New PSI forum

[Lucianarchy]

experimenter effect in parapsychology

Parapsychological, and even psychological experiments, may yield different outcomes depending upon the experimenters who conduct them. Personal characteristics of experimenters may influence the results of experiments in which humans or animals participate. Many such experimenter effects are quite likely mediated by conventional sensory cues. Experimenters may use slightly different instructions, different vocal intonations, gestures, and other forms of nonverbal communication and these "messages" could influence participants in the studies. Dr. Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University has conducted the most extensive work in this area.
Experimenter effects, however, can also be psi-mediated. Experimenters (or other involved personnel) can apparently influence their subjects without ever coming into physical contact with them. The parapsychological literature is filled with possible psi-mediated experimenter effects. For example, a famous series of ESP experiments indicated that people who simply checked results after an experiment seemed to have consistent influences upon their subjects’ earlier psi performance. A second example: It is well known that certain experimenters obtain consistently good results in their experiments, while other experimenters are well known for their negative findings. Many of the psi-conducive experimenters are known to have demonstrated strong psi performance themselves when participating in their own or others’ experiments. So it is not inconceivable that some experimenters may use their own psi, quite unconsciously, to influence the success or failure of their own studies.

The problem with the psi-mediated experimenter effect is that it can be used as an empty, untestable excuse or pseudo-explanation for all sorts of findings, if we are not careful. Also, since we know of no way to remove such an effect, it is difficult to know which of our findings are discoveries of lawful relationships and which are psi-fulfilled expectations of psi-talented investigations. Hopefully, in the future we may develop some adequate methodologies for dealing with this important issue.

Excellent examples of research on experimenter effects in psi research can be seen in two recent experiments by Dr. Marilyn Schlitz and Dr Richard Wiseman. Dr. Schlitz, the director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, designed a rigorous randomized trial evaluating whether subjects could detect another person staring at them from a distance (over a closed-circuit television system). The study yielded statistically significant positive results. When her skeptical colleague, British psychologist Richard Wiseman, failed to replicate the results, he invited her to England to repeat the experiment along with him in two separate but equal trials using the same subjects and the same equipment, and once again she got positive results and he got negative ones.

http://www.psiexplorer.com/experimenter_effect.htm

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But how would those people be able to tell the difference between a phenomenon and a hallucination? You wouldn't even get as far as determining that.

And...if they can't tell the difference, who says there is a difference?

That is a matter of personal judgement. Personallly having experienced every level of artificially induced hallucination from alchohol, to LSD, to the mega-hallucinations produced by DMT, I think I can tell when I am straight and when I am hallucinating. I do not believe I would have the slightest difficulty in deciding whether or not I was hallucinating. For me, it is not such an issue. By that, I mean many of the PSI effects that we are talking about could quite easily exist without me having to have a major re-evaluation of my belief system. So I would not have any big contradiction to resolve by positing that I must have hallucinated something on the grounds it could not possibly be real. The question is very similar to "how do you know you are not dreaming". And the answer is the same. When you are dreaming, you do not always know that you are dreaming. But when you wake up, you know it was a dream. If something happens to you when you are actually awake, you do not have to ask yourself whether you were dreaming unless something happens which contradicts your current conceptions of the limits to the way reality behaves. So the question only really arises if (a) you have some fixed beliefs about the limits to how reality behaves and (b) something happened to you when you believed you were awake/"not hallunicating" which busted those limits. At that point you have a choice - either you convince yourself you were actually hallucinating or you re-evaluate your own personal beliefs about reality, and change your limits to accomodate what you have seen. But if you choose the re-evaluation, you must also accept that others people, who did not witness what you witnessed, are extremely unlikely to change their own beliefs based on your testimony alone.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Your hypothesis makes the whole question unfalsifiable.

= non-scientific?

I already said several times that we are discussing the borders of where science can go. It may well be unfalsifiable, but this does not make it fantasy. It simply places it outside the area where science can go and still remain science (as we know it).

