether. They made 231 correct guesses in 571 trials, a success rate of 40%, well above the mean chance expectation of 25% (Table 8). The 95% confidence limits of this result are from 36% to 45%. This effect was robust and repeatable and was hugely significant statistically (p = 4 x 10-16). Not all participants scored at levels above chance, but the great majority did so.
Yet clearly the paper says they picked up the phone before guessing, while the book says the opposite.

Ah, hold on a minute. To repeat from the book:At a prearranged time, the subject received a call from one of these four people. Before answering the phone he or she had to guess who was calling. In trials that were not videotaped, the caller answered the phone by saying "hello, [name]" before the other person had spoken.
It doesn't say when they wrote down their guesses, so we don't know if they really guessed after they picked up the phone.

Juninho mentioned caller ID. Interesting.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I've sent a message to Sheldrake to clarify when subjects guess and when they record their guesses.

Meanwhile, tonight I'm going to read the second paper about the videotaped experiments.

By the way, the first paper is a classic example where the hypotheses (which aren't even stated explicitly) are about the outcome of the experiment, rather than about a theory of telepathy.

Edited to add: Message to Sheldrake acknowledged by Matthew Clapp.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I've sent a message to Sheldrake to clarify when subjects guess and when they record their guesses.

Meanwhile, tonight I'm going to read the second paper about the videotaped experiments.

By the way, the first paper is a classic example where the hypotheses (which aren't even stated explicitly) are about the outcome of the experiment, rather than about a theory of telepathy.

Edited to add: Message to Sheldrake acknowledged by Matthew Clapp.

~~ Paul

Ok good. Be interesting to hear what he has to say. I must say though that I cannot see the point of the unfilmed experiments, especially if they make their guess after they have answered the phone! :eek: So why not just film all the experiments? Or why bother with the unfilmed experiments at all??

[Interesting Ian]

Hmmmmm . . .maybe the unfilmed experiments, in and of themselves, were never meant to provide good evidence for telephone telepathy. Perhaps his intention was simply to compare the results of the unfilmed and filmed experiments to see if the results were more or less the same. And if they hadn't have been, then that might have been interesting. For example if the unfilmed experiments were of a 40% success rate (the actual result), where as the filmed experiments had a success rate of say 23% (instead of the actual 46%), then that might suggest that there were sensory leakage in the unfilmed experiments.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Perhaps his intention was simply to compare the results of the unfilmed and filmed experiments to see if the results were more or less the same.

The filmed experiments took place after the unfilmed experiments, so I assume the filmed experiments were carried out to clear up some of the holes in the original design.

There are some notable changes between the non-video and the video experiment.

1. It is explicitly stated that:
In all tests, the participants used landline telephones rather than cell phones, and in all cases only telephones without caller identification system were used
Unfortunately, it is not stated whether the callers were similarly restricted in the type of telephone they could use.

2. The guessing procedure takes place as follows:
In all cases, when a trial was taking place and the phone started ringing, the participant said his or her guess to the camera before picking up the phone. [...] Immediately upon picking up the phone, the participants again stated their guess by saying that person's name before the caller said anything.

Again, there is an unfortunate omission about whether anyone changed their guess after picking up the phone - e.g. due to picking up a cue from a noisier cell phone (if that was indeed allowed).

3. In most cases, the videotaping was done by the participants. However, in one series, there was a cameraman present in the room with the participant and a cameraman in a room with the caller. Combined with the fact that Pamela Smart was one of the callers in one of the trials and once again, the experimenters knew who was going to make the call, if there is some sort of psi effect going on to explain the results, it's rather hard to know who was reading whose mind - the cameramen were brothers, to further confuse matters!

I look forward to reading others' comments.

[CFLarsen]

This forum is the greatest! It is an incredible, unlimited well of knowledge and good ideas! I simply don't understand why paranormal experimenters don't ask for input before they engage in their botched experiments!

Wait....

Duh!

Of course I know why they don't do that....! :D

[Thanz]

On a somewhat related note, "telephone telepathy" of a different sort of kind has happened to me twice. Both times, the phone call was unexpected and the news was bad. Both times, I knew what the news was as soon as the phone rang.

Cue Twilight Zone music.....

It was pretty freaky.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by JamesM
[B]

The filmed experiments took place after the unfilmed experiments,



Ah! It doesn't state that in the book. Since both sets of experiments finished at the same time that seemed to me to suggest they were carried out contemporaneously. But it explicitly states otherwise?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by JamesM
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In all tests, the participants used landline telephones rather than cell phones, and in all cases only telephones without caller identification system were used
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Unfortunately, it is not stated whether the callers were similarly restricted in the type of telephone they could use.



Why does that matter?



2. The guessing procedure takes place as follows:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In all cases, when a trial was taking place and the phone started ringing, the participant said his or her guess to the camera before picking up the phone. [...] Immediately upon picking up the phone, the participants again stated their guess by saying that person's name before the caller said anything.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Again, there is an unfortunate omission about whether anyone changed their guess after picking up the phone - e.g. due to picking up a cue from a noisier cell phone (if that was indeed allowed).


Hell I hope not! Be impressively bad if they were allowed! :eek:

[Darat]

Why didn't he just design a very simple protocol and stick to reporting the results?

Starting with the "observation" “there are some people who can identify a caller more often then chance alone would account for” a very simple experiment could be devised to see if the observation is repeatable under "test conditions"

And another thing within the results themselves he is speculating, he can’t just keep to reporting results.

Look at this quote "This result implies that for the successful identification of callers, emotional closeness was more important than physical proximity. "

How on earth could he know what degree of "emotional closeness" there was?! Is there a protocol that gives an objective measure of "emotional closeness". :rolleyes:

[Darat]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Why does that matter?

...snip...



My mother always knows when I call her on my mobile - she says the "ring ring ring" starts at a different point when I call via the mobile network.

[john_v_h]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

They have to say immediately who the caller is.

What does that mean? Within 1 second of putting the receiver to the ear? Within 5 seconds of picking up the receiver? As long as it takes to say, "Er . . . um . . . I think this is Aunt Maybelle"?

How is this a problem? One should only pick people who do not believe they have any telepathic ability?? :confused: :eek:

A subject who believes he or she has a special ability has an ego stake in maintaining the belief. That is, he or she is motivated to cheat when necessary. This is one reason that the best psychology experiments hide the true nature of the experiment from the subject.

What do you mean? Either they "guess" correctly or don't "guess" correctly. Presumably this is verified. Explain please.

I mean verification that the self-recorded response is actually how the subject responded. Sheldrake says he can't believe that a majority of subjects would cheat, but his argument proves only that he is a Pollyanna.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by john_v_h
Originally posted by Interesting Ian

They have to say immediately who the caller is.
-----------------------------------------------
What does that mean? Within 1 second of putting the receiver to the ear? Within 5 seconds of picking up the receiver? As long as it takes to say, "Er . . . um . . . I think this is Aunt Maybelle"?
------------------------------------------------


He carried out this experiment on ch 5 in the uk a few weeks ago on the Nolan sisters on this programme on telepathy. I think they said it immediately as in they picked up the phone and immediately said the name. But the same phone was being used all the time in that instant. Notwithstanding this though I think that really they should make thier guess, and let it be known to other people, before picking up the phone.



How is this a problem? One should only pick people who do not believe they have any telepathic ability?? :confused: :eek:

A subject who believes he or she has a special ability has an ego stake in maintaining the belief. That is, he or she is motivated to cheat when necessary. This is one reason that the best psychology experiments hide the true nature of the experiment from the subject.



On the other hand I feel rather skeptical that a "skeptic" of telepathy will actually receive any telepathic impressions. So your point is appreciated, but I feel that using "skeptics" as subjects will not result in any statistically significant results (arguably statistically significant in the opposite direction!)



