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The sad, sad nature of Psi Research

Re: Re: Re: The sad, sad nature of Psi Research

Incitatus said:
Long story. In essence, they have said (on their site) that the effects are independent of distance and volition. This makes any kind of meaningful control impossible. Further, an effect that depends upon the holding in abeyence a law of Physics (the inverse square law) requires a bit more support than they have provided.

But, you are presuming that a "law" must apply when the culmination of the research is, perhaps, suggesting that normal "laws" do not apply.

Under your reasoning, no research into this area could ever be satisfactory unless it is within the realms of the current scientific status quo.

They also come up with some rather specious reasoning as when tighter control yield smaller results:

The reasoning may be specious - but the results are still striking. You are judging their work on the basis of "have they explained the results?" On that basis, yes, it all does look a bit dubious.

But, if we are to judge the PEAR research on the level of "does it suggest that there is anomalous data within the realm of psi-experimentation" then we can be a lot happier - their research certainly does suggest that inexplicable results occur.

So, I would suggest that any sense of embarrassment needs to be tempered with a decision as to what one is expecting from the work.
 
Sidebar...

The word 'law' has always bothered me in these arguments, Bilderberger's quoted use being an acceptable one :imo:

There are very few incontraverable truths, only theories which to a greater or lesser degree fit what we commonly see. Therefore to say that something is a basic law of the universe is, at a certain level, wrong, and probably unscientific.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: The sad, sad nature of Psi Research

Originally posted by Bilderberger
But, you are presuming that a "law" must apply when the culmination of the research is, perhaps, suggesting that normal "laws" do not apply.

Under your reasoning, no research into this area could ever be satisfactory unless it is within the realms of the current scientific status quo.

No. Not at all. But positing sea changes based on the evidence to hand puts a major burden on the claiment.



The reasoning may be specious - but the results are still striking. You are judging their work on the basis of "have they explained the results?" On that basis, yes, it all does look a bit dubious.

But if the results are due to poor science, they are not results at all, are they?

But, if we are to judge the PEAR research on the level of "does it suggest that there is anomalous data within the realm of psi-experimentation" then we can be a lot happier - their research certainly does suggest that inexplicable results occur.

Perhaps you could point me to a citation?

So, I would suggest that any sense of embarrassment needs to be tempered with a decision as to what one is expecting from the work.


After 25 years, a hell of a lot more I guess.
 
Point taken about knowingly participating in a flawed proceding - but in the event that perfection is not attainable, surely it is reasonable to do the best with what you have? Integrity demands one acknowledge the flaws, of course; but is not a flawed something better than a flawless nothingness? The imcomplete material we have for much in parapsychology does at least provide the scientist with pointers and the philosopher we grist - hardly a dead loss.

Psi maynot have been definitively demonstrated, but we have enough to merit serious consideration of the implications. If psi is the case, what can we infer about the world and our place within it? Being able to employ that 'if' liberates us to explore those implications without anxiety provided we remind ourselves that it is hypothetical. Nowt wrong with that.

Myself, I think there hasn't been enough sound speculative work in the field - a lot of measuration of varying quality, but little real effort to consider the consequences upon our view of the big picture. In so far as that is true, parapsychology currently lacks the philosophical 'minerals' to fulfil it's brief.
 
If the interpretation of spin parity change in particle pair research ( done in Sweden, i think) is correct, then information (ie the spin direction of one of the pair) can be sent at a speed greater than light and over any distance - independant of the inverse square law for radiation energy. If this is so, then the door is open for all sorts of anomalous events, in the classical scientific view. Of course, we can stick to Einstein's world and deny it or go for a quantum world where the 'weird' is normal but not nescessarily predictable. I'm for the latter. :D
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The sad, sad nature of Psi Research

Incitatus said:
Originally posted by Bilderberger
But, you are presuming that a "law" must apply when the culmination of the research is, perhaps, suggesting that normal "laws" do not apply.

Under your reasoning, no research into this area could ever be satisfactory unless it is within the realms of the current scientific status quo.

No. Not at all. But positing sea changes based on the evidence to hand puts a major burden on the claiment.



The reasoning may be specious - but the results are still striking. You are judging their work on the basis of "have they explained the results?" On that basis, yes, it all does look a bit dubious.

But if the results are due to poor science, they are not results at all, are they?

But, if we are to judge the PEAR research on the level of "does it suggest that there is anomalous data within the realm of psi-experimentation" then we can be a lot happier - their research certainly does suggest that inexplicable results occur.

Perhaps you could point me to a citation?

So, I would suggest that any sense of embarrassment needs to be tempered with a decision as to what one is expecting from the work.


After 25 years, a hell of a lot more I guess.

Again, I can only repeat that you are judging PEAR on its ability to explain its findings. The question is whether scientific data demontrates psi. PEAR has achieved this. Whether their explanations are valid, tenous, bollocks or genius misses the point.

"In 1986 a medical study was conducted in the US to test the effectiveness of aspirin in helping those with heart trouble. Had the researchers restricted their study to 3,000 test subjects they would have found that aspirin was no better than a placebo.

