Moderated Is the Telekinesis Real?

[aleCcowaN]

The hemorrhoid?

Dang! We thought it was the varicocele!

Poor Buddha made a major statistics gaffe in not being able to constitute the dependent variable properly -- at all -- in any of the experiments from Jahn, his colleagues, or critics. That's a show-stopper right there. He made an additional physics gaffe in thinking the Fraunhofer model of diffraction generally produces a single-node bell curve of intensity from a single slit. (Hint: it doesn't.)

He didn't look at the curve queues very carefully before realizing his blunder (Or maybe he'll try another "Heisenberg moment" to justify his mediocrity)

You can see why Buddha is desperately trying to press on. He's trying to distract from those unrecoverable failures by doing his customary drive-by bluster on new material. He never addresses the responses to the drive-bys, at least not in any material way. It reminds me of the time Bart Sibrel tried to take questions at a screening of his film. Each person got exactly one question and no follow-ups, so that there was no chance to expose the hogwash answer Sibrel gave for each question.

Same deal here. The Palmer book (it's a book-length review of then-current research, written for the U.S. Army) is his straw man. He trash-talks Palmer on point after point, addressing the content only to say how meager it is compared to his own superior intellect. Or, these days, he just quotes a bit of Palmer and then writes some irrelevant ad hominem slur at one of his critics. As soon as there's any meaningful discussion that he can't bluff his way past, he comes up with some excuse -- he doesn't have time, or his critics are too stupid and therefore not worth his attention.

Well, he hasn't set course apart from his main strategy from the very beginning: choosing carefully selected small parts of carefully selected works he has some sort of excuse thought about. But he's even so bad a such comfortable tactic that it all resolves in bad mouthing those authors and finally in diminishing his owners"opponents".

Thank Darwin that he still have some imaginary mathematicians and poker winning friends, some imaginary French cognac, some imaginary previous lives, some imaginary superior intellect, and the rest of things that make his inner front tolerable.

 

[JayUtah]

He didn't look at the curve queues very carefully before realizing his blunder...

It's a more basic matter of simply knowing what diffraction is and what causes it. You don't have to be intimately acquainted with the Frauhofer model for it, but you do have to know that a diffraction pattern and a normal probability distribution are fundamentally different kinds of things even if both, when visualized, look somewhat bell-shaped. To see something that's clearly labeled as the intensity plot of Fraunhofer diffraction and claim it to be a normal probability distribution -- I struggle to think of an analogy that captures sufficiently the pure ineptitude of such a claim.

Or maybe he'll try another "Heisenberg moment" to justify his mediocrity.

That was certainly a moment. "Here, let me drop this name that clearly doesn't apply, so so you can hear me say it doesn't apply. See how much smarter I am than the other guy?"

..choosing carefully selected small parts of carefully selected works he has some sort of excuse thought about. But he's even so bad a such comfortable tactic...

It's not just Debate Theatre, it's bad Debate Theatre. Jabba at least managed to be somewhat droll. This is just pathetically off-putting.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

It's a more basic matter of simply knowing what diffraction is and what causes it. You don't have to be intimately acquainted with the Frauhofer model for it, but you do have to know that a diffraction pattern and a probability distribution are fundamentally different kinds of things even if both, when visualized, look somewhat bell-shaped. To see something that's clearly labeled as the intensity plot of Fraunhofer diffraction and claim it to be a probability distribution -- I struggle to think of an analogy that captures sufficiently the pure ineptitude of such a claim.

Seeing the profile of a car and thinking it's the plot of air drag from the wind tunnel test?

 

[JayUtah]

Seeing the profile of a car and thinking it's the plot of air drag from the wind tunnel test?

No, it's closer to seeing the plans for the wind tunnel and thinking it's the plot of air drag from testing a car.

I should clarify that a diffraction pattern is a de facto probability distribution, just not a normal distribution. A probability distribution can literally be any shape of curve. A normal distribution is bell-shaped. Conversely not all bell-shaped curves are normal probability distributions.