What do you mean? Either they "guess" correctly or don't "guess" correctly. Presumably this is verified. Explain please.

I mean verification that the self-recorded response is actually how the subject responded. Sheldrake says he can't believe that a majority of subjects would cheat, but his argument proves only that he is a Pollyanna. [/B]

Pollyanna? :confused:

[Dogwood]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
This forum is the greatest! It is an incredible, unlimited well of knowledge and good ideas! I simply don't understand why paranormal experimenters don't ask for input before they engage in their botched experiments!


On a serious note, I've related this idea to Schwartz twice now. Either directly or through SG, that it would be advantagous to involve "skeptical consultants" to review experimental designs before one is implemented. If nothing else, it would allow the experimenters to consider and compensate for potential skeptical (so-called) "nit-picking" in advance.

To Schwartz's credit, he does involve a "friendly's devil advocate" committee to anticipate such criticisms, but I frequently get the impression that they are not as complete in their constructive criticisms as some of us might be.

[Jeff Corey]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
[BPollyanna? :confused: [/B]

A completly immaterial being. A fictitional character.
The quintessential simpleton.
Presents a very chipper persona, but has a more serious aspect.
Like duct tape.
A light side and a dark side. .

[Pyrrho]

Forgive my ignorance of statistics, but isn't the arrangement pseudorandom and not truly random at all? It's not blinded, either.

Oh well, leave it to Sheldrake and Smart to concoct significance to something already explained by coincidence. Maybe they can make another book out of it.

I'm amazed that such BS gets published at all, let alone by a pro-paranormal journal.

[Lucianarchy]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


He carried out this experiment on ch 5 in the uk a few weeks ago on the Nolan sisters on this programme on telepathy. I think they said it immediately as in they picked up the phone and immediately said the name. But the same phone was being used all the time in that instant. Notwithstanding this though I think that really they should make thier guess, and let it be known to other people, before picking up the phone.



But that is *exactly* what the strongest hitters were doing on that show with the Nolan sisters.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Darat asked:Why didn't he just design a very simple protocol and stick to reporting the results?
Sheldrake always seems to make everything complicated and variable.

My mother always knows when I call her on my mobile - she says the "ring ring ring" starts at a different point when I call via the mobile network.
Hold on there! What do you mean? Are you saying the rings on her telephone are different from normal rings?

I've read about half of the second paper describing the videotaped experiments. The protocol seems much better here; I haven't found anything obviously silly yet. This paragraph keep nagging at me:There was a striking difference between Sue’s performance with familiar and unfamiliar callers. With the two familiar callers, she was right 25 times out of 35 (71%; p = .00000001). With the unfamiliar callers, she was right only 5 times out of 35 (14%), not significantly different from the chance level (see Figure 1). The difference between success rates with familiar and unfamiliar callers was very significant statistically ( p = .000001).

~~ Paul

[Pyrrho]

Paul, one problem is that they're computing significance using a very small sample size. It's silly and meaningless. The set of available callers is limited and known to the guessers and the randomization isn't truly random.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You know, I'm often left with a nagging feeling about the statistics in these psi experiments, but I don't know near enough statistics to really delve into that aspect of the experiments. We need a couple of resident statisticians at our beck and call; ones who won't mind reading whacky paper after whacky paper in great gory detail.

Perhaps we should form the Committee for the Statistical Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. We'd have a great acronym, anyway.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Hey, I've got an idea! Who wants to try to replicate these experiments? Six or seven of us could conduct one or two trials a day over the next four months and present a paper at TAM2.

~~ Paul

[Darat]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Darat asked:
Sheldrake always seems to make everything complicated and variable.


Hold on there! What do you mean? Are you saying the rings on her telephone are different from normal rings?

...snip...
~~ Paul

It appears from what she says that when her phone rings from a call on a non-mobile phone the pattern of the rings starts at a different point in the standard pattern:

e.g.

landline

ring, ring, ring.......... ring, ring, ring.........

my mobile

ring,ring.......... ring,ring,ring..........

So it gives her a pretty big clue (along with my semi-regular phoning times) that it is me calling.

Not saying of course this happens in these experiments but it would be very simple to remove any chance of "phone cues", suprised he didn't.

[Darat]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Hey, I've got an idea! Who wants to try to replicate these experiments? Six or seven of us could conduct one or two trials a day over the next four months and present a paper at TAM2.

~~ Paul

Happy to join in.

[CFLarsen]

I'm in.

The paper will, of course, also be published in SkepticReport. :)

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by Darat


*Snip*
Not saying of course this happens in these experiments but it would be very simple to remove any chance of "phone cues", suprised he didn't. I'm afraid it is not surprising at all. They evidently did not try very hard to eliminate errors; just note the complete lack of blinding.

I think we are forced to seek the explanation in this fact: The experimenters believe in telepathy and set out to prove it. They specifically recruited testers that believed they had telephatic abilities.

Seing that the protocol leaves open several possibilities of cheating, deliberate or not, it is not very surprising that those people found what they were looking for.

Great idea, Paul. Being overseas, I cannot participate, but it could be interesting. Be sure to design a better protocol, though ;)

Hans

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
Being overseas, I cannot participate

Why not? I'm in Denmark. Sheldrake also used overseas callers.

(Oh, and, Hans...it's Paulie the Greek who is "overseas".... not you! ;))

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Pyrrho
Forgive my ignorance of statistics, but isn't the arrangement pseudorandom and not truly random at all? It's not blinded, either.


What arrangement is pseudorandom? Who should be blind to what? Could you outline specifically the faults of the filmed experiments and tell us how they could be improved?

Thanks.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I've read about half of the second paper describing the videotaped experiments. The protocol seems much better here; I haven't found anything obviously silly yet. This paragraph keep nagging at me:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was a striking difference between Sue’s performance with familiar and unfamiliar callers. With the two familiar callers, she was right 25 times out of 35 (71%; p = .00000001). With the unfamiliar callers, she was right only 5 times out of 35 (14%), not significantly different from the chance level (see Figure 1). The difference between success rates with familiar and unfamiliar callers was very significant statistically ( p = .000001).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

~~ Paul [/B]

I haven't read the 2nd paper yet. But what exactly is wrong with that paragraph? I mean apart from her scores with familar callers being excessively high.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
I'm in.

The paper will, of course, also be published in SkepticReport. :)

Unless it's a positive result of course :)

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
[B]I'm afraid it is not surprising at all. They evidently did not try very hard to eliminate errors; just note the complete lack of blinding.


Who should be blind to what?



I think we are forced to seek the explanation in this fact: The experimenters believe in telepathy and set out to prove it. They specifically recruited testers that believed they had telephatic abilities.



The subjects specifically said "I believe I have telepathic powers/abilities"?



Seing that the protocol leaves open several possibilities of cheating, deliberate or not, it is not very surprising that those people found what they were looking for.



Could you name these possibilities for the filmed experiments?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by mark tidwell


On a serious note, I've related this idea to Schwartz twice now. Either directly or through SG, that it would be advantagous to involve "skeptical consultants" to review experimental designs before one is implemented. If nothing else, it would allow the experimenters to consider and compensate for potential skeptical (so-called) "nit-picking" in advance.


Why should skeptics know more about experimental design than non-skeptics? Don't get me wrong though, I think it's an excellent idea when we consider that if a experiment produces overall statistically significant results, skeptics on the whole are more likely to pick faults with the experimental design afterwards.

But I heard that parapsychologists have been doing this over the last few decades anyway? (ie consulting skeptics in their experimental design)

Of course neither Sheldrake or Schwartz are parapsychologists anyway ;)

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by CFLarsen


Why not? I'm in Denmark. Sheldrake also used overseas callers.

