Another way to put it is that the amount of information which psychics provide corresponds to the amount of information they obtain through normal means. This is the hypothesis which was tested. And since psi is about gaining information through non-normal means, this was not a test of psi.
But why do you think that "the amount of information which psychics provide corresponds to the amount of information they obtain through normal means"? Why they could not provide much more informaton they could obtain through normal means? An example, Emilly Kelly says: "(1) In the
hope of focusing the reading on the intended deceased person, I sent photographs of the deceased to the mediums, but provided no other information;"
So, let's say this happened: the psychic see the photographs, and then the psychic says:
a) the full name of the deceased
b) the way which this person died
c) the year of the birth and death
d) the name of the relatives
e) the name of the pets
f) etc.
Isn't this MUCH MORE information than the psychic could obtain by normal means only seeing a photograph? I think we can say there are paranormal means involved.
Well, I don't know whether Gauld or Anthony Campbell have any sort of expertise in making that call, but Martin Gardner paints quite a different story in his review of the 'research' regarding Leonora Piper, including the information that she failed testing when simple controls were put in place.
Gardner's critics have so many mistakes that is clear that he never read the original reports. You can find some Gardner's mistakes here:
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
And these criticisms against Gardner are only a very small part of all the mistakes he did in his article. For example, "he says that Richard Hodgson died in 1909, when he passed away in 1905. Similarly, Gardner claims that the writer George Pellew died in 1881, when he died in 1892. It could certainly be the case that these mistakes were not the author’s failing…many an editor or typesetter has committed errors as a manuscript passed through their hands on the way to publication. However, it is less easy to forgive other dating errors which can only be attributed to the author. For instance, Gardner asserts that “when [the alleged spirit of] Pellew began coming through Mrs. Piper, Hodgson was so skeptical that he hired detectives to shadow Mrs. Piper and her husband for several weeks to make sure they were not researching information about his friend.” In fact, Hodgson hired detectives almost immediately after he took on the Piper case, around 1887-88, whereas Pellew didn’t die and start ‘coming through’ until 1892. Anybody who has read the original reports of the Piper case would know that Gardner is wrong in this instance – Fred Myers mentions Hodgson’s use of detectives in his 1890 introduction to the ‘British report’ on Mrs. Piper’s mediumship in the Proceedings of the SPR."
And Gardner did much, much more mistakes in his article.
However, regardless of whether any of these opinions can be trusted, the study of these two mediums did not follow a methodology which can be considered high quality (i.e. research from which reliable and valid conclusions can be drawn), so calling it such would be false.Linda
I disagree, anyone who read the original reports will see that the study of these two mediums - and others - did follow a methodology which can be considered high quality. Gardner didn't read the original reports, but Gauld did. A recent article reviewing Piper's case says:
"Because of the ever-present worry of deception, no totally satisfying evidence of the survival of human consciousness was established during this period. James and Hodgson hit on the idea of sending Mrs. Piper to England, where she could be tested by people who were strangers to her, in an environment where there was a guarantee that she could have neither talkative friends nor established agents. Consequently, Mrs. Piper, whose patience seems to have been as extraordinary as her other gifts, set sail for England in November 1889.
During a three month visit, Mrs. Piper stayed in Liverpool with Sir Oliver Lodge, in Cambridge with the Sidgwicks and with Myers, and in London in lodgings chosen by the SPR. Careful precautions were taken. In order to verify that she was not receiving information from confederates, Mrs. Piper was met off the boat at the Liverpool landing stage and carefully escorted throughout the length of her stay in England. She was shadowed day and night by private detectives, although the modest retainer supplied by the SPR seems scarcely sufficient to pay for the network of spies that such an explanation would have required (Gauld, 1968). She was furthermore required to allow the SPR to read all her incoming mail and to have free access to her belongings. Her hosts were careful to lock away family albums and Bibles. Myers provided Mrs. Piper and her teenaged daughters, whom she had refused to leave behind, a servant who knew nothing about the SPR or its members. Lodge, in whose house the most remarkable displays occurred, had, by chance recently changed his entire household staff. He spoke for all of the investigators when he insisted: “I took every precaution I could possibly think of”."
Mrs. Piper Revisited. Australian Journal of Parapsychology 2001, Volume 1, Number 1, pp. 9-29
And these are only a very small part of the precautions. The research has a very high quality, and Piper - and Gladys Obosrne Leonard - seems undeniably to have had some sort of paranormal faculty.
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