 

[Pooneil]

You know, replies must adapt to the receiver's abilities.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's a more basic matter of simply knowing what diffraction is and what causes it. You don't have to be intimately acquainted with the Frauhofer model for it, but you do have to know that a diffraction pattern and a normal probability distribution are fundamentally different kinds of things even if both, when visualized, look somewhat bell-shaped. To see something that's clearly labeled as the intensity plot of Fraunhofer diffraction and claim it to be a normal probability distribution -- I struggle to think of an analogy that captures sufficiently the pure ineptitude of such a claim.

I was being sarcastic about the queues. As you say, the matter here is the plain fact that """"Buddha"""" never pays attention to the variables.

Let's suppose that a Fraunhofer diffraction plot renders something virtually indistinguishable from a Gaussian bell-curve, like it will be the case with a plane wave diffracted through an aperture with a Gaussian profile (I mentioned this before). The fundamental thing is that Fraunhofer's is plotting intensity as a function of the left-right position related to the slit, while a Gaussian applied to the normal distribution plots the probability density as a function of the normalized variable.

Furthermore, Fraunhofer's plots a real physical effect while the Gaussian (for a normal distribution) plots an abstraction that only makes practical sense once it is integrated -good luck doing that if not numerically or using series; that's why tables are used- with the total "area" below Fraunhofer's being the total energy of the beam while the total area below the bell-curve is "certainty" (a 100% probability that the normalized variable X will take any possible value).

Fraunhoffer one-slit diffraction vs Gaussian aperture diffraction:

 

[JayUtah]

The fundamental thing is that Fraunhofer's is plotting intensity as a function of the left-right position related to the slit, while a Gaussian applied to the normal distribution plots the probability density as a function of the normalized variable.

Or, as I said, two completely different kinds of things. But in a strictly pedantic sense, the diffraction intensity graph could be considered proportional to the empirically-determined probability that the next photon fired down the line will land on a certain sensor element (i.e., the x-axis of the Fraunhofer plot). You'd integrate from the left side of the pixel to the right to get that probability, but you'd have to figure out how to normalize or transform the y-axis units.

 

[Loss Leader]

This thread has been put on Moderated status due to consistent insulting language in violation of Rules 0 and 12. Please remember that any post submitted must comply with the Membership Agreement even if the post is not approved and even if it never appears in the thread. Also please be advised that it is an infractable offense to import any argument here to any unmoderated thread in order to avoid moderation. Thank you.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Loss Leader

 

[halleyscomet]

A Return to the Topic at Hand

The article Psychokinesis: Facts About Mind Over Matter has a quote I find relevant to the main thrust of our discussion of the PEAR paper.

If people could move everyday objects with nothing more than their thoughts, this should be quite easy to demonstrate: Who wouldn't like their latte delivered by a psychic barista from across the counter, floating it right to your hand with a mere gesture?

This doesn't happen, of course. Instead researchers have focused on what they term "micro-PK," or the manipulation of very small objects. The idea is that if the ability exists, its force is obviously very weak. Therefore, the less physical energy that would have to be exerted on an object to physically move it, the more obvious the effect should be. For this reason, laboratory experiments often focus on rather mundane feats such as trying to make dice land on a certain number at an above-chance rate, or influencing a computerized random number generator.

Because of this change in methodologies, psychokinesis experiments rely more heavily on complex statistical analyses; the issue was not whether a person could bend a spoon or knock a glass over with their minds, for example, but whether they could make a coin come up heads significantly above 50 percent of the time over the course of 1,000 trials.

The article is short and I recommend reading it in its entirety.

The two portions I bolded get at the heart of this debate, the statistical analysis of the PEAR study. Unfortunately, as has been mentioned several times by multiple posters in this thread, the baseline for the PEAR study is, to use a common vernacular, "borked." Without a reliable baseline, the entire study is quite useless except as a guideline for future research. This gets us to the subsequent replication efforts, all of which have come up short on evidence. In all the debates about statistics that have happened since these replication efforts came up nobody has offered the one thing that would be useful, an alternate analysis of the raw data.

A fresh evaluation of the raw data in an experiment is a common scientific practice. Given the statistics heavy nature of any analysis of micro-PK experiments, evaluating the same data from a different statistical mindset strikes me as an exceptionally appropriate way to further the discussion without doing a whole new study from scratch.