Any failure to replicate PSI could be rationalized by "The experimenter or the subject really didn't believe, or had some momentary doubts."
And I'd like to see some references to any experiments that tested whether believers got consistently better results than skeptics.

I think Luci already did so. If you want more, then I can dig out the copy of last years New Scientist which carried the articles on this subject and provide those references. Edit : If my memory serves me correctly, the people Luci quoted were the same ones the main article in NS was about.

 

[Lucianarchy]

Experimenter Effects

Experimenter Effects in Scientific Research: How Widely Are They Neglected?

Rupert Sheldrake

(Abstract)
A survey of recent papers published in a range of scientific journals showed that the use of blind methodologies is very rare in the so-called hard sciences. In the physical sciences, no blind experiments were found among the 237 papers reviewed. In the biological sciences, there were 7 blind experiments out of 914 (0.8%). There was a higher proportion in the medical sciences, 6 out of 102 (5.9%), and in psychology and animal behavior, 7 out of 143 (4.9%). By far the highest proportion (85.2%) was in parapsychology. A survey of science departments in 11 British Universities showed that blind methodologies are neither used nor taught in 22 out of 23 physics and chemistry departments, or in 14 out of 16 biochemistry and molecular biology departments. By contrast, blind methodologies are sometimes practiced and taught in 4 out of 8 genetics departments, and in 6 out of 8 physiology departments. I propose a simple procedure that could be used to detect possible experimenter effects in any branch of science, by comparing the results of a given experiment conducted both under open and blind conditions.

 

[Lucianarchy]

Experimenter effects in parapsychology

Evidence for a non-classical experimenter effect?


H. Walach (University of Freiburg, Department of Psychology, D79085 Freiburg, Germany), S. Schmidt

(Abstract)

We conducted a well controlled experiment, in order to find out, whether lay- and professional dowsers and radiaesthiologists are able to unconventionally extract information. We used a widely used one-hand rod which is said to have unique sensitive properties for everyone without training. One hundred and six respondents to a publicity campaign coming from all over Germany and including lay as well as many professional and experienced persons performed in three identical reproductions of one single experiment: Ten test probes contained the purest known mineral water (Volvic), 10 contained E605 (parathion, lethal dose). The probes were sealed in glass phials, wrapped in natural silk and fixed in small cylindrical brass containers, identical in appearance. Then their sequence was randomized following a natural random sequence from a strontium 90 source. The code was known neither to the experimenter (SM), nor to the three assistants introducing the subjects to the experiment. The assistants had to make subjects acquainted with the rod and the task expected from them. Consequently, they only knew that the subjects had to detect, whether a probe would be `good for them' or `bad for them'. They did not know anything about the design, the test substances or the number of respective probes. Subjects were left alone in the experimental room, with only a video camera monitoring them. Research assistants only guided the subjects to the door of the room and brought them back, without entering the room or being present while subjects were dowsing. The experimenter (SM), who knew about the design and the contents of the probes, but not about the sequence, only saw subjects after they had performed the experiment and data were secured. There was no effect of unconventional information transfer over the three experiments with 106 subjects, (20 possible correct guesses, p = .703, Wilcoxon). However, there was a strong effect, consistent over all three experiments, with one of the three research assistants (p = .02 two-sided Wilcoxon): Subjects introduced by this assistant had significantly more correct responses. We cannot explain this clear and consistent effect by recurrence to experimenter effects, as all assistants had the same information and knowledge, and none knew anything about the design or the contents of the probes. Since the experimental task was non-classical as well, and the experiment was well blinded and controlled, we can only conclude that this specific person interacted in a way that enabled subjects to unconventionally extract information out of the system.

 

[Stitch]

Originally posted by JustGeoff
What if it manifests in their reality, and not yours. What if reality doesn't behave the same for everybody at all times? It is not logically inevitable that all phenomena are capable of being scientifically examined.

