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New Beischel paper and the hype..

Lukas1986

Critical Thinker
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Joined
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Here is the new paper from Julie Beischel and I want to ask you people what you think of it:

https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/9382034/765267908/name/BeischelEXPLORE2015vol11.pdf

I am quite skeptical of this whole paper but some people are already jumping to conclusions like this:

http://www.skeptiko.com/psychic-medium-tested-under-tightest-labratory-conditions/ or this:

Dr. Julie Beischel’s newly published research on assisted after-death communication sets a new standard of proof, but don’t expect science to change it’s stance on psychic mediums.
Click to expand...

Taken from: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...proven-accurate-what-will-debunkers-say.2541/

I am however quite skeptical after looking at the paper I already found some problems.

1. Problem: The way how the sittings are handled it is that they need a lot interpretation:

Scoring. For the Experiment2 readings,sitters provided
individual scores 13 for each item in each of two readings:a
target and a decoy.Each item received one of the following
scores:
5: Obvious fit (used if the item is a direct or concrete hit
that does not require interpretation to fit)
4: Fit requiring minimal interpretation(used if the item
indirectly applies and needs minimal interpretation or
symbolism to fit)
Click to expand...

Taken from: https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/9382034/765267908/name/BeischelEXPLORE2015vol11.pdf

The score system continues it has 6 points. The second problem is that there are no interviews present in the paper. I found non of them, just the results. I would like to know the actual discussion or readings taking place a transcript of one of those readings would be enough to illustrate the point.

Another problem what I found is that Julie Beischel is using a medium which already failed:

Dave Campbell
Location: Arizona
WCRM Level: 5
www.theastrologystore.com
Click to expand...

Taken from: http://www.windbridge.org/mediums.htm

Here is his failure from what I read: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223030

So I this is what I found in a quick google search and which leaves me skeptical of this whole "study" besides the fact that it is in a journal for spirituality and alternative medicine - Explore. Those who want can read the study and tell me what they have found because I just read it in a hurry. Thanks for reading this and have a nice day.
 
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Beischel is simply copying the methods of Schwartz and Hyman took those apart years ago. The man is 87 now but he was at TAM this year and I wonder if he'd bother to look at this too. Anyone might as well look up Hyman's responses to Schwartz's research and you'd probably have the exact same rebuttals.

They give out the first name to the medium, and then let them ask 5 questions where the sitter can answer yes, no, I don't know, maybe, sort of? That's incredibly naive! Don't they understand anything that skeptics have been saying all these years about cold reading?

They actually use the words "quintuple blinding" in a serious way. That's hilarious! I googled it to see if anyone else in the history of the world ever used such a silly phrase

My research lab is adopting the quintuple blind experimental standard - now noone knows what we're investigating, how to approach it or why we're there in the first place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fifthworld...research_lab_is_adopting_the_quintuple_blind/
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Sums it up pretty well in my books...

How does the decoy reading work? We aren't told...

Every sane person in the world realizes one thing without doubt; If mediums could really get this information from the dead, the information would be better, more accurate, and none of this retarded mathematics would be necessary. It'd be like the psychic Turing test, you'd just know for sure you were talking to a real person because they could tell you literally everything about themselves. No we have to give them a name, allow them to ask questions, and talk about statistics. It's not believable.

You know what? I don’t care. This is a replication study. We’ve shown that it occurs twice now in two different population of mediums, and we’re the Windbridge Institute for Applied Research. At the end of the day we care about how this affects people’s daily lives. And we’ve talked about grief and the possible effect of mediumship readings on the bereaved.
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Hey you know what? I do care. I care about the effect of mediums on the bereaved as well. Just as much as you do. And you're going around encouraging people to spend money on delusional psychics distorting the memory of their loved ones by giving them false hope and comfort, they can't actually connect through the mediums you promote, they don't actually get reliable information. Just look at the endless stories of people who have realized later that they were duped by psychics. Poor mothers going to dozens of psychics over the years trying to find a better connection. This is really harmful, and your crappy study has done nothing to improve the situation.
 
It's pretty clear to me the mediums aren't talking to the dead at all. No one can do that. They are just using telepathy on the living subjects.
 
Interesting that Beischel - says that 'discarnate' rather than 'deceased individual' is used for 'for ease of exposition but not implying independent volition or survival of consciousness', yet in the experiment, the question: '5. Does the discarnate have any specific messages for the sitter?' is asked, with corresponding scope for Barnum Statements. This seems to be an explicit implication 'independent volition or survival of consciousness'. One also wonders how responses to that question can or should be scored...