1. Do any of the replication efforts make their raw data available?
   
2. Is there anyone here willing to undertake a fresh evaluation of that raw data using the statistical methods they deem more appropriate?
   
3. Is there anyone here willing to act as a third party to blind the data so the person doing the statistical analysis doesn't know which is the baseline and which is the test data? I don't think I need to explain to anyone here why that could improve the reliability of the analysis.

 

[Buddha]

I didn’t have enough time yesterday to fully address an important topic of the precision of measurement. The manufacturer establishes the degree of measurement precision by using the sample set’s mean and variance (there are other methods of reaching this goal as well). The precision is reflected in the scale markings. It would be a fraudulent practice on the experimenter’s part to change the scale markings and claim that the experiment was run under normal conditions. No one accused Hasted of such practice, he was using the manufacturer’s markings. This means that the signal measurement data obtained in his experiment was of admissible magnitude. Wood claims that the signals were too small to draw that conclusion that the subjects have telekinetic abilities. His conclusion is plainly false.

“Theoretical interpretation of tests leads to severe difficulties. The first example
concerns the principle strains allegedly produced by Stephen North on circular
discs where it is stated 1 Tor ... a single radial stress vector we would expect
corresponding signals [principal strains] to be approximately equal and of
opposite sign’. Such a push-pull system is known only for pure shearing action,
and the authors clearly did not mean that. There is a well known solution for
forces P, acting on the diameter D of a disc of thickness t, giving principal stresses
at the centre of 2P/jt tD and — 6P/Jt tD. If Hasted and Robertson meant that then
they were in error by a factor of 3. In fact nothing at all can be said unless
complete stress fields are clearly specified, implying that investigators of the
paranormal should beware of plunging into the field of stress analysis” Wood

Hasted’s goal was to measure deformations in the metal rods to make sure that they were caused by his subjects. It is also important to know if the deformations were of such magnitude that it excludes all other explanations, and make sure that there were no extraneous factors affecting the metal bars. He had reached all three goals.

If I were conducting the experiments, I would have stopped here and declared that I reached my goal. However, Hasted went a step further and came up with a general theory, which was not required of him. It doesn’t matter whether he is right or wrong as far as his theory goes, this is a separate issue and it doesn’t affect the conclusion that his subjects have telekinetic abilities.

“One might think that twisting a spoon by one complete turn 2 would not be
difficult to interpret. However the same authors argue that such large strains
could not happen normally (and therefore must be paranormal), since they
derive a formula (Ref. 2, p. 394) for extensional strain £q which exceeds normal
tensional limits. This formula is quite false. Any student of mechanics is taught
that twisting is caused by shear strains, Figure 4, which were never mentioned” Wood

This reproduction of Wood’s article doesn’t have drawings and formulas, so I cannot say whether Wood is right or wrong. But let’s say that he is right, and the shear stress is the prevalent factor. Does this mean that Hasted misinterpreted the results of his experiment? I do not think so, and it seems to me that Wood holds the same opinion; otherwise he would have said that the presence of shear stress proves that Hasted came to a wrong conclusion.

 

[aleCcowaN]

This reproduction of Wood’s article doesn’t have drawings and formulas, so I cannot say whether Wood is right or wrong. But let’s say that he is right, and the shear stress is the prevalent factor. Does this mean that Hasted misinterpreted the results of his experiment? I do not think so, and it seems to me that Wood holds the same opinion; otherwise he would have said that the presence of shear stress proves that Hasted came to a wrong conclusion.

It's quite the opposite (no soup for Hasted):

...if Hasted and Robertson meant that, then they were in error by a factor of 3. In fact nothing at all can be said unless complete stress fields are clearly specified, implying that investigators of the paranormal should beware of plunging into the field of stress analysis

and in the comment section Hasted partially concedes.



[here are the drawings you wouldn't find]:

 

[JayUtah]

I didn’t have enough time yesterday to fully address an important topic of the precision of measurement.

You obviously want to move on, but we're still on Jahn, Palmer, and Jeffers. The mistakes you made in reviewing those authors have cast serious doubt on your ability to correctly understand the research and its reviews, even to the basic level of being able to determine the dependent variables in the studies you criticize. Since you explicitly primed this discussion ahead of time by citing PEAR, and since your claim at the time was that it was solid research that should still stand, we need to reach some closure on PEAR and its critics before we move on to other topics. You have asked that we simply agree to disagree on it, but I do not stipulate to that. You are clearly in error, and I intend to show it.