OK, I'll play along. You have your own little reality, odd things can happen there that do not happen in my reality.

If it is your reality and only your reality, how can anything outside of your reality be affected? How can there be ANY evidence for the paranormal (which some people keep claiming there is overwhelming amounts of) if it cannot be viewed, detected or experienced by anybody else??

I suspect that what you are actually describing is a delusion, but I could be wrong

 

[CFLarsen]

That is a matter of personal judgement. Personallly having experienced every level of artificially induced hallucination from alchohol, to LSD, to the mega-hallucinations produced by DMT, I think I can tell when I am straight and when I am hallucinating. I do not believe I would have the slightest difficulty in deciding whether or not I was hallucinating. For me, it is not such an issue. By that, I mean many of the PSI effects that we are talking about could quite easily exist without me having to have a major re-evaluation of my belief system. So I would not have any big contradiction to resolve by positing that I must have hallucinated something on the grounds it could not possibly be real. The question is very similar to "how do you know you are not dreaming". And the answer is the same. When you are dreaming, you do not always know that you are dreaming. But when you wake up, you know it was a dream. If something happens to you when you are actually awake, you do not have to ask yourself whether you were dreaming unless something happens which contradicts your current conceptions of the limits to the way reality behaves. So the question only really arises if (a) you have some fixed beliefs about the limits to how reality behaves and (b) something happened to you when you believed you were awake/"not hallunicating" which busted those limits. At that point you have a choice - either you convince yourself you were actually hallucinating or you re-evaluate your own personal beliefs about reality, and change your limits to accomodate what you have seen. But if you choose the re-evaluation, you must also accept that others people, who did not witness what you witnessed, are extremely unlikely to change their own beliefs based on your testimony alone.

Lots of words. No solution. We cannot tell whether it was an alien abduction or a hallucination.

Rather useless, wouldn't you say?

 

[Lucianarchy]

Sheep / Goat Effect

Gertrude Schmeidler

Her studies, which were conducted over a nine year period and have since been replicated, showed an unquestionable difference between the "sheep" whose scores fell above chance expectation and "goats" who scored below chance levels. The phenomenon of psi-missing is thought to be a psychological effect in which psychic material is repressed from consciousness.

In a review of 17 experiments testing the hypothesis that subjects who believed in ESP would show superior ESP performance compared to subjects who did not believe in ESP, psychologist John Palmer found that the predicted pattern occurred in 76% of the experiments, and all six of the experiments with individually significant outcomes were in the predicted direction. These findings suggest an overall statistical significance for this effect.

http://www.williamjames.com/Science/ESP.htm

 

[UndercoverElephant]

OK, I'll play along. You have your own little reality, odd things can happen there that do not happen in my reality.

If it is your reality and only your reality, how can anything outside of your reality be affected?

For this to work, there has to be an overlap between personal reality and consensus reality. Most things happen in consensus reality - so everybodies individual reality is mainly consistent with the consensus. Only in specific circumstances can the elusive paranormal phenomena occur - because they can only occur in such a way that nobody-elses reality is affected. Consensus reality remains consensus reality - so you can still do things which affect consensus reality.

How can there be ANY evidence for the paranormal (which some people keep claiming there is overwhelming amounts of) if it cannot be viewed, detected or experienced by anybody else??

As already pointed out, the "evidence" consists of repeated borderline positives which are consistently rejected by skeptics. The usual reason given for this is "extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence" - in other words borderline statistical positives which would suffice to approve a new drug would not suffice to accept PSI effects on the grounds that PSI effects are "extra-ordinary" claims. But this all boils down to what you happen to believe is "extra-ordinary", which in turn depends on your own metaphysical beliefs. In a persons private reality, the evidence can be "extra-ordinary", provided the extra-ordinary phenomena do not contaminate consensus reality. In consensus reality, the evidence will be restricted to the borderline positives that the skeptics will never accept.

