Well, a definition of psi would I suppose talk about events that appear to run counter to contemporary concepts of physics and psychology. Obviously this would change as science develops and culture changes. There are many places and cultures where contemporary views accept and employ psi without any contradiction. I am not going to start quoting individual studies (and I suspect you would in any case find some reason to quibble or find reasons not to accept the results)
You may not like it, but a vital part of reading any scientific study or paper is to read it 'critically' (i.e. to actively question the premises and statements therein to see if they stand scrutiny) and question the methods and results.
The writer (or the hypothesis proposer) has to make their case.
As the Royal Society motto (paraphrased) goes "Take no one's word for it".
Otherwise you're just believing what other people are saying.
but I seem to recall a meta analysis of just about all available studies of remote viewing that generates values of p that are all but zero.
Point me at that study, do, that rather suggests "all the remote viewing worked". That would be an earth shattering result, especially if repeatable.
I think the real difference between our viewpoints is that I have through much of my life experienced many "psi" (for want of a better term) events and so they are part of my background and as I know that they have happened I don't have to worry about "proving" it or finding evidence for it.
That's the whole point right there. So much work has confirmed that people are susceptible to misinterpretation of events, due to a whole range of cognitive biases (all well demonstrated and verified), never mind false memories, that believing 'something' is true because 'something' happened to you has no empirical weight at all and is on the same level as believing in [insert deity of choice here] because you believe you saw a statue move once.
You're welcome to believe something yourself and you may not feel the need to prove it to or for yourself, but you don't get to state your personal beliefs as facts on that basis, without said beliefs being challenged and rightly so.
But my impression is that the people who research such things have moved on from that anyway, and are (thankfully) getting more interested in a wider range of hypotheses about how and why it works.
Sure, but a hypothesis is just that. It's repeatable results that support or don't support. Otherwise, it's just an interesting idea, story or coincidence.
My own personal view is that 99% of such events happen spontaneously and that attempts to control them (which is what experimentation demands) will be unsuccessful. You can only try to simulate situations which might promote psi and there is no guarantee it will work.
That's a convenient view (for you) as is means that rigorous studies that show no support for a hypothesis in any such area can be conveniently ignored.
That's the basis of a belief system, not a scientific theory.
(For ethical reasons certain methods of control should be disallowed.)
Well that's true. For example experiments (e.g. French, Haque, Bunton-Stasyshyn Davis: "The “Haunt” Project") , trying to ascertain whether certain conditions cause people to think they are seeing ghosts, by necessity, to avoid priming the subjects, may not state this is the object, but ethically one can't scare the pants off them either as this is also unethical.
You don't speak for me.
99% of scientific research is not subjected to the kind of ultracritical analysis that you would want to apply to psi.
Yes it is. That's the whole point of critical evaluation of papers and studies. It's part of the training, as it were.
I think any reasonable person with no particular bias would regard the evidence for psi as pretty convincing.
Any reasonable person with a modicum of critical thought and an understanding of the scientific method would find otherwise.
I think Reddish's work is good and important.
I think it's bunk. Other well-known scientists, who's reputation is sound, think the same.
For a retired man in his 70s and 80s, working mostly on his own, he has explained a lot that seemed puzzling about dowsing and pointed the way for people with more time and resources to conduct the kinds of more intensive research that you might find convincing. If nobody -- not the new age dowsers, nor critics, nor open-minded scientists -- has taken up the challenge, I think that tells us a lot about contemporary science. Maybe the MoD have found someone else to follow his lead in a quiet and discreet way, and it is possible that the members of his informal group are still conducting work in this area. I hope so, because he made a real breakthrough, and it deserves to be extended.
No, he really hasn't.
I've read some of this work, after you pointed me to them and they prove nothing. It's awful to say so, but they are poor science by any standards.