P: The tests have to be binary, yes/no, black/white, hit/no hit. If mediums are unwilling to do this, and if experimenters are unwilling to do this, none of them can expect anybody to believe the results of their laboratory "tests".
Reply: If you do not hypothesize or advance any other type of sensory leakage after all opportunities for cold, warm and hot reading have been eliminated, e.g. guessing, then I agree. The information is either right or wrong, yes or no. This is on a one on one under lab conditions. Hyman has been fond of saying he could find nothing wrong with studies he has looked at but qualifies that with vague statements of his own saying he knows there is a flaw or a problem somewhere but just doesn't know what it is. Hymanesque remarks like this need to be discarded as well if we accept this protocol. Its not good enough for him to say the results were valid but there is some sensory leakge or other flaws or factors which must be in play: he has to name them.
Pyrrho: That sort of post-sitting validation is obviously subjective and could not apply to a laboratory test. Sorry, but that's giving the medium the benefit of the doubt where none is justified.
Reply: Not if the follow-up information is unequivocal. It too is either right or wrong. There is no reason to expect communicators to give only information known to the sitter. If you have a dialogue with me or anyone, do you expect everything I say to you to be something you already know? Do we not learn from such dialogues about new information we did not have before? Whether this is permissible under lab protocols is another matter. If it is to be discarded then the information cannot count as a miss either. Its like saying just because Pyrrho didn't know it beforehand, anything I say to him is incorrect. You know this is fallacious.
P: A simple validated fact that is completely anecdotal. I don't want to delve into the problems of anecdotal evidence, but it just doesn't qualify as scientific evidence. It's satisfactory to you, but explains and means nothing more.
Reply: I never said it wasn't anecdotal. It was in fact highy anecdotal. It was given as an example which could also occur under controlled conditions where it would not be anecdotal.
P: Nothing official that the community of mediums cares to admit. Clearly some sort of schooling goes on -- mediums have clearly stated that they were taught by other mediums. The typical claim is that the medium discovered their "gifts" in childhood, and underwent profound insights upon meeting certain other mediums who were already practicing the craft.
Reply: Oh surfe. And there are hundreds, maybe thousands of books to self-educate on these matters. But no formal body of rules. I have read a bit on this myself and find many conflicting arguments or statements.
P: I wouldn't even have the sitter and the medium in the same building. The experimenter's team should be separated; member of the team interacting with the medium should have no interaction at all with the sitters, nor should the sitter's team have interaction with the medium. Neither team should know that a medium or sitter is even present at the time of the reading.
R: Agreed except I still do not know what medium's claima s being necessary for a reading. If it is merely intent then it needs to be added to the above formula.
P: I would eliminate post-sitting validations. Only those readings validated at the time of the sitting should qualify. I see no reason why the dead person could not provide answers that can be validated immediately. This is why I suggested that a restricted pool of information be used, instead of allowing "hits" on details not included in that pool, to be "validated" later.
Reply: If you disallow post sitting validation, you need to discard the informatin completely and not count it as a NO. As a matter of interest it could be counted as a DONT KNOW. Just assessing follow-up information can be a separate study by itself. It was for Arthur Berger's research. A restricted pool would eliminate hits that occur if an item is not on the list. If you do this, you must not count them as NOs whether they are incorrect or not.
P" IRC is not a valid communication method. Information about the sitter's locale can be deduced from IP addresses. Telephones don't make sense. If the sitter gives no feedback, the sitting should be able to be held at a specific time, the medium issues their reading, and the results examined, without need for real-world physical connection via telephone. Surely the dead are not restricted by real-world physics...
Reply: IRC is valid if the sitter and medium are sitting at PCs and internet connections which are not registered to them. Those of multi-center investigators come to mind. Sitter can be in a lab at Univ A and medium at Univ B. Randi suggested a silent telephone protocol for Sylvia Browne.
I do not know what kind of connection a medium needs for a sitter in order to make it work. It is not logical that mere intent and reading anyone, anywhere in the world could work which is what you are suggesting. I dont know the answer to this. In setting up an interface, if there is one, you need to be mindful of the medium's claims and not move the goalposts beyond those claims.
P: I haven't advanced guessing as an hypothesis. The test is to determine if a medium can receive communication from the dead. It's a yes or no question. If yes, the dead should be able to provide answers to binary questions. The need to calculate probabilities should be eliminated, in order to avoid any chance of statistical error or bias by the experimenter. With probabilities, statistics, etc, the potential exists for the medium to miss completely most of the time, but to score very high in terms of probability, given what the experimenter might conclude is a statistically significant "hit".
Reply: I have seen communicators answer very few questions; nor have I seen them take true or false tests administered through the agency of a medium. This demand may exceed the realities of their claims. I have seen skeptics advance the guessing hypothesis when they could not explain a reading based on cold reading & generalities, warm or hot reading. I did not suggest adding up the probabilities except where they occur as a constellation of yeses. I suggest probability calculation to validate or invalidate this hypothesis which always comes up. You should first and foremost base the assesment on the individual pieces of information and whether they are true or false. Guesing the name of my dead dog's brother which dates back to the 60s is not possible to guess. The odds are astronomical. Okay, it is anecdotal but we have seen similar validations under controlled conditions.
P: I included references to "Pointing at his chest," as an example of vague readings that should not be permitted in a laboratory setting. Performances are performances. When it comes down to testing the real deal, ambiguity cannot be allowed.
Reply: Good, so you point to examples also as I did above. I am glad to see we both feel we can advance examples without being discredited for doing so. I agree that vague symptomatology involving medical problems or cause of death are not valid. However, are they wrong? Sure pointing to the chest can be heart, lungs, lung cancer, COPD, chest trauma, pneumonia, asthma, overdose, geez, a host of things. Much too vague. One could not make a diagnosis on this but if it was, say, chest trauma or pneumonia, can one say it is wrong? So if you want to eliminate vagueries, do so but then dont count them as misses. You can't blame the communicator for not saying he died of metastatic adenocarcinoma affecting the right lower lobe and bronchus.
...........neo
Clearly some sort of schooling goes on -- mediums have clearly stated that they were taught by other mediums. The typical claim is that the medium discovered their "gifts" in childhood, and underwent profound insights upon meeting certain other mediums who were already practicing the craft. 