(Oh, and, Hans...it's Paulie the Greek who is "overseas".... not you! ;)) Let me rephrase more honestly, then: The timezone issue would make it inconvinient for me to participate ;)

Hans

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Who should be blind to what?

Test subjects should not know their score till after the experiment. Neither should experimenters. This eliminates a lot of possibilities for cheating.

The subjects specifically said "I believe I have telepathic powers/abilities"?

According to the paper, they advertized for people who thought they had telepathic abilities. So, yes.

Could you name these possibilities for the filmed experiments?

Well, lack of blinding for sure. And biased test subjects.

--- and from another post:

Why should skeptics know more about experimental design than non-skeptics?

Very interesting question. Ideally they should not, but it seems they do. Could it be because correctly designed experiments invariably produce negative results for paranormal phenomenon? Thus those that understand experimental design unavoidably BECOME skeptics.

Don't get me wrong though, I think it's an excellent idea when we consider that if a experiment produces overall statistically significant results, skeptics on the whole are more likely to pick faults with the experimental design afterwards.

I'm sure you are right here. Most people are less likely to critizise an experiment when the result confirm their thinking. However, that is only one more reason to insist on good experimental design.



Hans

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Unless it's a positive result of course :)

On the contrary: Then it will get top billing.

Are you implying that I do not allow articles that show positive evidence of a paranormal phenomenon?

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
What arrangement is pseudorandom? Who should be blind to what? Could you outline specifically the faults of the filmed experiments and tell us how they could be improved?

Thanks.
Simple. They are pure BS and should never see the light of day.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen


On the contrary: Then it will get top billing.

Are you implying that I do not allow articles that show positive evidence of a paranormal phenomenon?

I really have no idea. How on earth should I know? But anyway, do the majority of articles in skepticReport dwell upon positive evidence for paranomal phenomena? Or is it skewed towards reporting negative results?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Pyrrho

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
What arrangement is pseudorandom? Who should be blind to what? Could you outline specifically the faults of the filmed experiments and tell us how they could be improved?

Thanks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pyrrho
Simple. They are pure BS and should never see the light of day.

You need to give details. If these tests are flawed in numerous ways then I really want to know in which ways. I'd be the first person to acknowledge it if they are. So could you please justify what you have said?

BTW I am not at all suggesting that you're not right. I haven't read the article yet (on the filmed experiments). Just started reading it now.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Pyrrho
Forgive my ignorance of statistics, but isn't the arrangement pseudorandom and not truly random at all? It's not blinded, either.


Just to explain to anyone who hasn't read the paper: the callers were chosen by rolling a die.

Pyrrho, would you (or anyone else) mind expanding on these comments? What would be a truly random method? I thought pseudorandom number generation was the best we could do. Also, how does the fact that the set of callers is limited to 4 adversely affect the statistics, compared to say, limiting it to 100 callers? Wouldn't this just change the expected hit-rate from 1/4 to 1/100? Would 50 trials where you had to choose between 100 callers produce more rigorous results than 50 trials where you had to choose between 4?

Love the TAM2 idea, by the way. Although unless I win the lottery, I won't be attending.

[MRC_Hans]

Ian, if Paul's experiment shows a positive result, the problem will not be who publishes it, but who gets the million$

BTW, I wonder why Sheldrake et al have not filed for the JREF challenge?

I have so far found two, perhaps minor, faults in paper #2:

- They are comparing the scores for different callers in the same experiment. This is not stistically sound, since the figures for callers are interconnected. Obviously, if the callee guesses wrong, she will place her guess on another potential caller, thus influencing the statistics of that caller. This will make differences appear larger (on average doubling them).

- They claim that the timestamp is "burnt into the film". Since the redording is on videotape, this is obviously wrong. They are implying that the timestamps could not be faked, while obviously that is possible.

Hans

[Interesting Ian]

This is amazing! It actually says about the unfilmed experiments:


Nevertheless, in the experiments we have just described we were relying on the honesty of the participants and their callers.


:confused:

So why were these experiments carried out in the first place if it is possible for the subjects to cheat!?? :eek:

I still think they might have done the unfilmed experiments for the reason I mentioned yesterday.

[Pyrrho]

Originally posted by JamesM


Just to explain to anyone who hasn't read the paper: the callers were chosen by rolling a die.

Pyrrho, would you (or anyone else) mind expanding on these comments? What would be a truly random method? I thought pseudorandom number generation was the best we could do. Also, how does the fact that the set of callers is limited to 4 adversely affect the statistics, compared to say, limiting it to 100 callers? Wouldn't this just change the expected hit-rate from 1/4 to 1/100? Would 50 trials where you had to choose between 100 callers produce more rigorous results than 50 trials where you had to choose between 4?

Love the TAM2 idea, by the way. Although unless I win the lottery, I won't be attending.
Sorry, it's speculation on my part, and I did state that I am somewhat ignorant of statistics. I cannot give anyone a definitive answer as to what statistical flaws, if any, exist in Sheldrake's experiments. I'm just not that well informed when it comes to statistics. It just seems to me that the sample size is far too small to be relied upon for meaningful results.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Who should be blind to what?

Test subjects should not know their score till after the experiment. Neither should experimenters. This eliminates a lot of possibilities for cheating.


Right, so in the filmed experiments the callees are immediately told afterwards if their guess was correct? Could you list all these possibilities down for being able to cheat on being told this information? (that is for the filmed experiments - it is agreed on all hands that the unfilmed experiments are a load of crock as Paul described them).

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans

II
The subjects specifically said "I believe I have telepathic powers/abilities"?

Hans
According to the paper, they advertized for people who thought they had telepathic abilities. So, yes.



I was just wondering if it were the sort of people who believe they have tremendous powers and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims and even screw people for money, or whether they are simply recruiting everyday people like you and me, but who often feel they know who it is when the telephone rings.


II
Could you name these possibilities for the filmed experiments?
Hans
Well, lack of blinding for sure. And biased test subjects.


You'll have to forgive me, but what do you mean by lack of blinding? Who is not being blinded to what precisely?

I think it's going to be impossible to recruit wholly unbiased subjects. They're either going to tend to believe in tel telepathy or not. The important point is closing any possible loopholes for cheating.

Remember also that people who believe they have never experienced any telephone telepathy (and who therefore would be less disposed to believe in TT) would very likely do less well in the experiments even if telepathy does exist!

[Diamond]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
You know, I'm often left with a nagging feeling about the statistics in these psi experiments, but I don't know near enough statistics to really delve into that aspect of the experiments. We need a couple of resident statisticians at our beck and call; ones who won't mind reading whacky paper after whacky paper in great gory detail.

Perhaps we should form the Committee for the Statistical Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. We'd have a great acronym, anyway.

~~ Paul

The acronym's already been taken by some hack organization... :p

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

Right, so in the filmed experiments the callees are immediately told afterwards if their guess was correct?

Yes, this is also true for the unfilmed experiments. It appears it was done to provide "immediate feedback". I'm not sure what purpose that was for - perhaps there is anecdotal evidence to suggest this is useful for focussing telepathic powers? It does seem the sort of thing you'd want to exclude from the experiment if possible.

Remember also that people who believe they have never experienced any telephone telepathy (and who therefore would be less disposed to believe in TT) would very likely do less well in the experiments even if telepathy does exist!

Well, maybe - we want to use this experiment to prove telepathy exists before investigating how its strength varies with attitude towards psi effects. A statistical problem with only picking people who think that they are telepathic w.r.t. the telephone is that it becomes hard to know to what population the results can be generalised to - just to other people who believe themselves to be able to telepathically tell who's phoning them?

