Would palm reading or finderprint reading qualify under the old rules?

Ladewig

I lost an avatar bet.
Ladewig
Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
28,828
Does the claim that specific personality traits can be revealed through the lines in one's fingertips or palms qualify as a paranormal event eligible for for the million dollar challenge? Specfically, www.handanalysis.net.
 
I think it would all depend on what they were willing to claim to be able to find learn or predict from your palm or fingerprints. Given some reported correlations like the ones between earlobes and heart problems, they might be able to come up with some generalities. For example, they could probably tell from the size of my hands I am male. Would it be a shock if they said I was at an increased risk for prostate cancer, but probably won't die while giving birth to a child?

What if all they provide are Barnum statements that apply to everyone? "You are happy at times, but also have bad days."

Then again if they can accurately and repeatedly tell me I will win the lottery in the future, and using which numbers, they might be on to something.
 
Alan Heap said:
the notion is absurd, so i don't see why not.
Click to expand...

I ask because sometimes the proponents of this type of bunkum claim
"What I do is not paranormal so I am not eligible for 'the prize'."

People who say stuff like that always put the prize in quotes as if it didn't really exist.
 
Ladewig said:
I ask because sometimes the proponents of this type of bunkum claim
"What I do is not paranormal so I am not eligible for 'the prize'."

People who say stuff like that always put the prize in quotes as if it didn't really exist.
Click to expand...


i guess it's not eligible as it's not really paranormal, it's pseudoscience. i'm just very keen to see it debunked. more a fan of debunking pseudo science than paranormal.

paranormal is sooooo 1900's
 
Randi says yes.

2.3. Does (this) qualify as paranormal?

The best way to answer this is to examine this list of things that people commonly apply for.

The following things are paranormal by definition:

Dowsing. ESP. Precognition. Remote Viewing. Communicating with the Dead and/or "Channeling". Violations of Newton's Laws of Motion (Perpetual Motion Devices). Homeopathy. Chiropractic Healing (beyond back/joint problems). Faith Healing. Psychic Surgery. Astrology. Therapeutic Touch (aka "TT"). Qi Gong. Psychokinesis (aka "PK"). The Existence of Ghosts. Precognition & Prophecy. Levitation. Physiognomy. Psychometry. Pyramid Power. Reflexology. Applied Kinesiology (aka "AK"). Clairvoyance. The Existence of Auras. Graphology. Numerology. Palmistry. Phrenology.
Click to expand...
 
Well, it's still the JR Educational Foundation, not the JR Embarrassment Foundation. Knucklehead.

As Jeff Albertson would say. "Worst episode ever."
 
Hello Ladewig, I think your question is fair.

But the use of personality traits will always rise a debate ... some acedemic psychologists question the existence of personality traits ... so my answer is: unlikely that you will win the million dollar challenge with this approach.

Maybe a shift from the personality traits to a medical perspective might create a more fruitfull challenge.
 
Ladewig said:
Does the claim that specific personality traits can be revealed through the lines in one's fingertips or palms qualify as a paranormal event eligible for for the million dollar challenge? Specfically, www.handanalysis.net.
Click to expand...

I suspect a test of this would be very similar to a proposed test of astrology, in which the "expert" must match up personality profiles to palm prints, or must provide personality reports for hand prints and see if people can choose their profile from among a small group.
 
Hand Analysis test

Gr8wight said:
I suspect a test of this would be very similar to a proposed test of astrology, in which the "expert" must match up personality profiles to palm prints, or must provide personality reports for hand prints and see if people can choose their profile from among a small group.
Click to expand...

Hello Gr8wight :),

Actually, a few years ago the test you described has been done in the Netherlands ... by myself!

A summary of the results: no statistical significant results.

Let me quote the description of the test from my website:


"- the handanalysts experiment -

This brings us into a position where we could start speculating about the value of the client's feedback during a handanalysisconsultation. However, since we can only speculate about this matter, this might not be very usefull. More interestingly we can use an experiment in order to face the following question:

'Are people able to recognize themselves in a personality sketch composed by an experienced handanalyst?’

In order to answer this question I would like to present an experiment which I have conducted in the summer of 2001 in coöperation with 6 experienced handanalysts - each of them has putten handanalysis into practice for at least 10 years:

['click' HERE in order to read a very comprehensive research report about the handanalysts experiment]

In the perspective of this experiment I had selected 5 female subjects and I have asked them to provide their hands available for a handanalysis research program. Every single handanalyst was asked to compose a personality sketch for each of the subjects on the basis of a photo + an inkprint of the hands only. Afterwards I have presented the personality sketches composed by handanalyst 1 to each subject and they were asked to select the best sketch - the best one with which each subject could identify with. This procedure was also conducted to the series of personality sketches which were composed by the other handanalysts.

The design of this experiment might appear to be complicated, however the controll-mechanism is actually very simpel. Are the subjects able to identify the personality sketch which is created by the handanalyst on the basis of their hands?

During this experiment every subject was asked 6 times to select the best recognizable personality sketch among a series of five. Out of the 30 selected personality sketches, the one and only correct sketch was selected only 7 times. Two handanalysts had been able to make 2 out of 5 subjects selecting the right sketch. Three handanalysts had been able to make only 1 subject selecting the right sketch. And regarding the analyses of one handanalyst, none of the subjects was able to recognize the one and only correct sketch.

By the way, on each series of personality sketches every subject was also asked to select the 2 most unrecognizable personality sketches. The strange thing about this specific aspect of the matter is that among the series of each single handanalyst, at least one subject had selected the personality sketch which was actually created on the basis of her hands. More critical: regarding the series of sketches composed by two handanalysts, two subjects have selected 'their' sketches as 'unrecognizable'. Most alarming is this matter is that regarding the sketches composed by one of these experienced handanalysts, up to three subjects have selected 'their' sketches as 'unrecognizable'."

Source: handresearch.com/hand/Evolutie/psychoEngels.htm
 
By the way, though I think the concept of the test was fair .... and I can assure that the participating Hand Analysts had very positive expectation BEFORE participating in the test ... I do think that part of the problem might be that rating personality features is a perceptive activity (subjective).

And some branches in Academic Psychology question the existence of personality traits ... though this might actually only reflect the fact that subjective perceptions play at least a part in observing personality traits.
 
Mensvoort said:
By the way, though I think the concept of the test was fair .... and I can assure that the participating Hand Analysts had very positive expectation BEFORE participating in the test ... I do think that part of the problem might be that rating personality features is a perceptive activity (subjective).

And some branches in Academic Psychology question the existence of personality traits ... though this might actually only reflect the fact that subjective perceptions play at least a part in observing personality traits.
Click to expand...

There you go.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom