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Is Schwartz on Crack?

CFLarsen said:
You have a point. We should, however, contact Nature, Scientific American, and the other scientific publications.

Magazine: "So, Dr. Schwartz, tell us about your new experiment."

Schwartz: "Well, I asked a ghost if she would be one of the co-investigators, and she agreed..."

Magazine: "...say what?"
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It looks like they are adopting the same mindset as paranormal investigators of old. Instead of "controls" or "spirit guides" they are calling them "departed hypothesized co-investigators". When reading Hodgson's reports on Mrs. Piper, one can detect that Hodgson began to perceive Phinuit as a real appendage of the medium. It gets so silly that it is regarded as evidence when Phinuit describes someone in the room that Mrs. Piper could clearly see because the description was actually from the spiit, not from Mrs. Piper. It becomes a tangled web when Phinuit summons another spirit.

Adults with invisible friends -- how strange.:(
 
Magazine: "...say what? Aren't these experiments about demonstrating the ability to contact dead people?

Schwartz: "Yes."

Magazine: "But aren't you rather strongly assuming that which you are trying to demonstrate?"

Schwartz: "Of course. It's true, you know. We're just trying to demonstrate it."


~~ Paul
 
patnray said:
No, I don't think he's on crack. But I do think he's addicted to the fawning attention he recieves from his gullible associates. And he's addicted to the research money his sponsors provide him to validate their beliefs.
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Well... it seems that at least one of his sponsors is less than impressed with Schwarty's antics:

Peter Hayes(one of the donors who financed the dog and pony show)wrote a critique of the debacle. It was included in the appendix of the abstract:

http://veritas.arizona.edu/survivaldetails.htm

A Skeptical Argument: Alternative Explanation for the Data Collected

by Peter Hayes (a member of the Advisory Committee to the William James Postdoctoral Fellowship in Mediumship and Survival Research)

What if the medium was actually duplicitous and knew a lot more than she let on about? Then it is probable that she interjected various bits of leading data she knew but pretended to not know or to be uncertain of the meanings. She had read accounts of Monty Keen's death (perhaps passed on to her by her husband who frequents mediumship research sites) which revealed that Monty was seated in the audience facing a debate, accompanied by his wife Veronica, when he died. Having this information, when given the name Veronica, who wanted to contact her deceased husband, the medium recalled reading the accounts of Monty's passing while with Veronica and deduced that he was probably the person to be contacted. Debates usually involve podiums, so mention of falling "at a podium" was not hard to guess. She deliberately made this slightly inaccurate ("falling at"), to make it more believable, a tactic sometimes used by tricksters.

She knew about various skeptics and threw out Shermer's name. She had actually read the Schwartz, et al. white crow paper, and threw this out in response to GS’s question about the deceased's attitude about her. She wanted to be considered a white crow medium. She had read enough of GS’s writings to know about Levin. She knew he was associated with Monty. She had read enough of Monty's writings to know his extremely cautious and thoroughly argued manner of approaching mediumship evidence.

For just one example, his emails to research colleagues posted to a public internet group show this. In his contributions, he did in fact correctly challenge those of us involved with the UA work to tighten our standards, just as he probably challenged GS and JB personally.

Finally, much of the meaningfulness of the statements and "dazzle shots" was due to GS’s interpretations, amounting to some degree of rater bias.
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Schwartz wrote a response that needs to be seen to be disbelieved. In a word... pathetic.

First, the double-blind experiment began with GS asking AD if she had any idea who the deceased is (she said no).
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A professional "psychic medium" who has never heard of Montague Keen? That's like a physics professor who has never heard of Stephen Hawking... yeah, right. :rolleyes:

Moreover, she was asked if she was aware of what would happen if we caught her cheating (she said yes, knowing we would expose her.) The issue of potential cheating, and the exposure of any cheating so discovered, is regularly and openly addressed in our research.
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John Edward was caught hot reading by John Hockenberry... red handed! On national television! It didn't seem to do his career any harm.

***Edited to correct a spelling boo boo. No hypothesized co-investigators were involved in the editing of this post.***
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Magazine: "...say what? Aren't these experiments about demonstrating the ability to contact dead people?

Schwartz: "Yes."

Magazine: "But aren't you rather strongly assuming that which you are trying to demonstrate?"

Schwartz: "Of course. It's true, you know. We're just trying to demonstrate it."
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Nah, Schwartz is unarguably impartial, after all in this interview with Schwartz concerning the experiments with Dubois, he clearly states:

"As a scientist, I approach all this as an agnostic - I don't believe it; I don't disbelieve it. After testing her under conditions that ruled out the possibility of fraud, I came to the conclusion she's the real deal."

:crazy:
 
Maybe the "departed hypothesized co-investigators" get a "non-appearance" fee that the prof keeps safe for them in his "departed hypothesized co-investigators" account.:D
 
The Mighty Thor said:
Maybe the "departed hypothesized co-investigators" get a "non-appearance" fee that the prof keeps safe for them in his "departed hypothesized co-investigators" account.:D
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According to the Departed Co-investigators Union, they're entitled to a ghost writer's fee, also.
 
I mentioned the departed hypothesized co-investigators to my wife, and she asked "Could it be that they are even cheaper than grad student research assistants?"

~~ Paul
 
Amongst many many comedic highlights from the linked transcript :
GS Is he becoming more spiritual now than he was when he was on...?