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
I really have no idea. How on earth should I know? But anyway, do the majority of articles in skepticReport dwell upon positive evidence for paranomal phenomena? Or is it skewed towards reporting negative results?

The articles are not "skewed", but written from a skeptical POV. If you have any evidence of a paranormal phenomenon, please suggest an article and I'll look at it.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
[B]

I was just wondering if it were the sort of people who believe they have tremendous powers and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims and even screw people for money, or whether they are simply recruiting everyday people like you and me, but who often feel they know who it is when the telephone rings.



The advertisement actually said:

{quote}
“Do you know who is ringing before you pick up the phone? Good pay for fun and simple experiments as part of psychic research project.”
{/quote}

Which suggests that the people who responded are predominantly those who ofen feel they know who it is when the telephone rings (rather than the former I mentioned above). I have to say I think that's absolutely fine if they are simply concerned with demonstrating telephone telepathy exists, rather than attempting to generalise about particular telepathic abilities amongst particular groups of people.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen


The articles are not "skewed", but written from a skeptical POV. If you have any evidence of a paranormal phenomenon, please suggest an article and I'll look at it.

Personnally I feel a skeptical POV is simply a euphenism for a biased point of view. I'm only interested in an objective rational appraisal of the evidence and an appraisal of the implict philosophical presumptions regarding the nature of reality which influence our beliefs in this regard.

Nevertheless, although I'm not interested in their point of view, this is not to say that they do not say relevant things or that they might not come up with explanations for phenomena which less skeptical people might overlook.

[CFLarsen]

IIan,

How can you be rational without being skeptical - or the other way around? I cannot see how you can be one and not the other.

Do you have evidence of a paranormal phenomenon or not?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans

I have so far found two, perhaps minor, faults in paper #2:

- They are comparing the scores for different callers in the same experiment. This is not stistically sound, since the figures for callers are interconnected. Obviously, if the callee guesses wrong, she will place her guess on another potential caller, thus influencing the statistics of that caller. This will make differences appear larger (on average doubling them).



Ummmm . .you'll have to forgive me, but I don't understand what you're saying here.



- They claim that the timestamp is "burnt into the film". Since the redording is on videotape, this is obviously wrong. They are implying that the timestamps could not be faked, while obviously that is possible.



I have no idea whether you are correct or not on this I'm afraid.

[MRC_Hans]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
I was just wondering if it were the sort of people who believe they have tremendous powers and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims and even screw people for money, or whether they are simply recruiting everyday people like you and me, but who often feel they know who it is when the telephone rings.

It is the latter category, just as it says in the paper. This debate would be simpler if you read the paper before asking.

You'll have to forgive me, but what do you mean by lack of blinding? Who is not being blinded to what precisely?

In principle, if at all possible, neither experimenters nor test subjects should be able to judge results as the experiment proceeds. This is to make cheating more difficult.

I think it's going to be impossible to recruit wholly unbiased subjects. They're either going to tend to believe in tel telepathy or not. The important point is closing any possible loopholes for cheating.

Recruiting people in order to test for an ability they believe to have is not a good way to conduct an experiement.

Remember also that people who believe they have never experienced any telephone telepathy (and who therefore would be less disposed to believe in TT) would very likely do less well in the experiments even if telepathy does exist!

Probably, and?

The imprtant thing when designing an experiment is to make it show the phenomenon it is to test for, and nothing else. Everything else is noise that reduces the value of the result, even if it confirms your theory. - This is provided you actually WANT to make an objective experiment. If you just want to make something that looks nice and confirms your belief, that is another story.

And this is what puzzles me: Designing sound experiments is a very very basic skill in the scientific community. Try to present a result from a flawed protocol through a peer review, and you'll get skinned alive.

So how come those people who are trying to prove paranormal phenomenon have such difficulties with protocols? If they cant design them themeselves, they could get any science student to do it. Take the paper above: They have gone to a lot of trouble and spent a fair amount of money, where a far better protocol would be quicker and cheaper.

I'm sorry, but I just can't help suspecting that they don't really want an objective result.

Hans

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

In addition to five or more subjects, we need a statistician. Any volunteers?

~~ Paul

[Prester John]

Actually it would help if they said the actual statistical tests that were used, there are rather a lot of them. Knowing this would help to evaluate the validity of the statistics. This information should be in any reputable scientific paper.
:cool:

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Pam Smart tells me they are doing email telepathy experiments now. Here is the protocol:You need to send me the names and details of your four emailers, and your own details, on the form below. They should be family members or good friends, ideally people who you think you are likely to respond to telepathically. If you cannot think of four such people, then you
should pick three. I will then serve as the fourth. You will need to
contact these people to make sure they agree to take part and that they are free to do so.

You need to decide a time when you can sit quietly by your computer and your emailers are
also by their computers so I can tell them if they have been picked, and
so that they can email you at the exact time that has been prearranged.
You need to make sure that your callers are available at the time you
and I have arranged. If, for some reason, the person whose picked at
random is not available when I send them the instruction to email you,
then that particular test will not happen. Please pick your
dates and times for Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays, between 9am and 5pm.

You are paid £40 for a 50-minute, five-trial session, in other words £8 per trial. If a trial has to be abandoned because your emailer is not available or the timing of the email is wrong, then of course there will be no payment for that trial.

I will co-ordinate the test and will need their email addresses of the
people you have chosen (and also their telephone numbers and postal
addresses). I will email the person chosen by the throw of the dice to
ask them to email you at the prearranged time. Please tell your
emailers that if they have not received an email from me 5 minutes
beforehand they have not been picked and should avoid thinking about you.

You have a one in four chance of guessing correctly.
Again, highly significant results.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
IIan,

How can you be rational without being skeptical - or the other way around? I cannot see how you can be one and not the other.

Do you have evidence of a paranormal phenomenon or not?

--- and from another post:


II
Why should skeptics know more about experimental design than non-skeptics?

Hans
Very interesting question. Ideally they should not, but it seems they do. Could it be because correctly designed experiments invariably produce negative results for paranormal phenomenon? Thus those that understand experimental design unavoidably BECOME skeptics.


No Hans I do not think this is correct. I suspect that what makes us become skeptics or believers is not so much a question of rationality or irrationality, but rather one of psychological predispositions. A predisposition which is moulded to a very large extent by our implicit presumptions about the underlying nature of the world and what possible phenomena it could be expected to exhibit.

To make myself more clear, the skeptic will generally tend to prefer any "normal" explanation, no matter how far fetched and unlikely it might be, to a paranormal explanation. This is simply due to the fact that he or she considers himself to live in a world where such things are simply not possible. We live in a world wholly explicable in terms of natural laws ie everything that ever happens, all phenomena, can be traced back and subsumed under general theories describing the world which are written in the language of mathematics. In particular, all our behaviour is governed by physical laws, just as much as the behaviour of a boulder is governed by physical laws as it rolls down a hill.

Myself and others, on the other hand, do not subscribe to this naturalistic picture of the world. I do not believe that consciousness is an object in the world like all other objects in the world. Rather it is that which percieves and is aware of objects and processes in the world. Moreover I do not believe that my behaviour is circumscribed by algorithmic laws, but rather my behaviour can arise spontaneously as an instantaneous exercising of my will. In other words I believe that consciousness is something other than the objects of consciousness. Given this it is entirely unclear to me why something like telepathy should not exist. Indeed, if anything, I am surprised it is not more prevalent than it apparently appears to be.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Prester John
Actually it would help if they said the actual statistical tests that were used, there are rather a lot of them. Knowing this would help to evaluate the validity of the statistics. This information should be in any reputable scientific paper.
:cool:

They give the tests: the exact binomial test for testing the null hypothesis of a 25% hit rate; the Stouffer method for the meta-analysis; the Fisher exact test for comparison between the 1st and 2nd trial & familiar and unfamiliar callers.