I suspect that what you are actually describing is a delusion, but I could be wrong

Fair enough.

 

[Stitch]

Originally posted by JustGeoff
my arguments are about the fuzzy grey area at the borders of science, psychology and metaphysics - places where maybe the scientific method alone cannot neccesarily provide us with an answer to the question.

That just smacks of desperation to me. "I want to belive X, I have no rational reason for beliving it, I can't prove it and if anbody asks me to prove I'll just say that it is outside the boundaries of being testable"

I think this illustrates my point quite nicely. In this example the aliens came to visit your house, had a cup of tea, discussed inter-stellar issues in English, and left again. Rather than accepting the evidence of your own eyes and ears,

The evidence of ones own eyes and ears has been shown to be rather flakey on a number of occasions, just watch a street magician, to my eyes it looks like he has just "bitten a chunk off a coin" (or whatever), but I don't belive he has actually done it either.

you are telling me you would use "reason" to convince yourself you had been dreaming or you were going mad.

I look at the evidence available to me, there is NO evidence the aliens have been there "...then disappear leaving no trace of their visit", in fact if we are being pedantic, they haven't left a memory in my brain of them being there either and so there is nothing for me to be aware of anyway.

But certainly if there is nothing to suggest they ever were there I would have to consider that I dreampt it is a very real possibility. To be honest it would seem far more likely to me that this was the case.

If however they had left some evidence behind, then that's a different story.

That isn't skepticism. That is a refusal to believe your own eyes and ears, just as "180 proof" said he would refuse to believe is own eyes had he witnessed Moses receiving the stone tablets. What is happening here is that you find it easier to dismiss what your own eyes and ears were telling you than go through the process of completely re-evaluating your belief system in order to accomodate what you had witnessed yourself.

And yet you would rather belive what you see and accept it whole heartedly when everything else i.e. a lack of any other evidence ought to suggest that something is not right? I know the eye can be fooled, I know one person can be fooled, this is why I talk about repeatability and peer review, it brings a sanity check in to things.

Maybe so - which makes things even more complicated. But perhaps some are genuine and yet it is impossible for them to ever provide evidence that will satisfy.

Cop out again. If you want to believe "X" then feel free to do so, but don't expect anybody else to believe it as well unless you can back your claim up.

Well, for arguments sake, this is my hypothesis. My hypothesis is that certain PSI phenomena only manifest when the experimenter and the subject are genuinely open to believing in their existence,

OK, we are starting to get somewhere, and are begining to find something that we can test, carry on...

rather than attempting to prove they do not exist because they do not believe it is possible.

I cannot disprove anything and it would be feutile to try - think about it! I can however say that I do not feel sufficient high quality evidence is available to suggest that a given claim is credible. Big difference.

This has been tested, and produced a positive result which the skeptics in question refused to accept.

Cite your chosen example and we will work through it, remember we want to see:
Claim, Hypothesis, Test Protocol, Peer review of Test Protocol, revised Test Protocol, etc etc

The same set of experiments have been repeatedly carried out by believers and skeptics, and the believers consistently got better results than the skeptics.

"Better results", I would hazard that the Skeptic's results showned no evidence of statistical significance, however, if you can show otherwise, please do so.

Rather than accepting this result (that there is an experimenter effect), the skeptics accused the believers of fraud and/or incompetence, which led to an unfortunate stand-off once more.

Please cite the experiment you refer to. Were the believers accused of "fraud" or were a list of reasons given to indicate flaws in their testing technique that accounted for the observed result, and the believers refused to accept them??

Personally, I'd rather keep "God" out of this. Far too emotionally charged on both sides, and usually it turns out that the people discussing the subject have different definitions of "God" anyway.

Fine by me, I treat one paranormal phenominon the same as the next, I am happy to discuss any one of them if you can provide some evidence to back up your claim.

Is it idiotic to believe your own eyes and ears instead of rationalising phenomena away on the grounds that you yourself are deluded?

