A parapsychologist writes about leaving parapsychology

[davidsmith73]

That's the point, David: We can't know.

Then why did you say that you check if you now say you can't?

If you're talking about independent replication then thats fine. But someone who reads any scientific paper in any field can't check, like you claimed before. That's why I have to accept the accuracy and truthfullness of scientific reporting, because otherwise you could talk yourself into rejecting whatever findings you don't like the look of, on the basis that "it could have been made up for all I know".

So, why are you so eager to believe these people when they say that they are doing right, when you (say that you) doubt them when they report their results?

Where have I said I "doubted them" ?

And please explain how Bem can possibly suggest what he did. Would you call that "replication"?

Yes I would call that a replication. It was an experiment to test the PH hypothesis with the same methods as Bem used. Why isn't it a replication?

 

[davidsmith73]

I'm suggesting that the number of necessary negative studies falls well within the realm of "plausible".

Wouldn't this involve doing a meta-analysis on the results?

Tests of statistical significance are based on a single comparison - a single roll of the dice. If you make more than one comparison, you are effectively giving yourself extra chances to roll an "eleven". How much do you want to bet that in addition to comparing "emotionally reactive men" with "emotionally nonreactive men", they also compared "belief in ESP" with "non-belief in ESP", "prior ESP experiences" with "no prior ESP experiences", etc.? And how much do you want to bet that if those comparisons had been "statistically significant" they would have reported on them as well as everything else? Even if you just go on what they admitted to comparing, it looks like they gave themselves a few dozen chances at rolling "eleven".

Why does it look like Bem gave himself this opportunity? Its certainly possible but that would make him a bad and dishonest scientist. Is that what you really think?

 

[Merko]

Wouldn't this involve doing a meta-analysis on the results?

You could do a meta-analysis covering a field, by compiling results from different researchers. Such an analysis might state that the experiment conducted by Smith, verified by Yin and later by Shansky, appears to prove the existance of the X effect, while the research by Prabaharan, Kurtz and Young, to name the most comprehensive studies, indicate that the proposed Y effect is not present.

Where it goes all wrong is when you try to add up some mathematical probabilities of different studies all involving probabilities, when you actually have no confirmation that the probabilities claimed in the underlying studies are valid.

Why does it look like Bem gave himself this opportunity? Its certainly possible but that would make him a bad and dishonest scientist. Is that what you really think?

Bad, yes, dishonest, not necessarily. It is clear that many of these types do a study first, and define the criteria for what is a 'hit' afterwards. That's bad science, but not necessarily done in bad faith.

 

[davidsmith73]

First of all, they should stick their neck out and make a very strong statement that according to their research, some very well defined effect definitely exists, and can be measured through a test, that they have performed, and that could be repeated by other scientists. If they really are so sure, then they need to really put their scientific reputation at risk here. It's not enough to hint that 'further research is merited'.

I know of no such claim. Do you?

Not yet.

There's 3 independent successful experiments on anomalous anticipatory effects of the nervous system according to the 2006 parapsychology convention abstracts.

http://www.parapsych.org/pa_abstracts_2006.html

All that kicked off with Dean Radin's presentiment experiments I think. Perhaps this, along with precognitve habituation, is parapsychology's best shot so far.

 

[davidsmith73]

Bad, yes, dishonest, not necessarily. It is clear that many of these types do a study first, and define the criteria for what is a 'hit' afterwards. That's bad science, but not necessarily done in bad faith.

I don't believe that a professor of psychology would do that and not realise that its bad science. But remember, there's no reason to assume that Bem actually did that.

 

[CFLarsen]

Then why did you say that you check if you now say you can't?

Again, you are missing the point. We check if we possibly can.

If you're talking about independent replication then thats fine. But someone who reads any scientific paper in any field can't check, like you claimed before. That's why I have to accept the accuracy and truthfullness of scientific reporting, because otherwise you could talk yourself into rejecting whatever findings you don't like the look of, on the basis that "it could have been made up for all I know".

Rubbish. Either you accept the word of people, or you rely on evidence. It doesn't matter if it is when they explain how they did something, or what results they got.

Where have I said I "doubted them" ?

Gee, did I misunderstand you, when you said this?

When I said I have to believe what is written in the journals, I meant that I have to believe that the researchers are being accurate and sincere in describing their research. I don't mean that I automatically accept their conclusions or that I don't question methodology.

If I did, please explain what you meant.

Yes I would call that a replication. It was an experiment to test the PH hypothesis with the same methods as Bem used. Why isn't it a replication?

Are you out of your f**king mind? How can you possibly call it a replication, when Bem himself demands not one, but two "critical" changes to the experimental setup?

That is not a replication. That, David, is a prime example of moving the goal posts.

By insisting that he dictates the conditions of the experiment that should replicate his first experiment, Bem proves himself to be a fraud. There is no way you can justify that Bem demands that skeptics "replicate" his experiments, only that they do it his way, which is fundamentally different from the experiment he did.