In the videotaped experiments, the Cochran and Armitage trend test was used to compare the success of the trials with the participant's confidence in the guess.

If I get the time this weekend, I may take a look at some of the numbers in the paper.

[JamesM]

Email telepathy? This is something we could be able to handle even more easily than telephone telepathy, right?

Anyone want to try and design a protocol? Do easily accessible-via-the-web anonymous email servers still exist?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I have started a thread to act as the experiment notebook for our telephone telepathy experiments:

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24807

My concern with email telepathy is delay in transmission of email messages. Does anyone think that will be a problem? We could switch to email telepathy, but then we would be attempting to replicate experiments that haven't been published. We could also do both.

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
So how come those people who are trying to prove paranormal phenomenon have such difficulties with protocols?
Hans [/B]

Well I think on the whole they don't do they? Even I am aware (despite my comparative lack of interest in this subject) that parapsychogist experimental protocols are tighter than in any other area of science. Why are you under the delussion in thinking otherwise?

Of course Sheldrake is not a parapsychologist, nor is Schwartz.

The difficulty here is that we're not dealing in a hard science and can't expect humans to behave in such a regularly predictive way as one would expect electrons to behave. Also, because of the naturalistic presumption that skeptics hold, such phenomena is a priori considered to be extremely unlikely, meaning that effectively no standard of evidence would ever satisfy him or her.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:Given this it is entirely unclear to me why something like telepathy should not exist. Indeed, if anything, I am surprised it is not more prevalent than it apparently appears to be.
Perhaps two individual consciousnesses cannot communicate directly.

Also, because of the naturalistic presumption that skeptics hold, such phenomena is a priori considered to be extremely unlikely, meaning that effectively no standard of evidence would ever satisfy him or her.
It's hard to be satisfied without a theory.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Three volunteers so far. Come on folks, we need three or four more.

~~ Paul

[Jeff Corey]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Even I am aware (despite my comparative lack of interest in this subject) that parapsychogist experimental protocols are tighter than in any other area of science. Why are you under the delussion in thinking otherwise?
Au contraire, mon ami.
Parapsychological protocols are looser than the proverbial goose.
Viz, Schwartz and Sheldrake, who are indeed parapsychologists, if any exist. They publish in parapsychology journals, after all.
And no reputable university in the US awards a Ph. D. in parapsychology.
At least not since Duke got a Rhine-oplasty.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Even I am aware (despite my comparative lack of interest in this subject) that parapsychogist experimental protocols are tighter than in any other area of science. Why are you under the delussion in thinking otherwise?

Excuse me?? I have not seen one single paranormal experiment you couldn't lead a herd of obese elephants through.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Of course Sheldrake is not a parapsychologist, nor is Schwartz.

How does one qualify to be one?

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
The difficulty here is that we're not dealing in a hard science and can't expect humans to behave in such a regularly predictive way as one would expect electrons to behave.

I think this should be nominated for the "Most Ignorant Of Science" post of the year. Electrons are not little balls orbiting the nucleus. We cannot predict where the electrons are, we can only determine where they would be most of the time (the "orbitals").

You really should move away from the Rutherford Atomic Model. Most other people did that in 1913. And then, of course, moved on to more correct models.... :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Also, because of the naturalistic presumption that skeptics hold, such phenomena is a priori considered to be extremely unlikely, meaning that effectively no standard of evidence would ever satisfy him or her.

Not a presumption, but based on observation. We don't see UFOs flying through the air at regular intervals, we don't see things going through time warps all the time, and we don't see that many ghosts in our daily lives.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
My concern with email telepathy is delay in transmission of email messages. Does anyone think that will be a problem?

Good point. Also, there's less compelling anecdotal reason to believe people know when someone is emailing them. But it might be easier to get volunteers for an email experiment than the phone experiment. I'd like to volunteer for the phone, but as I share a house with 3 other people, it'd be harder to arrange, unless I used my mobile, which can display the number of the person calling...

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

James, you're one of the three volunteers I had so far! I think we just have to agree to ignore caller ID. I don't own a phone without it.

~~ Paul

[davidsmith73]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
James, you're one of the three volunteers I had so far! I think we just have to agree to ignore caller ID. I don't own a phone without it.

~~ Paul

Doesn't this vastly increase the chances of fraud ?

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
James, you're one of the three volunteers I had so far!

Oh, am I? Ok, well, I'm still in!


I think we just have to agree to ignore caller ID.


That seems fair enough, but the one thing we may want to bear in mind is what we would say if we read a paper that mentioned that caller ID was possible on the phones used and there was no way of knowing if the participants used them or not.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Even I am aware (despite my comparative lack of interest in this subject) that parapsychogist experimental protocols are tighter than in any other area of science. Why are you under the delussion in thinking otherwise?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Excuse me?? I have not seen one single paranormal experiment you couldn't lead a herd of obese elephants through.



Care to provide a list and explain in each case the errors?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Of course Sheldrake is not a parapsychologist, nor is Schwartz.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



How does one qualify to be one?



How on earth should I know? Thinking of becoming one are you?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
The difficulty here is that we're not dealing in a hard science and can't expect humans to behave in such a regularly predictive way as one would expect electrons to behave.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I think this should be nominated for the "Most Ignorant Of Science" post of the year. Electrons are not little balls orbiting the nucleus. We cannot predict where the electrons are, we can only determine where they would be most of the time (the "orbitals").



Doesn't matter what they actually are. Not relevant.



You really should move away from the Rutherford Atomic Model. Most other people did that in 1913. And then, of course, moved on to more correct models....



More correct relative to what reality really is? LOL



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Also, because of the naturalistic presumption that skeptics hold, such phenomena is a priori considered to be extremely unlikely, meaning that effectively no standard of evidence would ever satisfy him or her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Not a presumption, but based on observation.



Ends up being viciously circular. ie Naturalism is inferred from our observations. We observe apparently paranormal phenomena, but can't really be paranormal because incompatible with naturalism.

[davidsmith73]

Originally posted by JamesM



That seems fair enough, but the one thing we may want to bear in mind is what we would say if we read a paper that mentioned that caller ID was possible on the phones used and there was no way of knowing if the participants used them or not.


Exactly my point. Fraud would be a likely explanation if you got positive results. Actually I would be more inclined to suspect fraud if you got chance results since you are all sceptics. (I'm sure you are all honest people, but I'm just applying critical thinking you understand !)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well then, I think telephone telepathy is out. Who doesn't have caller ID these days?

And email telepathy is out for the same reason, unless we require the callee to email their guess many minutes before they are supposed to receive the email message.

~~ Paul

[juninho]

Originally posted by JamesM
Email telepathy? This is something we could be able to handle even more easily than telephone telepathy, right?

Anyone want to try and design a protocol? Do easily accessible-via-the-web anonymous email servers still exist?

Well I bet I'm going to receive an e-mail in the next 24 hours offering to extend the size of my penis. Not that I'm complaining as I've taken up all the offers I've received and subsequently I've now got a 42 metre long dick.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by davidsmith73

Exactly my point. Fraud would be a likely explanation if you got positive results. Actually I would be more inclined to suspect fraud if you got chance results since you are all sceptics. (I'm sure you are all honest people, but I'm just applying critical thinking you understand !)

Yes, sorry David, you posted your comments while I was writing my post. I agree with you, if our main problem with the first, unvideotaped experiment is that there was no way of knowing if the participants were telling the truth, we ought to find a way to avoid replicating this part.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Well then, I think telephone telepathy is out. Who doesn't have caller ID these days?