Do you belive EVERYTHING you see without question??? Do you belive EVERYTHING you hear without question???

I'm not so sure. If the aliens visited me, then I'd sooner believe in aliens than believe I had gone mad.

I admit it would not be easy to consider the possibility that you are delusional. However plenty of people are or even become so. In the abscence of any evidence to suggest that Aliens had paid me a visit, I would have to consider it. I would also probably keep hunting around for evidence that the aliens had visited me as well, but in the abscence of that evidence I would have to go with the most likely possibility. If I then found a "ray gun" under the bed, I could re-evaluate the situation.

Although this is a bit of a silly example, and I don't believe in aliens. I think we are very probably alone in this Universe, personally.

I think we have more chance of finding evidence of life on another planet that we do of the paranormal, but there we go, we haven't got any soild evidence for either yet, so I'll keep an open mind.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Lots of words. No solution. We cannot tell whether it was an alien abduction or a hallucination.

Rather useless, wouldn't you say?

For you, as a scientific skeptic, it is not much use, no. I was trying to explain that for me, I have no problem that requires a solution, because I am not interested in proving to you that these phenomena do occur, and I have no trouble myself determining whether or not I was hallucinating. I am not sure there is a "problem" at all, unless you are a person who wants others to believe what you believe i.e. the skeptic who wants to convince the paranormalists they are wrong has a problem, and the paranormalist who wants to convince the skeptics they are wrong has a problem. Therefore the problem, if there is one, is that many people on both sides of this debate seem to want to prove to the people on the other side that they are wrong, and no means of proving it exists, regardless of Randis unclaimed prize. Perhaps that is the bottom line - some of the skeptics here believe that Randis unclaimed million is evidence for the non-existence of PSI, and I'm not sure it actually is. Provided you are happy living in a diverse world where there is room for all sorts of beliefs, then there is no problem.

 

[drkitten]

I'll throw your own standards back at you. Where is your evidence that reality remains consistent for all people at all times?

Start with the Okla nuclear reactor.

 

[drkitten]

I've always had a bit of problem with the definition of "mental illness". Who gets to decide what is crazy? I think the modern world we live in is almost completely insane. Does that make me mad?

No. It might be a symptom, and not a cause, for example.

 

[Lucianarchy]

That just smacks of desperation to me. "I want to belive X, I have no rational reason for beliving it, I can't prove it and if anbody asks me to prove I'll just say that it is outside the boundaries of being testable"

If you want to believe "X" then feel free to do so, but don't expect anybody else to believe it as well unless you can back your claim up.

"To be precise, when we say that "X exists," we mean that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying X, provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for repeatable, anomalous, X-like effects.

With this in mind, ESP exists, precognition exists, telepathy exists, and PK exists. ESP is statistically robust, meaning it can be reliably demonstrated through repeated trials, but it tends to be weak when simple geometric symbols are used as targets. Photographic or video targets often produce effects many times larger, and there is some evidence that ESP on natural locations (as opposed to photos of them), and in natural contexts, may be stronger yet. [...]" - http://www.parapsych.org/faq_file3.html

 

[Lucianarchy]

"As the 21st century draws nearer, we can see that society's materialistic values, fostered in many respects by modern science and technology, have become outdated and unworthy. It is clear that we have come to another turning point in history and science. What we require to meet the challenges of these unpredictable and confusing times is a new paradigm to guide a new age. I believe that the key to this new paradigm lies in the research of biological, mental, and spiritual phenomena such as "Qi" and other psychic powers that have been overlooked by modern scientists.... I think that the results of my research could help bring about a significant revolution that might force our materialistic society to turn around, and concurrently reform the ways of modern science and technology."

--Sony ESPER Laboratory director Yoichiro Sako, speaking at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration (hosted by the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, June 1997).

http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/sonyESP.htm

 

[CFLarsen]

"To be precise, when we say that "X exists," we mean that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying X, provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for repeatable, anomalous, X-like effects.