You are defending a crook.

 

[psp02ls]

David.

I don't want to criticise Daryl Bem. He's a nice guy, I've met him and chatted to him about the area.

But here is the voice of experience and learning (things fundamental to science). I have first hand experience of Professor Bem making a mistake with analysis. I gave him some data of mine to examine and he pulled out a number of significant findings. However I went back into my data and noticed some errors in his calculations. Correcting for those errors eliminated the results.

If I had trusted and not checked, the story might be different.

Perhaps journal editors should note which authors are theists and which are atheists. That might eliminate a need to read rubbish, whilst put pressure on people to consider their positions. Where else do we even start?

 

[Kaylee]

You can get a good idea of a journal's standing within its field by the Science Citation Index. Unfortunately it's not freely available, but if you're affiliated with some University you can probably get access from there. Or someone else with access (I don't have it unfortunately) could give you the index for this particular journal and some others in the same area.

Thanks Merko! I just looked on the web and one of the research libraries in New York City has it. Next time I'm in midtown during the week, I'll look it up.

Of course a good standing within a certain field of research is no absolute guarantee for quality, but the title of this one suggests it's an empirically based field.

One can hope.

 

[fls]

Wouldn't this involve doing a meta-analysis on the results?

Realistically? No. We've had a look at the only "promising" studies and they barely show anything. The few negative studies that psp02ls mentioned are probably more than enough to negate the "effect".

I know that doesn't eliminate the straw you are grasping at, though. Which goes back to my original point. The research in parapsychology consists of grasping at straws without ever getting ahold of anything. Sooner or later, you'd think it would dawn on them why that is.

Why does it look like Bem gave himself this opportunity?

Experience. And it's right there in the article you referenced - how many different ways did he split up the data on his charts?

Its certainly possible but that would make him a bad and dishonest scientist. Is that what you really think?

I suspect wishful thinking drives a lot of manipulation. I don't discount the possibility that he is being deliberately dishonest, though. I should add that this issue is not confined to parapsychology research.

Linda

 

[Merko]

Perhaps journal editors should note which authors are theists and which are atheists.

It wouldn't help. There are so many ways to be illogical, it's in no way limited to theism. And there are lots of theists who somehow manage to keep themselves to stringent scientific principles when they conduct research, too. It seems strange to me how they can do this, but there is plenty of evidence that they can.

 

[psp02ls]

Not yet.

There's 3 independent successful experiments on anomalous anticipatory effects of the nervous system according to the 2006 parapsychology convention abstracts.

http://www.parapsych.org/pa_abstracts_2006.html

All that kicked off with Dean Radin's presentiment experiments I think. Perhaps this, along with precognitive habituation, is parapsychology's best shot so far.

Almost my entire PhD is that kind of experiment David. Radin's been into time-reversed effects for ages. I thought the same as you once. Turned out I was wrong.

 

[Merko]

There's 3 independent successful experiments on anomalous anticipatory effects of the nervous system according to the 2006 parapsychology convention abstracts.

Come back when you have a researcher in parapsychology who has a secure position and is willing to risk her reputation on the claim that some precisely stated PSI effect exists and that she has a test for it.

I don't believe in that stuff. I don't dismiss it completely, but if not even the proponents are sure about it enough to take a risk, I'm not interested. There's an infinite set of unlikely claims to explore.


EDIT: I followed your link and found two of the studies I think you're referring to. These two studies are completely different. I cannot see how one of them would add any credibility to the other. I can imagine a wide set of possible flaws to these studies. But the question I'm asking here is: if these people think that these effects really exist, why can't they, after all these years, agree on a standard practice to measure it?

In my opinion, the theories these people are investigating are on par with the theory that there's a pink elephant in the room, whenever we close our eyes. It also disappears if we're using a camera, by the way. But it could still be there!

 

[Rodney]

Perhaps journal editors should note which authors are theists and which are atheists. That might eliminate a need to read rubbish, whilst put pressure on people to consider their positions. Where else do we even start?

Are you suggesting that theists cannot be objective about parapsychology, whereas atheists can be? How about agnostics?

 

[Merko]

Are you suggesting that theists cannot be objective about parapsychology, whereas atheists can be? How about agnostics?

I think he's probably just fed up after spending years wading through reports from 'faith-based scientists'. Now, I would say that while theists by necessity must have a disposition to assume that PSI-phenomena exist, an atheist could be disposed either way, or be completely neutral.

But I don't believe in the 'objective scientist' anyway. I think that most scientists have some sort of agenda. They'd spend their entire career trying to prove something that they just decided must be there, even before they had evidence, just a 'hunch'. There's nothing wrong with that, this sort of motivation is probably needed for someone to put in the hard work that is necessary for many discoveries. And I believe that we can make correct conjectures, better than chance, even when we do not have the kind of solid evidence that is required in science. The formalism is required to make something into acceptable science, but that doesn't mean these 'hunches' are always just some kind of woo.