But because they had an unprecedented 22,000 people in the study they discovered almost at once that aspirin had an overwhelmingly powerful curative value -- in fact if you take an aspirin a day it will cut your chance of a heart attack by a massive 45%, almost in half.

The reason for this curious result is that what statisticians call the 'effect size' of aspirin is very small (0.03). Even though aspirin is a lifesaver that is now prescribed automatically to every coronary victim, its effect could not be observed in clinical trials until there was a large enough sample -- and it has taken more than 100 years for the effect to be discovered.

Something very similar appears to be the case with paranormal phenomena. The studies conducted in the past with a few hundred or a few thousand subjects produced marginal results that were not much better than chance expectation -- just like aspirin.

In recent years a new approach called meta-analysis has enabled parapsychologists to combine the results of many different studies to make the aggregate results statistically significant.

Some of the most outstanding results so far have come from meta-analysis of experiments like those carried out by Robert Jahn and Roger Nelson of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) programme at Princeton University, where researchers have accumulated years of statistical trials on microscopically small psychokinetic effects -- known in the jargon of the paranormal business as Micro-PK.

Test subjects are asked to try to consciously influence electronic devices whose output should be random, rather like an electronic version of coin tossing.

In December 1989 Dean Radin of Princeton's Psychology Department and Roger Nelson of the PEAR lab published a paper on the meta-analysis of micro-PK experiments not, as might be expected, in a parapsychology journal but in the respected physics journal Foundations of Physics. Their paper was entitled, 'Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems.' In their analysis, Radin and Nelson tracked down 152 reports describing 597 experimental studies and 235 control studies by 68 different investigators involving the influence of consciousness on microelectronic systems.

Radin and Nelson's studies showed that the aggregate of all these trials dramatically provided powerful evidence for micro-PK. For they found that the odds against the overall result being the result of chance was 1 in 1035.

To understand how unlikely it is that this result was obtained by chance, it is like finding a lottery ticket in the street, finding that it is the winning ticket and you have won first prize of millions -- and then continuing to find the winning lottery in the street every week for a thousand years.

That such findings continue to be dismissed shows more clearly than anything could that the "skeptics" are not evaluating the data with extra care -- they are in denial."

http://www.alternativescience.com/evidence-for-paranormal.htm
 
brian ellwood said:
If the interpretation of spin parity change in particle pair research ( done in Sweden, i think) is correct, then information (ie the spin direction of one of the pair) can be sent at a speed greater than light and over any distance - independant of the inverse square law for radiation energy. If this is so, then the door is open for all sorts of anomalous events, in the classical scientific view. Of course, we can stick to Einstein's world and deny it or go for a quantum world where the 'weird' is normal but not nescessarily predictable. I'm for the latter. :D


Brian,

There are two unfortunate appeals that occur in paranormal research. One is the use of Meta Analysis which is often incorrectly utilized as a way of gaining data points. The key thing to remember here is that bad data does not improve with numbers.

The second is QM. First let me state that I do not pretend to understand it. The two observations that I have are first that QM does not pertain to the macro world. Second, I believe that anyone who invokes this area should be asked, politely, to explain the maths to an understandable degree. Simply taking a snippit out of context is not reasonable. Newton is perfectly fine at one level, Einstein at another and, perhaps QM at a third but appealing to this construct because of it's oddness is specious.

Personally, I'd settle for some solid basic research that demonstrates the existance of an effect before casting about for mechanisms.
 
IIRC QM is largely statisitcal rather than mechanical, it there fore deals in probabilities

Newtonian physics works 'ok' in most situations, but there was alway the infinatessimal error, and also the essential chaos in the three body problem, so to say it works well and 'predicably' in all situations is a generalisation. If it did work fine then relativistic and quantum theories would not have had to have been invented

Usually, on in a 1g gravity field, at 1 atmosphere pressure, in the range of temperatures we see, things are pretty well clustered around the mean of the normal distribution curve. This doesn't mean that that curve doesn't have a far end at either extreme... and to say it doesn't is to place one's fingers in one's ears and go 'la-la-la very loudly...
 
Incitatus said:
There are two unfortunate appeals that occur in paranormal research. One is the use of Meta Analysis which is often incorrectly utilized as a way of gaining data points. The key thing to remember here is that bad data does not improve with numbers.

The second is QM. First let me state that I do not pretend to understand it. The two observations that I have are first that QM does not pertain to the macro world. Second, I believe that anyone who invokes this area should be asked, politely, to explain the maths to an understandable degree.
We use the tools we have to hand to understand the World.

If you don't understand them, Incitatus, then what's the point of criticising others, who attempt to use them to try understand phenomena that, at least, seem to act in similiar ways?

And, as computers increasingly move into the realm of "QM", why shouldn't the discreet phenomena of the mind not also utilise microcosmic phenomena and even physics?

Perhaps the brain is really only an amplifier and processor for other level activities?
 