With this in mind, ESP exists, precognition exists, telepathy exists, and PK exists. ESP is statistically robust, meaning it can be reliably demonstrated through repeated trials, but it tends to be weak when simple geometric symbols are used as targets. Photographic or video targets often produce effects many times larger, and there is some evidence that ESP on natural locations (as opposed to photos of them), and in natural contexts, may be stronger yet. [...]" - http://www.parapsych.org/faq_file3.html

...because pictures with many details in them can be interpreted much more than simple symbols, hence yield more hits.

Fool.

 

[Stitch]

Originally posted by JustGeoff I have no problem that requires a solution, because I am not interested in proving to you that these phenomena do occur, and I have no trouble myself determining whether or not I was hallucinating.

To be honest, I think the believers are far more in need of a solution than the skeptics.

If I can't find a rational explanation for something, then I am happy to consider that the experience is quite possibly beyond my current understanding, and possibly that of science. It does not however mean that it will ALWAYS be beyond science to explain it, and I am happy to accept there may be no solution at present.

It would seem however that the believers, when presented with something that does not have a current scientific explanation, resort to inventing something that explains the situation, so that they DO have a solution. The fact that it is made up and has no evidence to support is doesn't matter, it is an answer, a solution, even if it is wrong, it is something warm and fluffy to cling on to an allows you to say "I understand that"

The problem arises when science catches up and a rational explanation is provided for something. This is when we get in to denial and refusal to change belief systems.

Science says "Ahh, well actually we think that happened because of X. If we change the experiment slightly to cater for X, lets see if the hypothesis still holds true"

For X, read any real world explanation for why ANY experiment may produce a spurious result (dirty test tubes for example, cross contamination etc)

This the point at which the believers start to panic. Somebody has spotted the "trick" and has proposed a revised "test" to plug the hole. The belief system is about to come crashing down. Hence the "I refuse to be tested" type statements or, as seems to be one of your favourites "It can't be tested"

 

[Lucianarchy]

Stitch, just curious. Have you posted to this forum previously, under a different name?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Stitch :

That just smacks of desperation to me. "I want to belive X, I have no rational reason for beliving it, I can't prove it and if anbody asks me to prove I'll just say that it is outside the boundaries of being testable"

I'm not desperate. I am not trying to get you to believe what I believe, I am just having a chat on a rainy afternoon. Me, I am going off to study philosophy - so expect my answers to get even more frustrating! Most of philosophy does indeed lie outside the boundaries of what is empiticaly testable - that's what makes it philosophy.

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I think this illustrates my point quite nicely. In this example the aliens came to visit your house, had a cup of tea, discussed inter-stellar issues in English, and left again. Rather than accepting the evidence of your own eyes and ears,
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The evidence of ones own eyes and ears has been shown to be rather flakey on a number of occasions, just watch a street magician, to my eyes it looks like he has just "bitten a chunk off a coin" (or whatever), but I don't belive he has actually done it either.

Yes, but there are limits. Aliens coming to tea was an example I chose because it so clearly breaches the limits of the capabilities of a stage magician.

But certainly if there is nothing to suggest they ever were there I would have to consider that I dreampt it is a very real possibility. To be honest it would seem far more likely to me that this was the case.

If however they had left some evidence behind, then that's a different story.

But by now it is all coming down to a personal assessment of what is or is not believable/possible. In most cases, you would believe your own eyes. In this case, you wouldn't. PSI is trickier, because whether or not you believe PSI is "extra-ordinary and unbelievable" is very much debatable and very dependent on personal belief systems about the nature of reality. If you happen to be an idealist, for example, you might have a very different conception about what is possible/likely/believable.

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That isn't skepticism. That is a refusal to believe your own eyes and ears, just as "180 proof" said he would refuse to believe is own eyes had he witnessed Moses receiving the stone tablets. What is happening here is that you find it easier to dismiss what your own eyes and ears were telling you than go through the process of completely re-evaluating your belief system in order to accomodate what you had witnessed yourself.