Another point about the scoring caught my eye - in 'Hits vs Misses', they used the two highest scores, 5 & 4, ('obvious fit' & 'fit requiring minimal interpretation', respectively) for the hits, and the lowest meaningful score, 1 - 'No fit' for the misses, in the analysis of the results. However, above score 1 was score 2: 'Other fit (used if the item does not fit the named discarnate or the rater, but does fit someone else that the rater is/was close to and that is likely to be the subject of the statement)'. It strikes me that a significant number of misses are likely to match score 2, as it is quite likely that a random statement about someone will match someone you feel you are 'close' to, particularly if you feel 'close' to a wide circle of people. This is likely to significantly reduce the number of score 1's, reducing the effect of misses in the analysis. And by dropping score 3: 'Fit requiring more than minimal interpretation', they're also dropping another set of misses. Without knowing how many score 3s and 2s were dropped from the analysis, it's hard to say how much effect this had.
 
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It is rather remarkable that the deceased never seem to give these mediums the sort of information that you'd think they would be eager to transmit:

"Tell my wife I hid the money under the garden gnome in the back yard."

"It was that jerk brother-in-law of mine that shot me...Arrest that fool!"

You know, the juicy stuff.
 
Bikewer said:
It is rather remarkable that the deceased never seem to give these mediums the sort of information that you'd think they would be eager to transmit:

"Tell my wife I hid the money under the garden gnome in the back yard."

"It was that jerk brother-in-law of mine that shot me...Arrest that fool!"

You know, the juicy stuff.
Click to expand...

They probably just don't want to start any trouble.
 
Donn said:
They're waiting for personal discarnate revenge. It's sweeter.
Click to expand...

That would suck. A line of pre-deceased waiting to thump you when you die. No wonder people instinctively fear death.

But there's probably a long list of things about the afterlife the dead don't mention to the living. Like the complete lack of decent footwear. Or that the cable sucks. Or the irritating, constant background buzzing. Or... Death II, the afterlife's afterlife.

Surprise!
 
marplots said:
But there's probably a long list of things about the afterlife the dead don't mention to the living. Like the complete lack of decent footwear. Or that the cable sucks. Or the irritating, constant background buzzing. Or... Death II, the afterlife's afterlife.

Surprise!
Click to expand...

Afterafterlife. The Rerevengeaning.
 
dlorde said:
Interesting that Beischel - says that 'discarnate' rather than 'deceased individual' is used for 'for ease of exposition but not implying independent volition or survival of consciousness', yet in the experiment, the question: '5. Does the discarnate have any specific messages for the sitter?' is asked, with corresponding scope for Barnum Statements. This seems to be an explicit implication 'independent volition or survival of consciousness'. One also wonders how responses to that question can or should be scored...

Another point about the scoring caught my eye - in 'Hits vs Misses', they used the two highest scores, 5 & 4, ('obvious fit' & 'fit requiring minimal interpretation', respectively) for the hits, and the lowest meaningful score, 1 - 'No fit' for the misses, in the analysis of the results. However, above score 1 was score 2: 'Other fit (used if the item does not fit the named discarnate or the rater, but does fit someone else that the rater is/was close to and that is likely to be the subject of the statement)'. It strikes me that a significant number of misses are likely to match score 2, as it is quite likely that a random statement about someone will match someone you feel you are 'close' to, particularly if you feel 'close' to a wide circle of people. This is likely to significantly reduce the number of score 1's, reducing the effect of misses in the analysis. And by dropping score 3: 'Fit requiring more than minimal interpretation', they're also dropping another set of misses. Without knowing how many score 3s and 2s were dropped from the analysis, it's hard to say how much effect this had.
Click to expand...

Although a good criticism, I think it goes away provided you compare your data set to the blank (no actual reading performed) condition. Proper blinding and a control group ought to make the objection moot, because any structural skew would show up in the control as well as the test arm. (With the usual stipulations about number of participants and all things being equal, blah, blah, blah.)

You might still argue that an actual effect was magnified by the procedure, but then we've passed into an "actual effect" territory.
 
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marplots said:
It's pretty clear to me the mediums aren't talking to the dead at all. No one can do that. They are just using telepathy on the living subjects.
Click to expand...
They controlled for this, it's part of the quintuple blind protocol.
 
Bikewer said:
It is rather remarkable that the deceased never seem to give these mediums the sort of information that you'd think they would be eager to transmit:

"Tell my wife I hid the money under the garden gnome in the back yard."

"It was that jerk brother-in-law of mine that shot me...Arrest that fool!"

You know, the juicy stuff.
Click to expand...
Psychic medium vigilantes: people who talk to the dead and take revenge on their behalf. Part The Punisher, part The Ghost Whisperer. You all know I could make millions with this TV show idea.
 
Lukas1986 said:
Here is the new paper from Julie Beischel and I want to ask you people what you think of it:

https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/9382034/765267908/name/BeischelEXPLORE2015vol11.pdf

I am quite skeptical of this whole paper but some people are already jumping to conclusions like this:

http://www.skeptiko.com/psychic-medium-tested-under-tightest-labratory-conditions/ or this:



Taken from: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...proven-accurate-what-will-debunkers-say.2541/

I am however quite skeptical after looking at the paper I already found some problems.

1. Problem: The way how the sittings are handled it is that they need a lot interpretation:



Taken from: https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/9382034/765267908/name/BeischelEXPLORE2015vol11.pdf

The score system continues it has 6 points. The second problem is that there are no interviews present in the paper. I found non of them, just the results. I would like to know the actual discussion or readings taking place a transcript of one of those readings would be enough to illustrate the point.

