Journal’s Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage

[groovedaddy]

One of psychology’s most respected journals has agreed to publish a paper presenting what its author describes as strong evidence for extrasensory perception, the ability to sense future events.

The decision may delight believers in so-called paranormal events, but it is already mortifying scientists. Advance copies of the paper, to be published this year in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have circulated widely among psychological researchers in recent weeks and have generated a mixture of amusement and scorn.

The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects.

Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

[Raster]

1. Shine the light...

:kick:

[Kceres]

7. Somehow I knew you were going to say that. n/t

[Raster]

22. Ha Ha Ha...and I knew you knew that.

:rofl:

[meow mix]

2. dr peter venkman nt

[Orsino]

3. As skeptical as I am...

...this quote bugs me: "So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed. But more are in the works, Dr. Bem said, adding, “I have received hundreds of requests for the materials” to conduct studies." There's not a word about the different controls these alleged efforts might have undertaken, or sample size.

Coverage of this story has been vague, as is typical in science reporting. I could wish that journalists might get even a tiny bit more of their fucking act together before submitting their reports. While I'm confident that Bem's results won't be reproducible, I think the take-down should be careful.

[TalkingDog]

5. "I think the take-down should be careful."

Thank you.

It's science people. Not politics, not religion. SCIENCE. Act like fucking adults please.

[TalkingDog]

4. Okay how to say this nicely.

"others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review"

Fundamentalist thinking much?

You haven't seen the damned study. Read it, study it, find the freakin' flaws. THEN you are allowed to complain..... AFTER you show how and why it is flawed.

It's people like this that make lay people distrust the scientific "agenda".

[BadgerKid]

6. See if they go after James Randi's $1M Paranormal Challenge. n/t

[Speck Tater]

9. Randi has already admitted that he will move the goalpost as far as needed...

...to prevent anyone from every winning his fraudulent "challenge". He has already declared that he will never pay out the challenge money no matter who presents what evidence. Why? Because he "knows" it's not possible. And he has the gall to call his prejudice "science"?

[qazplm]

10. well I dont "know" that it's impossible

but I really really really strongly believe it is not possible...because it would violate some basic laws of physics.

I generally tend to have a high level of skepticism of any phenomena that require a rewriting of basic tenets of physics.

[Speck Tater]

13. People often say "It would violate the laws of physics" without ever says WHICH laws.

It smacks of a fundamentalist saying that evolution violates the laws of God. It's a statement without any real content.

Personally, I'm on the fence. As far as I'm concerned the parapsychologists haven't proven their case and the skeptics haven't proven theirs. I've followed both side closely for years, but I canceled my subscription to Skeptical Inquirer after I got sick of seeing how much sloppy bad science they published to "debunk" claims they didn't believe in.*

When both sides in an argument resort to sloppy science to prove their point I lose respect for both sides. I refuse to believe the parapsychologists and I refuse to believe the hard-core skeptics because both so an unacceptable amount of bias in their published work.

* I recall an article in Skeptical Inquirer that "disproved" Rupert Shelldrake's theory of "morphic resonance" by showing that a computer failed to run faster and faster if it kept solving the same problem over and over. Now I don't for a minute believe in Shelldrake's nonsense, but nor do I believe a "scientist" who thinks that the constant speed of a quartz crystal in a computer clock circuit disproves morphic resonance. The theory may be nonsense, but Skeptical Inquirer's debunking of the theory was even bigger nonsense. Junk science is junk science whether done by "true believers" or hard-core debunkers. Randi is a hard-core debunker, not a scientist.

For more info on the challenge read: The Myth of the Million Dollar Challenge and some links to other information: About the James Randi Million dollar challenge

Some snippets from various author's links found at the second link:

"They call themselves the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. In fact, they are a group of would-be de-bunkers who bungled their major investigation, falsified the results, covered up their errors and gave the boot to a colleague (Dennis Rawlins) who threatened to tell the truth."

"One of the things going against the challenge is that it’s hard to apply and to get to the part where you actually have to prove something. In the review of the FAQ Prescott shows various parts of the challenge that demonstrate the nature of the prize offer, where some claims are not even considered because they are being pre-decided as being false claims."

Sean describes how his question about the nature of the Million dollars (offered in some kind of bonds) was left unanswered and his correspondence with the foundation was edited to remove foul language of the foundation’s representative and an email which he never wrote was posted on the forum as being written by him. This is a very interesting evidence of how hard it is to apply and how the foundation treats the applicants. Read Beware Pseudo-Skepticism.

"Although on the popular media scene many magicians-such as the Amazing Randi have claimed that they can duplicate parapsychological effects using magic tricks, they have consistently been unable or unwilling to do so under controlled laboratory conditions"

[qazplm]

19. no they give examples all of the time

google is your friend.