I am asserting that you have grossly erred in understanding Jahn's research and its critics. The basis of your dismissal of Jeffers, Palmer, and others was that they were not as qualified as you in the field of data analysis. Do you wish to concede your claim to have had sufficient statistics expertise to discuss the criticism against it before I explain your errors to everyone else?

 

[abaddon]

I didn’t have enough time yesterday to fully address an important topic of the precision of measurement. The manufacturer establishes the degree of measurement precision by using the sample set’s mean and variance (there are other methods of reaching this goal as well). The precision is reflected in the scale markings. It would be a fraudulent practice on the experimenter’s part to change the scale markings and claim that the experiment was run under normal conditions. No one accused Hasted of such practice, he was using the manufacturer’s markings. This means that the signal measurement data obtained in his experiment was of admissible magnitude. Wood claims that the signals were too small to draw that conclusion that the subjects have telekinetic abilities. His conclusion is plainly false.

“Theoretical interpretation of tests leads to severe difficulties. The first example
concerns the principle strains allegedly produced by Stephen North on circular
discs where it is stated 1 Tor ... a single radial stress vector we would expect
corresponding signals [principal strains] to be approximately equal and of
opposite sign’. Such a push-pull system is known only for pure shearing action,
and the authors clearly did not mean that. There is a well known solution for
forces P, acting on the diameter D of a disc of thickness t, giving principal stresses
at the centre of 2P/jt tD and — 6P/Jt tD. If Hasted and Robertson meant that then
they were in error by a factor of 3. In fact nothing at all can be said unless
complete stress fields are clearly specified, implying that investigators of the
paranormal should beware of plunging into the field of stress analysis” Wood

Hasted’s goal was to measure deformations in the metal rods to make sure that they were caused by his subjects. It is also important to know if the deformations were of such magnitude that it excludes all other explanations, and make sure that there were no extraneous factors affecting the metal bars. He had reached all three goals.

If I were conducting the experiments, I would have stopped here and declared that I reached my goal. However, Hasted went a step further and came up with a general theory, which was not required of him. It doesn’t matter whether he is right or wrong as far as his theory goes, this is a separate issue and it doesn’t affect the conclusion that his subjects have telekinetic abilities.

“One might think that twisting a spoon by one complete turn 2 would not be
difficult to interpret. However the same authors argue that such large strains
could not happen normally (and therefore must be paranormal), since they
derive a formula (Ref. 2, p. 394) for extensional strain £q which exceeds normal
tensional limits. This formula is quite false. Any student of mechanics is taught
that twisting is caused by shear strains, Figure 4, which were never mentioned” Wood

This reproduction of Wood’s article doesn’t have drawings and formulas, so I cannot say whether Wood is right or wrong. But let’s say that he is right, and the shear stress is the prevalent factor. Does this mean that Hasted misinterpreted the results of his experiment? I do not think so, and it seems to me that Wood holds the same opinion; otherwise he would have said that the presence of shear stress proves that Hasted came to a wrong conclusion.

Yet telekinesis remains utterly useless. How can you account for that?

 

[Buddha]

It's quite the opposite (no soup for Hasted):





and in the comment section Hasted partially concedes.



[here are the drawings you wouldn't find]:


[qimg]http://i67.tinypic.com/otmd5v.jpg[/qimg]


[qimg]http://i67.tinypic.com/291kgt5.jpg[/qimg]


[qimg]http://i68.tinypic.com/20pej39.jpg[/qimg]


[qimg]http://i65.tinypic.com/2ilbpuh.jpg[/qimg]

Thank you for the drawing. Wood wrote that Hasted used incorrect formula for his research. The formula is not here, and neither the correct one that he mentioned in his article. Unfortunately, without the formulas the drawings are not enough to draw a conclusion.

 

[JayUtah]

Unfortunately, without the formulas the drawings are not enough to draw a conclusion.