Another problem what I found is that Julie Beischel is using a medium which already failed:



Taken from: http://www.windbridge.org/mediums.htm

Here is his failure from what I read: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223030

So I this is what I found in a quick google search and which leaves me skeptical of this whole "study" besides the fact that it is in a journal for spirituality and alternative medicine - Explore. Those who want can read the study and tell me what they have found because I just read it in a hurry. Thanks for reading this and have a nice day.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the link to this interesting study.
Here's my two cents:
The basic study is design is good, especially exp 1 and 2 where the medium is given only a first name as a target, the sitter is not involved in the reading at all, and the experimenter asks set questions and knows nothing about the target corpse. The sitter is given two readings, "matched" by some "objective" means, and is asked to pick the one that applies to their enquiry. (I don't think the matching really matters as long as the two are the same sex, because the medium is given only a first name.)

That being said, the set questions have some problems; some are objective (cause of death and physical appearance in life) and the other three are open ended and perfect fodder for cold reading and interpretation by the sitter. There is no differentiation between these in analysis. How often does a medium get the cause of death and physical features correct? They don't bother to say.

In experiment 1 the sitters give a percentage "estimate" of the overall accuracy. This is a useless number pulled out of the AIR, but is evaluated using a parametric statistic. Interestingly the target reading is rated as 37% accurate, the incorrect matched reading is rated 24% accurate, on average.

In experiment 1 the correct reading was selected in 17/27 cases, not significantly different from chance, even with one tailed statistic they used.

In experiment 2, there are some problems. There were 40 readings, but only 31 "usable" responses from sitters. 12 of the readings were done with the experimenter running an EEG on the medium during the reading, therefore present in the room, and the questions were elaborated with sub questions. Clearly these 12 are a different experimental protocol, but have been lumped together with the other 28 readings to make a total of 40. Was this intended from the start, or was this a post hoc decision? What happened to the other 9 readings? Were they all from the initial 28, or are some of the missing readings from the set of 12 with EEG?

In this experiment 2, 21/31 correct readings were chosen. This is reported as p=.04 in a one tailed test, but the p will be double that in a two tailed test. The authors claim that the one tailed test is appropriate because sitters would chose the correct reading more often than the decoy. My opinion is that the null hypothesis should be that the sitters choice will be random, hence a two tailed test would be appropriate, this gives a p=07 in a binomial statistic. In short I have reservations about this experiment and it's analysis.

The analysis of the readings using the 5 point scale is also problematic as you point out. Given how cold readings work, the response number 1, No Fit, would be unusual. The typical vague platitudes in a cold reading will fall into numbers 2,3, and 4, and by the rare correct guess 5. Just by the nature of cold reading statement there won't be many No Fits, which is essentially what the statistics show.

It is interesting that in the preliminary study sitters rated the readings around 4, while in the blinded studies the global scores average less than 3 (enough correct information to establish contact with the corpse).

I remain unconvinced.
 
Thanks for your two cents MuDPhuD and everyone else who had a look at it. Thanks a lot. I will also read the study in more detail when I have the free time to do so, but for now I just don't thanks to work.
 
marplots said:
Although a good criticism, I think it goes away provided you compare your data set to the blank (no actual reading performed) condition. Proper blinding and a control group ought to make the objection moot, because any structural skew would show up in the control as well as the test arm. (With the usual stipulations about number of participants and all things being equal, blah, blah, blah.)

You might still argue that an actual effect was magnified by the procedure, but then we've passed into an "actual effect" territory.
Click to expand...
Yes, you're probably right - I just noticed the apparent discarding of valid data during the analysis, which is a red flag for me.
 
Found a new red flag for me when it comes to Beischel and her work in general. She is has a strong motivation for the paranormal to be true:

Like a lot of people at the conference, Beischel's interest in the afterlife was precipitated by a death, in this case her mother, who committed suicide when Beischel was in grad school.
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Taken from: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlo...de-to-afterlife-awareness/Content?oid=2503767

Here are her own words about it:

How did you become interested in psychical research and mediumship?

“Science has always been in my blood, but it was always the more traditional sciences. I didn’t even know what a medium was until questions about the afterlife showed up in my backyard. When my mother committed suicide when I was 24, I turned to science for the answers to my questions. Through a series of interesting “coincidences,” I was able to begin performing survival and mediumship research after I received my PhD in 2003 and I have been doing so ever since. I quickly discovered that there was something interesting going on and a lot of research questions that still needed answers.”
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Taken from: http://www.ascsi.org/feat/life_after/julie_beischel_interview.php

I think this shows her commitment why she wants it to be true.

Also she is a believer in astrology:

She invested heavily in her personal experiences and actually mentioned her belief in astrology.
Click to expand...

Taken from: http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/the_excluded_middle_a_skeptic_explores_the_extraordinary/

So I would be careful to believe in her research.
 
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