I don't. Only vaguely heard of it. I can of course guess what it means. Certainly wouldn't pay extra money for that! :eek:

[Darat]

Originally posted by davidsmith73



Exactly my point. Fraud would be a likely explanation if you got positive results. Actually I would be more inclined to suspect fraud if you got chance results since you are all sceptics. (I'm sure you are all honest people, but I'm just applying critical thinking you understand !)

Why would I, as a sceptic be more likely to fraud in this experiment then someone who doesn’t ask questions?

It would seem that you think asking questions makes someone more likely to commit fraud then someone who doesn't ask questions?

As a sceptic I have no vested interest in whether the results provide evidence that “telepathy” (whatever that means) exists or not.

(Thinking about my last statement I have to concede that it is probably slightly dishonest – I am certain from a purely egotistical standpoint I’d like to be associated with an experiment that provided evidence that there is yet another area of knowledge to explore…)

[Darat]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Well then, I think telephone telepathy is out. Who doesn't have caller ID these days?

And email telepathy is out for the same reason, unless we require the callee to email their guess many minutes before they are supposed to receive the email message.

~~ Paul

I don't have caller ID, and I know in the UK caler ID is disabled by the prefix of three digits before dialing.

[Darat]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Well then, I think telephone telepathy is out. Who doesn't have caller ID these days?

And email telepathy is out for the same reason, unless we require the callee to email their guess many minutes before they are supposed to receive the email message.

~~ Paul

I was wondering about this experiment - would it be possible to run it up at TAM2 - that would be even more fun, we would have a large group of people with quite a few that have "emotional closeness" to use?

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

And email telepathy is out for the same reason, unless we require the callee to email their guess many minutes before they are supposed to receive the email message.


Well, we could set up a dummy webmail address, which all emailers had the password for.

All emailers would have to be logged in at a certain time, knowing that any one of them could be required to send an email over the time period specified.

The experimenter sends an email to that account with the chosen caller's name in the subject line.

That person then has 5 minutes to send an email to the participant, which would be cc'ed to a third party.

If there are delays in delivery for whatever reason, that trial has been invalidated.

You could later check the time dates on the various emails, which would be surely at least as secure as the time stamp on the video.

I've not thought about this very hard, but what about something along those lines?

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Care to provide a list and explain in each case the errors?

A few out of many:

Schwartz, Arizona Experiments: Basically no controls whatsoever, no independent verification of hits, he uses himself as a participant...

Scole: No serious controls, no infrared equipment allowed...

Global Consciousness Project: Very selective use of data, very shaky hypothesis, very generous "interpretation" of data...

Care to provide a list of experiments that had stronger controls than scientific experiments (and which yielded a positive result)?

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
How on earth should I know? Thinking of becoming one are you?

If you don't know if someone is a parapsychologist, how can you say that e.g. Schwartz isn't one?

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Doesn't matter what they actually are. Not relevant.

I was merely pointing out that your comparison was both invalid and false.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
More correct relative to what reality really is? LOL

Yes, that's right: Working towards a more accurate idea of what reality is.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Ends up being viciously circular. ie Naturalism is inferred from our observations. We observe apparently paranormal phenomena, but can't really be paranormal because incompatible with naturalism.

Stop obfuscating. Can you point to a paranormal phenomenon that is observed regularly?

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Darat


I don't have caller ID, and I know in the UK caler ID is disabled by the prefix of three digits before dialing.

I don't have caller ID on my landline, either. However, anyone who did have caller ID would be hard pushed to prove they hadn't used it. Also, we'd have to ensure that there was no way to do a 1471 (or equivalent) to find out who'd rung you. Also, we couldn't prove that we hadn't picked up the phone and spoken to each other, even though our feedback-free methodology prohibits this.

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Darat

As a sceptic I have no vested interest in whether the results provide evidence that “telepathy” (whatever that means) exists or not.


David has a point. What if we got results according to chance? People would say, "oh look, Sheldrake the psi-believer got positive results with plenty of opportunity for cheating, and the skeptics got negative results with plenty of opportunity for cheating - how convenient!"

[Prester John]

yes they are, should have paid more attention.

Heres my take on the stats:

Experiments Calls Right % right p
Preliminary 30 13 43 0.02
Series 1 201 75 37 0.00007
Series 2 322 134 42 5 x 10-11
S. Bloomfield 18 9 50 0.02
Totals 571 231 40 4 x 10-16

these are the results shown in the paper. They look pretty good and are statistically significant (very) using the tests they have used. The tests used seem reasonable enough.

My biggest problem with the results is they seem to be skewed, nearly everyone scored above average. When you draw a histogram of % correct guesses it looks like a normal distribution, but with one side (the non significant results) chopped away. we are left with just the significant results. This alone is strongly suggestive of incomplete data.

you would expect the results to be reasonably normally distributed even if they showed greater than expected correct caller guessing.

edit- the use of the word average is wrong, expected would be a better word. (hey i was rushing to go home)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm guessing this idea will die from lack of volunteers, but anyway.

I'm leaning toward an email experiment, just because it's less hassle. I've asked Pam Smart for their protocol. The problem is that we all know each other, so there is nothing to prevent the selected sender from contacting the recipient outside the protocol. We could set things up so that the senders do not know who the recipient is, using anonymous email addresses, but the recipient will know the senders and can contact them to set up a cheat.

And will the telepathy work if the sender is addressing the recipient through an anonymous email address and so doesn't know who the recipient is? How would those telepathic vibes get from the sender to the recipient?

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

John said:My biggest problem with the results is they seem to be skewed, nearly everyone scored above average. When you draw a histogram of % correct guesses it looks like a normal distribution, but with one side (the non significant results) chopped away. we are left with just the significant results. This alone is strongly suggestive of incomplete data.
Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. Do you think there ought to be some series with lower % right numbers?

~~ Paul

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I'm guessing this idea will die from lack of volunteers, but anyway.

If nothing comes of it, this may be interesting as a purely academic exercise.

The problem is that we all know each other, so there is nothing to prevent the selected sender from contacting the recipient outside the protocol.
That's why I would suggest that the experimenter contact the sender under a very strict time limit, to reduce the chance that they will have time to both send the sneaky cheating message (by whatever means) and send the real message.


We could set things up so that the senders do not know who the recipient is, using anonymous email addresses, but the recipient will know the senders and can contact them to set up a cheat.

What if everyone has to use the same email address and the content of the email is determined solely by the experimenter and the mailers have no way of knowing what it is until they're told to send it. If the email is cc'ed to a third party, it can be compared to the instructions sent by the experimenter to see if the emailer changed it in any way as a way of signalling to the recipient.


And will the telepathy work if the sender is addressing the recipient through an anonymous email address and so doesn't know who the recipient is? How would those telepathic vibes get from the sender to the recipient?

It seems to me that the mailer should know the identity of the recipient to make it similar to the telepathy by phone experiment.

[Moz]

... did his experiment record only incorrect precitions of the caller's identity, or did it also include the event that a "telepathically" anticipated call *did not* take place?

Surely this is a factor. Focussing on the identity of the caller might have lead the experimenters away from including the *fact* (or otherwise) of a call as an event worth recording in the "experiment".

[Prester John]

yes basically nearly every one did better than expected, this is not what you would expect :)

if you propose that the sample would do better than expected, say they are psychic and can identify 40% rather than the expected 25%. You would still get some, who by chance do less well than expected and only get 10 or 20 % correct. So you should get a distribution with a mean of 40% and something close to a normal distribution.

This data is not like that. Large numbers of people got 30-50% correct with the numbers getting 50+ % tailing off in the "normal" way. but at 0-29% there are practically no people. This is indicative of incomplete data - those results should be there.