The academic system is fortunately capable of handling this. Even when it is probably true that very few scientists ever admit that they were wrong, there will emerge a general opinion that they were, and they will gain few followers.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Includes an aside to CFLarsen

...But I don't believe in the 'objective scientist' anyway. I think that most scientists have some sort of agenda. They'd spend their entire career trying to prove something that they just decided must be there, even before they had evidence, just a 'hunch'...

I don't know where you ran into these scientists, but in my personal experience they are rare. Lucky me.
Aside to CFLarsen.
By the way Claus, there are two kinds of replication. Direct and systematic. Direct is when you follow the original method as precisely as possible to see if you get the same result. Think cold fusion.
The second is systematic replication, when you vary parameters to see how robust the original finding was.
Direct replication is normally the first step.

 

[Rodney]

Now, I would say that while theists by necessity must have a disposition to assume that PSI-phenomena exist,

So how do you explain theists like Martin Gardner, who are extremely skeptical of PSI-phenomena?

an atheist could be disposed either way, or be completely neutral.

How, pray tell (if you'll pardon the expression), could an atheist be disposed to think PSI could exist?

 

[Ersby]

How, pray tell (if you'll pardon the expression), could an atheist be disposed to think PSI could exist?

Are you suggesting that a belief in psi is only possible if you're a theist? Are you saying that psi must be the work of a higher intelligence and cannot possibly be a natural mechanical process?

 

[CFLarsen]

By the way Claus, there are two kinds of replication. Direct and systematic. Direct is when you follow the original method as precisely as possible to see if you get the same result. Think cold fusion.
The second is systematic replication, when you vary parameters to see how robust the original finding was.
Direct replication is normally the first step.

Yep, "Heureka!" and "Let's Tear It Apart"

My point is that they are skipping over direct replication and move on to something which, to the uninformed observer (or blind believer), looks like systematic replication. But that's not what it is: They are simply moving the goalposts around, while trying to forget - or ignore - that there is no ball to begin with.

 

[davidsmith73]

Again, you are missing the point. We check if we possibly can.

But we've just agreed that there is no way ensure that fraud didn't happen.

Rubbish. Either you accept the word of people, or you rely on evidence. It doesn't matter if it is when they explain how they did something, or what results they got.

If the evidence is in the form of a written paper then the same argument applies.

Gee, did I misunderstand you, when you said this?

When I said I have to believe what is written in the journals, I meant that I have to believe that the researchers are being accurate and sincere in describing their research. I don't mean that I automatically accept their conclusions or that I don't question methodology.

If I did, please explain what you meant.

Yes you did misunderstand me. I thought I made it perfectly clear from that statement. Lets take Louie's first PH paper as an example. I believe that he reported his methods and results sections accurately and truthfully and I can't find anything wrong with his methodology. But we can agree or disagree on the conclusions he made. Louie himself even disagrees with what he wrote in the conclusion back then.

Are you out of your f**king mind? How can you possibly call it a replication, when Bem himself demands not one, but two "critical" changes to the experimental setup?

Because the changes that were made did not affect the hypothesis being tested. The indepdendent scientist asked the participants not to look away from the screen and left out the erotic images. So the experiment was a replication of the negative image effect from the supraliminal experiment.

As Jeff says, there are exact replications and there are conceptual replications. Louie was involved in a conceptual replication attempt because he used different types of images. I think the Williams replication mentioned in the Bem article is pretty close to an exact replication of the effect found using negative images.

There is no way you can justify that Bem demands that skeptics "replicate" his experiments, only that they do it his way, which is fundamentally different from the experiment he did.

How were the conditions fundamentally different?

 

[Cuddles]

But I don't believe in the 'objective scientist' anyway. I think that most scientists have some sort of agenda. They'd spend their entire career trying to prove something that they just decided must be there, even before they had evidence, just a 'hunch'.

Utter rubbish. All scienctists work on things we know exist. If someone studies convection in the Sun, we might not know exactly how it works, or even if there is definately convection and not something else, but we know damn well that the Sun is there and that something is happening. Even scientists looking for hypothetical particles that quite possibly don't exist know that some particles exist and that new ones have been found in the past. Even when they don't find anything, or even prove themselves wrong, they have added a bit of knowledge to the world and can move on to new research in the field.

What makes parapsychology different from all other science is that this can't happen. If a physicist spends decades looking for a new particle only to find it isn't there, they can move on to study different particles. If a parapsychologist spends decades looking for psi and finds it isn't there, they are out of a job and have no relevant qualifications or research to find a new one. With all other sciences, theories might be right or wrong, but the field will always be there. With parapsychology, if the theories are wrong then there is no field.