No, Buddha.
As desperately as you want to change the subject, we're not just going to forge ahead and ignore the past 15 pages. Your ability to read, understand, and evaluate this research has been credibly called into question. Therefore there's no point in advancing until your errors and misunderstands regarding Palmer, Jeffers, Alcock and PEAR are resolved and a plan is in place to avoid the same errors in the future. Otherwise, without that closure, you'll just be likely to commit the same errors again and ignore them again. That's not how intellectual responsibility and honestly works, so that's not how we're going to proceed.
We'll get to Hasted, I promise. And when we do, I'll start at the beginning of your posts that discuss him, and thoroughly respond. You can surely trust me on that -- when have you known me not to be thorough? B
ut not until we've finished thoroughly examining your claims surrounding PEAR and reached some closure.
You've been asked nearly on a daily basis since Day One to address the baseline issue in PEAR research. Contrary to your insinuation, this was noted by Jahn, not by Jeffers. Jeffers merely pointed out the implication of Jahn's report. You have not yet responded to this issue. You referred us to Williams, who tried to excuse it by suggesting (wrongly) in a blog post -- not a published paper -- that Jeffers somehow mistook what Jahn intended to be the baseline. Not only does that misrepresent Jeffers, it misrepresents PEAR. It's simply factually incorrect.
Please address the baseline bind, or admit explicitly that you cannot or will not.
You have insisted that Palmer's disregard of data from Operator 010 -- the only operator in all the studies to show significant results -- is improper. You have provided no argument to support this other than your pretended expertise in the field. You have failed to address the rebuttals to this, which include detailed analysis as well as documented examples from the field, except to claim that your opponents must be incompetent not to take your word for it.
Please either address your opponents' rebuttals to your claims regarding Operator 010 with a substantive answer or admit explicitly that you cannot or will not.
You have not addressed the fact that Jahn admitted in the end that his earlier results could not be duplicated. You stated in your opening post that Jahn's earlier research should stand, but the admission of PEAR's principal investigator seems to contradict that.
Who do you think is right, you or Robert Jahn?
Regarding Stanley Jeffers' attempts to continue the research and duplicate PEAR's results, a number of questions remain open. You have suggested in numerous ways that Jeffers intended to sabotage his research. But you have entirely ignored facts that contradict this interpretation. You have ignored Jeffers' own explanations and justifications in his papers. You have ignored Alcock's testimony regarding Jeffers' pre-study work.
Please address those challenges to your claim, or admit explicitly that you cannot or will not.
Most egregiously, you have no clue what the dependent variable was in Jeffers' affirmative experiments. You wrongly claim it was the raw output of the apparatus Jeffers used, which is a bizarre and baffling thing to believe given the generally accepted practices of statistical modeling.
This remains a serious flaw in your entire approach here, which has been based on your repeated claims to expertise in statistical analysis.
At this point it seems unlikely that you can repair your argument regarding Jeffers while maintaining your claim to be an expert in statistics. It is simply not the kind of error an expert is likely to make, and I think you have realized this. I think that's why you want to move on to something that doesn't involve statistics. However, given your assertions in this thread, the question of your claims to expertise cannot simply be left hanging. In this and other threads it has been shown that you tend to claim expertise you do not have, and this is a concern to your critics moving forward.
Please acknowledge that you do not have the expertise in statistics required to interpret the statistical models and techniques used by Jeffers, PEAR, and their critics.
Along the same lines, you seem to have finally understood to some degree what the t-test for significance is and why it has been used in the PEAR research and congruently therefore by those who reviewed and continued it. But you wrongly seem to believe you have been the one who was correct regarding it all along, when the evidence in the thread clearly shows that your opponents have been the consistently right ones all along.
Please acknowledge that your opponents here were right all along regarding the t-test for significance, and that you have confirmed this with your own research.
The last two requests in boldface speak to your honesty as a would-be scholar and as a debate opponent. Despite a few insincere and token half-admissions, you steadfastly refuse to admit your errors. This is dishonest, on the one hand. But more importantly it makes it less likely that thinking persons will consider you worth their time. If you want meaningful debates instead of just punching bags, you will need to convince people you deserve their attention.
You seem to be focused on your credibility. You may be interested to know that "digging in" when you are obviously, visibly in error reduces one's credibility. You may find that you are more credible when you demonstrate that you are willing to admit errors (i.e., show that you can be persuaded by facts and sound argument), and willing to be taught.
No, I won't "agree to disagree" so that we can move on. There are clear right and wrong answers to your claims, and you must address them if you want to be taken seriously.
The other requests deal more straightforwardly with the PEAR arguments as you've left them. Given that you have a documentable history of abandoning threads, yet also claiming they served your purpose, it is important that we determine exactly what your purpose was and whether it has been met. Your critics have made credible arguments suggesting your real purpose is to serve your ego. Your direct responses to the requests above will disprove that to them. If, instead, you simply "leave it hanging," hoping that lurkers or readers will believe you have somehow succeeded despite the obvious failures, then it would tend to confirm their suspicion. This is an invitation to evaluate the thread so far on its merits so that we can be confident that proceeding further will be fruitful on the same merits.