You claim in your profile to have a graduate degree in mechanical engineering. It therefore should not matter whether your source supplied the correct formulas to refute Hasted. I think you should be able to derive the proper mathematics or find them in the standard texts on stress analysis. Further, if your goal is to defend Hasted, and Hasted is right, then you should be able to demonstrate this by showing his choice of mathematical model is supported from the standard literature.

<snip>

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Edited. Moderated thread.

 

[Buddha]

Franhover single-slit diffraction and Franhover double-slit diffraction produce very different particle distribution patterns. For more information on these types of diffraction follow this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_diffraction

To make it perfectly clear – for his experiment Jeffers used double-slit diffraction; the title of his article is: A Double-slit Diffraction Experiment to Investigate Claims of Consciousness-related Anomalies. I already provided a link to his article.

This Wikipedia article contains a picture of wave interference pattern characteristic of double-slit diffraction. The distribution function does not even remotely resemble a bell-shaped curve.

Single-slit Franhofer diffraction process produces a distribution function that is almost bell-shaped and could be easily converted to a Gaussian distribution if one uses power transforms that I already mentioned. The article contains a picture of single-slit distribution as well.

As I said before, Jeffers could have used a single-slit Franhofer diffraction for his experiment, but he didn’t, which completely invalidates his research.

It would be a big mistake to confuse single-slit Franhofer diffraction with double-slit Franhofer diffraction.

In his review Palmer mentioned an article critical of Hasted’s experiments: Stokes, Review of Metal-benders. I tried to find this article on the Internet, but couldn’t

Tomorrow I will continue the discussion of Palmer’s review.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Thank you for the drawing. Wood wrote that Hasted used incorrect formula for his research. The formula is not here, and neither the correct one that he mentioned in his article. Unfortunately, without the formulas the drawings are not enough to draw a conclusion.

We're way beyond the "drawing a conclusion" part. In the same document you have been reading, in the comment section, Hasted conceded he had used the wrong formula. Here it is:

Comment by John Hasted

...

The authors are pleased that professional stress analysis criticism has become available to them and have been aided by useful discussions with Professor Wood. Although we are satisfied that the great majority of our paranormal strain signals (although possibly not including those of Figure 2, Ref. 1) are not electrical in origin, there is nevertheless the obligation to develop equipment in which the noise level is mechanical (i.e. microphonic) rather than electrical, as is the cause for the resistive strain gauge.

...

We agree that the formula derived on page 394 of Ref. 2 is inapplicable in that it was derived in terms of extension rather than shear (although the extension and shear moduli bear a constant ratio to each other). Nevertheless, by applying torque to a batch of similar stainless steel spoons, it has been possible to show experimentally that they fractured substantially before they twisted as tightly as the paranormal examples. A treatment should now be given in terms of pure shear, since the shear modulus yield point for stainless steel must also be known.
Dept, of Physics
Birkbeck College
Malet Street WC1E 7HX

As per the formula Wood doesn't mention, it's because, as he says:

One might think that twisting a spoon by one complete turn 2 would not be difficult to interpret. However the same authors argue that such large strains could not happen normally (and therefore must be paranormal), since they derive a formula (Ref. 2, p. 394) for extensional strain £q ε₀ which exceeds normal tensional limits. This formula is quite false. Any student of mechanics is taught that twisting is caused by shear strains, Figure 4, which were never mentioned

No big secret, as the formula is the elementary one that accompanies figure 4. I'm sure you know it, as you claim to have a MS in mechanical engineer, don't you? I used it during the only course I took related to that branch, one called "Mecanismos", which obviously included projecting axles (and cams, and gears).

And here is the formula used by Hasted and Co. What's written has the same kind of character recognition errors in all these documents:

e ₀+1=(p²+4p ²r²)^½/p

I'm quite sure one instance of a Latin letters is its Greek equivalent, as it seems to have been extracted from the estado tensional del punto material (I'm not interested in learning how to translate my vocabulary in this subject into English). The dimensional analysis will make it quite obvious to you.

 

[aleCcowaN]

And Hasted and his mistakes have been long forgotten, debunked by Randi and so many others decades ago.