AD Yes.
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Hmmm ...

GS : "Is he more spiritual now that he's a spirit living in the spirit realm, in his spirit house with all his spirit friends?"
AD : "Yes."

[Well, made me laugh...]
 
The article has many flaws. Here's some observations:

Phase I ("double blind") experiments
  1. There were 4 mediums involved. Why were only AD's reading's results included?
  2. Regarding "double blindness"

    a) In Part B, why would the medium need to know the sitter's name and the gender of the deceased? The explanation given ("Montague is not a common first name") makes no sense.
    b) The "proxy sitter" (JB) knew the deceased, since he was in her graduation committee, and a very popular person in her circles, anyway. This is sloppy double blinding, to say the least.
  3. Regarding the control group

    a) What questions were in the control group?
    b) How many of those questions would logically conflict with the knowledge that the deceased was a man with a wife named Veronica?
    c) Why are the control groups so small?
  4. Regarding results:

    a) Where are the transcripts, scoring tables, etc? How can it be that the transcript for Phase III which is not even single blind is fully included, but not the transcript for the Phase that is the only really interesting one, scientifically speaking?

    b) In Part IB the control group is way too small in comparison to the "intended group". In fact, had the control group scored only two more hits, it'd score better than the intended group.

    c) Saying that the intended group's score increased more from part 1A to part 1B than the control group's score is misleading, since the intended group started out worse in the first place, and the number of questions in the control group make the differences insignificant anyway.

    d) The results from Part 1B on are irrelevant, since there is no double blinding.

    e) Asking questions about the afterlife (Part 2B) is obviously unverifiable. The statement that cross-referencing between mediums can provide verification is flawed, because they are not independent sources.
Phases II & III
  1. Since phase II includes a direct conversation between AD and the sitter (VK), there is neither double, nor single blinding. The results of this phase are meaningless, scientifically. I would expect VK has a British accent that gives away her English origins, and possibly the identity of the deceased.
  2. Since in phase III GS is in direct contact with the medium, there is neither double, nor single blinding, although this phase is called single-blinded. The results of this phase are meaningless, scientifically. The medium actually has a high probability of knowing who the deceased is in phase III, when cross-referencing known facts "England", "deceased man", and GS's personal involvement.
  3. Since in phase III the sitter, the experimenter and the rater are GS, ratings cannot be free from bias, making the results scientifically weak. There are many examples of questionable scoring in phase III. Take for instance, Q:"What is he learning about the afterlife?", A: "It wasn’t what he expected.". This is scored with a +3 with an added "required interpretation and was not factual". Even many of the "factual scorings" are questionable. Scoring "there was a banner at the conference", "The afterlife didn’t necessarily make sense to him." and other such general remarks that can apply to anything and anybody with +3 (a definite hit) skews the results extremely.

    [/list=1]
 
frankdj said:
The article has many flaws. Here's some observations:

Phase I ("double blind") experiments
  1. There were 4 mediums involved. Why were only AD's reading's results included?
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  1. The remainder of the more detailed experiments using novel scoring procedures will be described in future publications.
    Click to expand...

    http://veritas.arizona.edu/survivaldetails.htm

    I can't wait! :D

    I hate to give away the plot to my upcoming report for Skeptic Report, but here's what happened.

    1) January 2004, Montague Keen dies.

    2) February 2004: Wasting no time to exploit the death of a great ADC proponent, mediums contact the widow Veronica Keen to say they have been hearing from the dearly departed Monty and Monty wants Veronica to contact Schwartz to arrange a little afterlife chat. Veronica passes this on to Schwartz.

    3) March 2004: A tribute to the late Monty is scheduled for July. Schwartz is to be a key speaker.

    4) April 2004: Schwartz holds a chat with Monty through a medium. This part of his experiments fits so nicely with his plans to participate in the Tribute to Monty that he just can't pass it up.
    During this "experiment" the medium experiences Keen's death with appropriate gasps, wimpers, expressions of horror and so on, all on the pretense she has no idea who it is she is in contact with, even though she and Schwartz make prior references to Veronica (Monty's wife) in the transcript, and that the dead guy she is in contact with is Veronica's husband. Schwartz comments how amazing this all is and states the medium says she isn't cheating and that's good enough for him.

    Never forget who started this whole ball rolling; the mediums. They made the contact with Veronica which initiated the whole thing.
 
CFLarsen said:
Do you honestly think he will provide it? Based on your previous experience with Schwartz? :)
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Not really.

And I guess I was editing in more stuff into my post when you posted.
 
Frankdj said:
Since in phase III GS is in direct contact with the medium, there is neither double, nor single blinding, although this phase is called single-blinded. The results of this phase are meaningless, scientifically. The medium actually has a high probability of knowing who the deceased is in phase III, when cross-referencing known facts "England", "deceased man", and GS's personal involvement.
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Welcome to the forum!

If AD didn't know it was MK, I'll eat my shorts.

~~ Paul
 
Why didn't AD just say to GS: Gary, you silly goose, what the hell are we doing here? It's obviously Keen. Do you want me to make you look like a fool?

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Why didn't AD just say to GS: Gary, you silly goose, what the hell are we doing here? It's obviously Keen. Do you want me to make you look like a fool?

~~ Paul
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It's not a transcript. It's a script. To a play. A performance for the credulous reader.
 
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