There are a number of ways to proceed:

To compensate statistically for it is possible, simply fill in the missing data by mirroring the data present.This would allow a statistical analysis of what is more likely the full data set.
However as the data is not complete it is acceptable to discard the entire study as there are probably other flaws if there is missing data. Of course the authors should be given their opportunity to defend the apparent missing data

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Moz
... did his experiment record only incorrect precitions of the caller's identity, or did it also include the event that a "telepathically" anticipated call *did not* take place?


Do you mean, were there "blank" runs, where no phone call came, but the person made a guess, anyway? If so, no, that wasn't part of the protocol: no guess was made until the phone rang. So, no ringing, no guess. Perhaps this sort of thing could be included if you could get some sort of automated call up service as a possible caller.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I'm guessing this idea will die from lack of volunteers, but anyway.

Give it time. It's only been a few hours.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well, let's take a look at the videotaped trials.

Hawksley: 3 callers significant, 3 not. Overall p=.000001
Hawksley: 2 callers significant, 3 not. Overall p=.0008
Hawksley: 2 callers significant, 2 not. Overall p=.04

Reeves: 1 caller significant, 3 not. Overall p=.05

Morsman: 1 caller significant, 3 not. Overall p=.20

Marcovici: 2 callers significant, 2 not. Overall p=.0003

These experiments show a wider range of results.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Here is Pam Smart's response to my request for the email protocol:It is important to have people who are connected emotionally. They send their guess one minute before the trial time and the person who gets picked sends their email with a Cc copy to the co-ordinator at the exact trial time.
Are email time stamps that accurate?

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Here is Pam Smart's response to my request for the email protocol:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is important to have people who are connected emotionally. They send their guess one minute before the trial time and the person who gets picked sends their email with a Cc copy to the co-ordinator at the exact trial time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Are email time stamps that accurate?
~~ Paul [/B]

I absolutely 100% agree about them having to be connected emotionally. But for some reason it's just something that skeptics can't get their heads around :confused:

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Here is Pam Smart's response to my request for the email protocol:
Are email time stamps that accurate?

~~ Paul
Far from it. It depends entirely on the clock settings on the mail servers.

If they hadn't checked this beforehand, they are worse experimenters than both Steve Grenard and Gary Schwartz!!

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
I absolutely 100% agree about them having to be connected emotionally. But for some reason it's just something that skeptics can't get their heads around :confused:

Please point to the experiment that proves that people have to be "connected emotionally".

How is "emotion" measured and defined?

[JamesM]

Originally posted by CFLarsen

Far from it. It depends entirely on the clock settings on the mail servers.

If they hadn't checked this beforehand, they are worse experimenters than both Steve Grenard and Gary Schwartz!!

So if I send an email from my Yahoo account to my Hotmail account, what determines the time that appears on the email I receive?

[Darat]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


I absolutely 100% agree about them having to be connected emotionally. But for some reason it's just something that skeptics can't get their heads around :confused:

What level of "emotional connectedness" is needed and how would it be established?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:I absolutely 100% agree about them having to be connected emotionally. But for some reason it's just something that skeptics can't get their heads around.
Does this go for contacting dead people, too? Does it go for influencing random number generators (I feel a real affinity for RNGs, don't you know)?

~~ Paul

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen


Please point to the experiment that proves that people have to be "connected emotionally".



I can't point to any experimental data. It's kind of from personnal experience, from anecdotes, and what I instinctively feel. :)


How is "emotion" measured and defined?

Oh it can't be :) That's because it's real. Science deals with measurements. That's because it deals in a world of unreality :)

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by JamesM
So if I send an email from my Yahoo account to my Hotmail account, what determines the time that appears on the email I receive?

That's a very, very good question! And it needs to be answered, if this test is going anywhere (which I hope it is - if we can't pull it off, who else can? :))

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
I can't point to any experimental data. It's kind of from personnal experience, from anecdotes, and what I instinctively feel. :)

Funny, but I never saw you as a "touchy-feely" guy. Guess I was wrong... :)

You can't back up your claim, then. OK. Your claim is therefore invalid.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Oh it can't be :) That's because it's real. Science deals with measurements. That's because it deals in a world of unreality :)

I hope you are joking. You certainly have been unable to back up your posts! :)

[patnray]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was a striking difference between Sue’s performance with familiar and unfamiliar callers. With the two familiar callers, she was right 25 times out of 35 (71%; p = .00000001). With the unfamiliar callers, she was right only 5 times out of 35 (14%), not significantly different from the chance level (see Figure 1). The difference between success rates with familiar and unfamiliar callers was very significant statistically ( p = .000001).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What percentage of Sue's guesses were the two callers she was emotionally connected to? If she guessed them 80% of the time it would skew the results for both classes.

Also, when selecting a subclass of the data, such as the 2 callers she was familiar with, what is the correct way to calculate the expected chance results?

If I always guessed A, I would be right 100 % of the time when A calls and 50% of the time in any subgroup of 2 that includes A.

It would seem that any analysis of the data should include examination of any patterns in the receiver's guesses.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Claus, an email message is time-stamped by the SMTP server receiving the message from your mail app.

Patnray, both of the cited papers have tables that break down guesses by caller and guess. For example, in one series, Hawksley never even guessed one of the callers; she divided her guesses between the other three. She had insignificant results for two callers; significant results for the other two; signficant results overall.

I'm telling you, folks, without a statistician we're going nowhere. In the case of email telepathy, for example, I cannot imagine what the sensory leak is. Seems to me the results are due either to something amazing, cheating, or bad statistics.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Here's a little test we could do with three of us. Person A could email Person X at 2:59. Person B could email Person X at 3:00. Let's see how accurate the time stamps are.

I'll be person X.

~~ Paul

[JamesM]

What time is it now? It's 09:33ish here, so it 3.00 10.00 my time? If so, I volunteer to be person A.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

James, your message was posted at 4:34 my time. You're five hours ahead of me.

Do we have another volunteer?

Meanwhile, James, send me an email at exactly 10:00 pm (22:00) your time. I'll PM you my email address.

Edited to add: I guess by sending at a certain time we mean clicking on whatever it is that actually transmits the message to your server.

~~ Paul

[JamesM]

I hear and obey Paul. My watch is sychronised.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Okay, James and Claus are persons A and B. Guys, post here what parts of the day are good for you. We'll run trials on Thursday and Friday.

I'm available between 9:00 and 17:00 US Eastern time.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Impressive. I got James's message at 17:00 and it was stamped 22:00.

James, try again at 22:15 your time, if you're around.

~~ Paul

[JamesM]

Oh, so you didn't want me to send it now? Oh dear, this has to be the 8 millionth stupid thing I've posted today. I think I better go home now.

I shall be in front of a computer until about 3pm your time tomorrow and 1.30pm your time on Friday. So any reasonable time for you is fine by me.

EDIT: just noticed Paul's post. Maybe I'm not so stupid. I shall repeat at 10.15.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It occurs to me that we don't know what time our email applications display. Do they display the time stamped by the sender's SMTP server or the recipient's server? Must find out ...

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Two more accurate time stamps from James, and one from a friend of mine.

So we know that the time stamps can be accurate. I doubt they always are.

~~ Paul

[CFLarsen]

Which is why we have to rely on the time stamp from the mail form from the web page. :)

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
I can't point to any experimental data. It's kind of from personnal experience, from anecdotes, and what I instinctively feel.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Funny, but I never saw you as a "touchy-feely" guy. Guess I was wrong...

You can't back up your claim, then. OK. Your claim is therefore invalid.



Ummm . . fraid you're gonna have to come up with something better than that! LOL



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Oh it can't be That's because it's real. Science deals with measurements. That's because it deals in a world of unreality
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I hope you are joking. You certainly have been unable to back up your posts!