But let me suggest to you the very meaning of the word extra-sensory, it means something outside of any sense we ordinarily possess. It's akin to magic bottom line. Because if it were simply a sense that we possessed but didn't recognize, such as the feeling of being watched being due to the release and reception of a pheromone then it wouldn't be "extra" sensory.

There is no known physics that allows light particles to leave a closed room from across the planet and make it all the way to the brain of a remote viewer, nor is there any physics to suggest that future events can send particles back in time which then interact with a human being that allows them to see what that event is whether it is a future calamity or what a card will be before it is turned over.
In fact, there aren't even any real hypothesis as to how or what the physics might be of these "phenomena" just simply anecdotal arguments.

It does not require a "hard-core skeptic" to be skeptical of something that has no proposed mechanism of operation and never stands up to controlled experiment or any kind of detailed investigation.
So you can't ever prove it happens and you can't explain how it would work if it did happen...and yet you are on the fence?

Pretty hard for skeptics to "prove" ESP and it's progeny don't exist. Proving a negative is a bit, well, difficult. But yes, based on what we know, pretty much every part of ESP would have to rewrite some law of physics, introduce new particles, change what we know about the transmission of information, and probably time travel and the speed of life, as well as biologically how we operate.

I could care less if some famous debunker is or is not scientifically strict in their debunking, I can see for myself that there is no science and no evidence behind ESP et al.

[FiveGoodMen]

12. Link? Or retraction?

[Speck Tater]

14. Link in the post above

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=74855&mesg_id=74871

[Orsino]

23. Link contains misinformation.

The terms of the challenge state that the criteria for success/failure are agreed upon by the claimant and JREF before a final test.

I've never seen this debunked. As for the rest of the info at that link, it does not make the case for any goalposts having been moved.

[Speck Tater]

15. Here's an author that says it like it is

"But, I believe Randi’s offer is a scam. And, I will say why I believe it to be so, in very simple terms.

First of all, there is no doubt that Randi has used his alleged offer – over a period of many years – to generate enormous publicity for himself and his cult of debunkers.

Second of all, Randi’s offer sets himself up as judge and jury. And, of course, he has not the slightest interest in losing the very game that he has created. A true prize would have an independent panel of neutral judges – and these judges, not Randi, should be in control of prize money, to determine if and when it shall be released.

So while James Randi and his cult go around accusing the general public of falling for a wide variety of psychic scams, they themselves are engaged in perpetrating a scam of an equal and opposite sort. The final irony is that they are the very near a mirror image of the phonies they try to expose.

As long as they set about exposing the true frauds and schemes in the psychic world, they do the world a service. And, I applaud Randi and his ilk for that. But, in their fanatical zeal, they sometimes endeavor to put a stop to legitimate scientific and academic inquiry. (I know this, first hand, as they attempted to interfere with my own doctoral degree program in parapsychology at the University of California, Berkeley.) When they go this far, as they did with Brenda Dunne, they simply reveal the philosophical and moral emptiness of their position."

--Jeffrey Mishlove

[FiveGoodMen]

16. I see an opinion.

I see no reason to believe that is "like it is".

[Speck Tater]

17. Moot point. Randi announced in Jan 2008 that the challenge would be canceled in Jan 2010

So it's all over with anyway.

http://boingboing.net/2008/01/08/end-of-skeptic-james.html

[FiveGoodMen]

18. That I'm aware of.

[BadgerKid]

21. News to me (or I long forgot). Thanks for the heads-up! n/t

[Orsino]

24. News to me, too. Thanks, Speck Tater!

However, the "tells it like it is" seems to contain nothing more than vague suspicion unsupported by evidence.

[bananas]

27. Randi lost the bet in 2007 and didn't pay up

"James Randi loses million dollar challenge"
"Someone has discovered the contents of James Randi's safe using mental powers."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x116921

[Boojatta]

29. Link?

[Canuckistanian]

8. Replicate, replicate, replicate

Then publish the results.

[Orsino]

26. And IF you can replicate...

...then set about playing with various controls until you begin to get an idea of what it is you're actually measuring.

You don't leap to telepathy as an explanation.

[VeryConfused]

11. I had already sensed this was going to happen

[dimbear]

20. I have a profound psychological truth to offer. It is that

students like to screw with their professors minds. This turned out to be the most likely explanation of the results of J. B. Rhine.

[somone]

25. Not the Journal of Irreproducible Results?

[Thor_MN]

28. Did I mention that I'm invisible, but only when no one is looking at me?

[groovedaddy]

30. Psychic Rewards - interesting piece from the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/opinion/09romm.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

[groovedaddy]

31. And still more...from ny times editorial

“I was delighted that this ESP paper was accepted in a mainstream science journal, because it brought this whole subject up again,” said James Berger, a statistician at Duke University. “I was on a mini-crusade about this 20 years ago and realized that I could devote my entire life to it and never make a dent in the problem.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/11esp.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

[Ian David]

32. Here's the footage from the experiment... forward to 24 seconds into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn7-JZq0Yxs