tkingdoll
I have a question if you don't mind me asking it here rather than on your blog: How many parapsychologists, in your experience, are believers?
Most parapsychologists are believers. They're not a completely homogeneous group and you have a few sceptics (like Richard Wiseman and Chris French) who aren't really parapsychologists, but interested psychologists. The rest of them working in academic parapsychology are pretty much certain of the reality of the phenomena.
And how much of that belief (if there is any) leads to bad science?
This is from my PhD:
I tested over five hundred participants in some eleven empirical tests, none of which provide evidence for any kind of paranormal functioning. Moreover what results are obtained highlight both the difficulty in conducting parapsychological research, and the responsibility of researchers to not make strong claims on the basis of weak evidence. Personal belief and previous paranormal experience appear to be strong motivating factors for parapsychologists.
In summary, parapsychology is identified as a thinly veiled theistic pursuit (one that’s very purpose is to provide evidence for a soul or spirit, and ultimately a god). Religion’s claims are regularly dismissed outright by science and the final argument is made that a similar attitude should prevail in the case of parapsychology. There may be many things that we do not, as a species, understand about the universe, but it does not permit a leap of faith to believing paranormal claims.
Ersby
That ganzfeld thing you were invloved in. Are there any further details? Was that the one investigating the experimenter effect?
Yes it was. There are a couple of in progress reports in the literature, but the final study has not been finished or published.
And how many experiments would you say ended up unpublished in the time you were there? Do you think this is a widespread or uncommon practice?
I would say that having students running informal parapsychology studies is fairly common and that only the successful studies really get reported. This does lead to a biased opinion.
And will we be able to read your phd thesis when it's done? It sounds interesting.
Is it interesting? I conclude that there's nothing really going on. I think that I would have preferred to read it, than research and write it. But such was my lot. I'm going to post snippets on my blog, which will hopefully be less of a chore to read.
davidsmith73
I was going to ask you this on your blog site but I thought it would be better here since we're all together.
Do you still think that your precognitive habituation/boredom replication attempt produced results worthy of further study, as you seem to express in the paper?Or are you now inclined to explain them as chance findings?
It seems to me that the results were quite promising. Perhaps a larger study would achieve significant results?
I ask because I think the Bem experiments look very promising in terms of producing a replicable effect. I think its a shame that someone like yourself, who was in the position to perform replication attempts, has not taken this line of inquiry forward (or perhaps you have but I've not seen the paper).
I suggest you look up my last publication in the SPR journal (Savva, Roe & Smith, 2006. Further testing of the precognitive habituation effect using spider stimuli). It outlines 2 precognitive habituation studies which I ran and which were not successful. That is one of the reasons I gave up parapsychology. I was involved in 3 PH studies (and many more other para studies) and looking over the results with sceptical eyes I realised that the evidence was very poor. Also mentioned in the SPR paper is the fact that an anonymous referee mentions 3 large unsuccessful PH studies that they had conducted and not published. Looking at the PH area with that new information, you have a few successful studies and potentially more unsuccessful studies.
But more than that. My entire PhD was an empirical test of precognition and I did not find any good evidence for believing in the paranormal. What I did discover is that human beings don't really understand concepts like chance and randomness, and they like to make patterns and links between random events in their lives.
My position now is that parapsychology is not science and should be dismissed outright. People like James Randi exist to test the nut cases and kooks and if any psychic superstars go on to win the million, then science would be interested in testing them. But I'm not going to hold my breath!
Hope this answers all of the question.
Obviously not:
I was wondering why you used supraliminal rather than subliminal exposures for the follow up 2005 study?
This is a technical issue. Getting subliminal exposure on CRT computer monitors is very difficult. Bem didn't necessarily use subliminal, just very quick. There are a few other technical issues with the whole area. I wouldn't get too excited. If we could easily show a precognitive paranormal effect using the technique, I would've found it!