Of course I'm not joking! I take the minimal task of science to be a process of building mental representational models patterning and ordering our mental experiences (or qualia). If you wish to maintain science amounts to more than that, then I remain to be convinced :)

Our experiences, our raw emotions, the redness of red as experienced etc, none of them can be measured. Yet it is the prime reality from which we know anything at all! ;)

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Ummm . . fraid you're gonna have to come up with something better than that! LOL

Actually, no. You made a claim. You couldn't back it up. It's that simple.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Of course I'm not joking! I take the minimal task of science to be a process of building mental representational models patterning and ordering our mental experiences (or qualia). If you wish to maintain science amounts to more than that, then I remain to be convinced :)

Our experiences, our raw emotions, the redness of red as experienced etc, none of them can be measured. Yet it is the prime reality from which we know anything at all! ;)

Say what?? Is there a translator in the room?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

My wife and I were discussing the email telepathy protocol. Remember, the receiver sends her guess at 9:59, while the sender sends his message at 10:00. Imagine this scenario:

1. Sender's clock says 10:00, so he sends a message to the recipient and the experimenter. His server thinks it's 10:00, so the message is stamped 10:00.

2. Recipient receives the message, but her clock says 2:58. She reads the message.

3. At 2:59, she sends her guess to the experimenter. Her server thinks is 9:59, so the message is stamped 9:59.

If the experimenter doesn't notice the order of arrival of the messages, or they arrive out of order, he won't be able to tell that the recipient cheated.

~~ Paul

[Dogwood]

Guys,

I applaud the initiative here, but I think e-mail or internet based experiments are a horrible idea. There is absolutely no security! Nothing can prevent participants from pming each other here or e-mailing each other seperately to skew results. This was one of my main complaints against Schwartz's Afterlife Watching Experiment.

An experimenter cannot rely on trust. Ever. This is Schwartz's greatest failing in my opinion, and one we cannot risk repeating. As much as I'd love (and I mean absolutely freaking love) to pick up where CSICOP left off with skeptical investigations of paranormal claims, I think this is a really bad idea.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I hear what you're saying, Mark. Unless all five participants are anonymous, there is really no way to stop cheating. I know that Sheldrake wouldn't use anonymous participants, since he thinks the relationship between the participants is important. The same goes for telephone telepathy.

When I thought of this idea, I wasn't intending that we perform a tight, publishable experiment. I was more interested in trying it out to see if we could understand what was really going on.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

A thought just occured to me regarding the telephone experiments. Could the callee pick up clues by noting exactly when the caller called relative to the precise time he was supposed to call?

~~ Paul

[American]

I've been tracking Sheldrake's BS for years. I'd volunteer to help, but I'm too biased.

I'm also temporarily on the outs with most folks around here, all 'cause people didn't like a silly joke I made. That's another matter.

Lastly, I have no idea what Ian is saying, since he's the single person who resides on my ignore-list, but I'm sure he's being completely idiotic. I brought up Sheldrake a year ago, and he was the first one to defend the quack.

[Jeff Corey]

This is too complex. Prelimimary experiments should be as simple as possible. Someone said the n is too small.
Nope. Test one person who claims this ability.
The falsifiable question is, "Can this person tell which one of two people will be calling when the phone rings better than chance using the Binomial test, where p=q=.5?"
Disable the receiver's mike and speaker (to eliminated any leakage) and caller ID.
Only let the phone ring once, in case the patterns mentioned earlier could provide cues.
Draw 50 red and 50 green chips (without replacement) from a blind box to determine who calls next.
After 100 trials, if you get more than 62 hits, I'd be statistically surprized, and ask for some direct replications.

One of the annoying things about feculant pararesearch like Schwatrz's is they are unnecessarily complicated with bells, whistles and EEGs to cover the lack of controls.
Misdirection.

[69dodge]

The paper reports results above chance for familiar callers and at chance for unfamiliar ones. It tries to give the impression that this would be expected on the hypothesis of telepathy, which supposedly is stronger between people familiar to each other. How does that follow? If I am more likely to get a telepathic signal from a familiar caller, then when I don't get such a signal I can conclude that the caller is likely unfamiliar. So I should guess above chance for unfamiliar callers too.

[MRC_Hans]

About the Sheldrake experiments: Apart from the obvious possibilities for fraud, I'm getting more and more suspicious of those statistics. My problem is that wrong guesses are not mapped. I think somebody already mentioned this: If most guesses fall on a one caller, the hit rate for that caller will invariably become high. So they should actually, instead of just counting hits, use the hit/miss rate for guesses on each caller.

Also, there is one more serious flaw in the protocol: Since the identity of the caller is disclosed the the callee every time, then even if a phenomenon WAS disclosed, the test would not be able to tell if it was telepathy, precognition, or combination of those.

Hans

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I reread the entire videotaped experiment paper last night. I see nothing that controls for the passage of information via the difference in times on the clocks of the callers and callee. In fact, there is no mention of clocks at all.

So, to add to Jeff's list:

Employ a mechanism to randomly select when the caller will call, in the range +/- 15 seconds around the official call time.

69dodge, perhaps the callee doesn't realize that "no telepathy" means one of the unfamiliar callers. Perhaps she just guesses randomly when there is no telepathy. Although you'd think she would subconsciously pick up on that pattern.

Hans, they do use the hit/miss ratio when they use the percentage of hits, right? Perhaps I don't understand what you mean.

All psi experiments suffer from not being able to distinguish telepathy, precognitiion, micro-PK, and remote viewing. This will continue until they start testing real theories instead of experiment results.

~~ Paul

[davidsmith73]

Originally posted by American
I've been tracking Sheldrake's BS for years. I'd volunteer to help, but I'm too biased.

I'm also temporarily on the outs with most folks around here, all 'cause people didn't like a silly joke I made. That's another matter.

Lastly, I have no idea what Ian is saying, since he's the single person who resides on my ignore-list, but I'm sure he's being completely idiotic. I brought up Sheldrake a year ago, and he was the first one to defend the quack.


I respect and would defend Sheldrake for his ideas and his courage to oppose convention. Calling someone a "quack" is a rather prejudiced point of view if you judge new ideas to be irrational because they are based on unfamiliar principles.
I wouldn't defend him for sloppy experimentation. Thats a different issue.

[Darat]

Originally posted by davidsmith73



I respect and would defend Sheldrake for his ideas and his courage to oppose convention. Calling someone a "quack" is a rather prejudiced point of view if you judge new ideas to be irrational because they are based on unfamiliar principles.
I wouldn't defend him for sloppy experimentation. Thats a different issue.

What is new about any of the ideas that Sheldrake puts forward?

[JamesM]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Hans, they do use the hit/miss ratio when they use the percentage of hits, right? Perhaps I don't understand what you mean.


I think what Hans and Patnray are getting at is the following question: if telepathy isn't occurring, then is the probability of me guessing any caller 0.25?

I would say that this is by no means assured, especially on the unfamiliar/familiar test. Sue never guessed that either Carole or the BT computer were calling, so there was no chance of her being right on those occasions. This means the guesses that she "should" have been making for Carole and BT were going to someone else - Jayne, it would appear. Thus she gets a high hit-rate for Jayne and a very low one for BT and Carole.

Now, Carole has never met Sue, and obviously Sue has never met the BT computer. Jayne was one of her friends. So: a high hit-rate for a friend and a very low one for an inanimate object and someone she's never met. Evidence that telepathy works best for people you know? Or just evidence that the probability of guessing Carole or BT was lower than that of her friends? To sort out whether this is accounted for in the p-values reported, I'll have to go through the