Gave it some thought... QM effect at the macro-scale, an example. Nearly everytime you sit on a 'solid' surface its hightly unlikely that you'll fall through it. The reason for this is that the probaility of the matter in the object is clumped such that it all is in the same close proximity. Since everything is largely space, the only thing holding your bottom is quantum probability, not Aristotelian atoms. For the real freak out, your bottom is also only a matter probability clump, and nothing else. Atoms from your bottom will tunnel intothe seat, atoms from the seat will tunnel into your bottom. The net mass loss of each object over time is, probably a net zero, but give ot take an atom. Ta-daaaa.
 
Hugo Cornwall said:
Atoms from your bottom will tunnel intothe seat, atoms from the seat will tunnel into your bottom. The net mass loss of each object over time is, probably a net zero, but give ot take an atom. Ta-daaaa.
Ah! The Flann O'Brien 'Third Policeman' Thesis. ;)
 
Diffusion, demonstratable at molecular level, of course. But if, as you say, the clump of atoms making up the shape of your bum is simply a probability cluster then you can sit down on the bicycle saddle millions of times and only exchange a few atoms, but on one occasion statistically, you will fall right through the bloody thing. :D Truly fortean! ( Good old Mr. O'Brien;)
All I'm trying to say is that older physics does not allow such things to happen, but modern theories do have room for this. We may appear to live mostly in a solid physical world most of the time, where things behave predictably (fortunately, or normal day to day functioning gets difficult) but our brain maybe can interact at a micromicro level and influence things at that level on occasion.
 
Brian, that's it in a nut shell. Its called tunnelling. IT would happen more often if planck's constant was one order of magnitude bigger IIRC...
 
Well, some "decent" PSI research at last - or is it?

Feeling The Future: Is Precognition Possible?

Most science papers don’t begin with a description of psi, those “anomalous processes of information or energy transfer” that have no material explanation. (Popular examples of psi include telepathy, clairvoyance and psychokinesis.) It’s even less common for a serious science paper, published in an elite journal, to show that psi is a real phenomenon. But that’s exactly what Daryl Bem of Cornell University has demonstrated in his new paper, “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,” which was just published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bem’s experimental method was extremely straightforward. He took established psychological protocols, such as affective priming and recall facilitation, and reversed the sequence, so that the cause became the effect. For instance, he might show students a long list of words and ask them to remember as many as possible. Then, the students are told to type a selection of words which had been randomly selected from the same list. Here’s where things get really weird: the students were significantly better at recalling words that they would later type.

Or consider this experiment, which is a direct test of precognition. Bems provided the following instructions to subjects:

This is an experiment that tests for ESP. It takes about 20 minutes and is run completely by computer. First you will answer a couple of brief questions. Then, on each trial of the experiment, pictures of two curtains will appear on the screen side by side. One of them has a picture behind it; the other has a blank wall behind it. Your task is to click on the curtain that you feel has the picture behind it. The curtain will then open, permitting you to see if you selected the correct curtain. There will be 36 trials in all. Several of the pictures contain explicit erotic images (e.g., couples engaged in nonviolent but explicit consensual sexual acts). If you object to seeing such images, you should not participate in this experiment.

The location of the image was selected at random by the computer, which means that students should have correctly guessed the location of the pornography 50 percent of the time. However, it turned out that over 100 sessions, the subjects consistently performed above chance, and correctly located the porn 53.1 percent of the time. Interestingly, their hit rate on “non-erotic pictures” did not deviate from chance. (They found neutral pictures, for instance, 49.8 percent of the time.)

The power of Bem’s paper is cumulative. In total, he describes the results of nine different experiments, conducted on more than 1000 subjects. All of the experiments revealed slight yet statistically significant psi anomalies, with an average effect size of 0.21 across all experiments.

However, the real contribution of this paper isn’t even these statistically significant results. Instead, it’s Bem’s attempt to create rigorous, well-controlled tests of psi that can be replicated by independent investigators. Because here is the dirty secret of anomalous phenomena like telepathy and clairvoyance: They’ve been demonstrated dozens of times, often by reputable scientists. (Bem is an extremely well-respected psychologist, best known for his work on self-perception.) Why, then, do serious scientists dismiss the possibility of psi? Why do rational people assume that parapsychology is bullshit? Because these exciting results have consistently failed the test of replication.

And this is why Bem’s paper is so important: It provides the first testable framework for the investigation of anomalous psychological properties. Unlike most tests of psi or ESP, Bem’s research builds upon well-known experimental paradigms, and minimizes the contact between the experimenter and the subject. The data collection was automated and accurate; the paper passed peer-review. (Charles Judd, who oversaw the review process at JPSP, said: “This paper went through a series of reviews from some of our most trusted reviewers.”) Only time will tell if the data holds up. But at least time will tell us something. Bem ends the paper with a reference to Lewis Carroll:

Near the end of her encounter with the White Queen, Alice protests that “one can’t believe impossible things,” a sentiment with which the 34% of academic psychologists who consider psi to be impossible would surely agree. The White Queen famously retorted, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... -possible/
 
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