Here is one of many threads here discussing his in the distant past:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31684&highlight=hasted

 

[aleCcowaN]

Franhover single-slit diffraction and Franhover double-slit diffraction produce very different particle distribution patterns. For more information on these types of diffraction follow this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_diffraction

To make it perfectly clear – for his experiment Jeffers used double-slit diffraction; the title of his article is: A Double-slit Diffraction Experiment to Investigate Claims of Consciousness-related Anomalies. I already provided a link to his article.

This Wikipedia article contains a picture of wave interference pattern characteristic of double-slit diffraction. The distribution function does not even remotely resemble a bell-shaped curve.
Single-slit Franhofer diffraction process produces a distribution function that is almost bell-shaped and could be easily converted to a Gaussian distribution if one uses power transforms that I already mentioned. The article contains a picture of single-slit distribution as well.

That couldn't be more wrong. You continue to make the same dire conceptual mistakes that I pointed in post #886. Other's also pointed the same before. You have to address those severe mistakes. Repeating such mistakes ad nauseam won't make them vanish or right.

As I said before, Jeffers could have used a single-slit Franhofer diffraction for his experiment, but he didn’t, which completely invalidates his research.

That is false as it has been already proved many times that you confound the physical output with the statistical variable, and that a one-slit experiment made by Jeffers on the same topic is freely available on the web.

It would be a big mistake to confuse single-slit Franhofer diffraction with double-slit Franhofer diffraction.

Such mistake, if someone made it, would pale when compared with the mistake of mixing up the physical output (density of energy as a function of position) with the probabilistic distribution (density of probability as a function of the normalized variable, Z or t, depending on the circumstances).

 

[JayUtah]

Franhover single-slit diffraction and Franhover double-slit diffraction produce very different particle distribution patterns.

And you wrongly think the diffraction pattern itself is the statistical distribution in the analysis, the dependent variable. You're quite wrong.

The distribution function does not even remotely resemble a bell-shaped curve.

Variables don't have to be in order to be candidates for statistical modeling, especially those that have non-zero high-order moments, as much real-world data does. You are correct in saying that it isn't susceptible to the kind of analysis you propose. My response is that the kind of analysis you propose is too simplistic to be effective, and is not in fact the way the models are actually built in real life.

Single-slit Franhofer diffraction process produces a distribution function that is almost bell-shaped...

Except that it isn't. It's multi-nodal. The illustrations you're looking only show the central antinode, and you've wrongly assumed that's all there is.

...and could be easily converted to a Gaussian distribution if one uses power transforms that I already mentioned.

No, that's not how distributions work. And no, the one thing you managed to Google for a few days ago is not the right answer. And no, that's not the dependent variable in the research you discussed.

The article contains a picture of single-slit distribution as well.

And if that article were the only place where you could see a picture of Fraunhofer diffraction, you'd have a chance of convincing someone you were right. But since we're fortunate to have many examples of what Fraunhofer diffraction looks like, we don't have to take your word for it. Nor do we have to resort to pictures. The Fraunhofer model is foremost a mathematical model, and we can solve it for different diffraction angles and note that it does not produce a bell-shaped curve as a function of angle. The center portion of it is roughly bell-shaped, but that's not the whole pattern. And not all that is bell-shaped is a normal probability distribution.

As I said before, Jeffers could have used a single-slit Franhofer diffraction for his experiment...

And he did. He experimented with both single- and double-slit apparatus. The deependent variable in each was different, and in neither case was it the raw diffraction pattern.

...but he didn’t, which completely invalidates his research.

A "fact' which seems to have gone entirely -- and suspiciously -- unnoticed by all of Jeffers' other critics, including PEAR"s resident statistician. You still have declined to provide an explanation for why this allegedly egregious mistake you've accused Jeffers of wasn't noticed by people who do statistics for a living. I propose that it's because you don't understand the Jeffers papers -- and, for that matter, in the Jahn paper.

It would be a big mistake to confuse single-slit Franhofer diffraction with double-slit Franhofer diffraction.

It's a good thing Jeffers didn't do that, then.

Tomorrow I will continue the discussion of Palmer’s review.

And tomorrow I will explain the grave errors in comprehension you continue to make regarding the work of Stanly Jeffers and why your review of his work should be rejected. Keep in mind I've given you ample opportunity to revise your position.