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And yet you would rather belive what you see and accept it whole heartedly when everything else i.e. a lack of any other evidence ought to suggest that something is not right? I know the eye can be fooled, I know one person can be fooled, this is why I talk about repeatability and peer review, it brings a sanity check in to things.

Depends on what I saw. I certainly don't believe everything I see without questioning it. The opposite is true - I question everything, including some things the skeptics take for granted, like reality being observer-independent. Perhaps this might be a good time to point out that physics (QM) has quite clearly suggested that reality is NOT observer-independent, something which has shocked a great many people who were willing to confront its implications, and still causes a great deal of disagreements. Indeed you only need to watch the reaction of certain individuals to the claim that QM implies an observer-dependent reality to know that this is a very important claim. It is often met with an extreme over-reaction ("Nonsense! QM says nothing of the sort! It is a tool for analysing probabilities! Schroedinger was just pulling your leg!"). Schroedinger was actually perfectly serious, adopted Hindu idealism and ended his life writing about consciousness and mysticism, not as a scientist but as a philosopher.

Cop out again. If you want to believe "X" then feel free to do so, but don't expect anybody else to believe it as well unless you can back your claim up.

I thought I had made it crystal clear that I do not expect anybody else to believe anything! That is a fool's game.

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rather than attempting to prove they do not exist because they do not believe it is possible.

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I cannot disprove anything and it would be feutile to try - think about it! I can however say that I do not feel sufficient high quality evidence is available to suggest that a given claim is credible. Big difference.

You can say that, yes. But it is coming down to your own personal standards of "quality of evidence", and quality of evidence required is dependent on your own evaluations of what is an "extra-ordinary claim".

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The same set of experiments have been repeatedly carried out by believers and skeptics, and the believers consistently got better results than the skeptics.

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"Better results", I would hazard that the Skeptic's results showned no evidence of statistical significance, however, if you can show otherwise, please do so.

Well, Lucianarchy already provided a reference to the set of experiments I am talking about. I'll follow his link and see if it provides the right information.

Please cite the experiment you refer to. Were the believers accused of "fraud" or were a list of reasons given to indicate flaws in their testing technique that accounted for the observed result, and the believers refused to accept them??

No fraud/incompetence was demonstrated. The problem has been that the more statistically relevant the results were, the more likely that the skeptics would claim there "must have been" fraud/incompetence.

In the case Luci and myself are refering to, a specific set of events happened over about 10 years. At first, the skeptics would always invoke the "fraud/incompetence" accusation whenever there were statistical positives, and the paranormalists were claiming that there was an "experimenter effect" which the skeptics hated because it was so hard to nail this doen experimentally (because if different experimenters get different results then it derails the scientific method as we know it). So there was an agreement - the skeptics agreed they would not make unfounded accusations of fraud/incompetence and the paranormalists agreed they would avoid invoking the "experimenter effect". There were then a set of experiments lasting several years, carried out by Dr. Marilyn Schlitz and Dr Richard Wiseman, who were good friends. What came out of this set of experiments was data which suggested that the "experimenter effect" really was occuring, which caused a problem because as soon as this was pointed out, the same old warfare broke out because the paranormalists had "broken their deal". But I don't see how they have any choice. If the "experimenter effect" is real, what are the paranormalists supposed to say? The skeptics simply aren't willing to go down the path of considering "the experimenter effect", regardless of the evidence provided, but the paranormalists have no choice, because "experimenter effect" evidence is the only evidence they can provide!

The question is this : If the experimenter effect is real, how do we get the skeptics to ever believe the data? I think the answer is : we can't.

Do you belive EVERYTHING you see without question??? Do you belive EVERYTHING you hear without question???

I believe NOTHING without question! I am going to study philosophy!

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Start with the Okla nuclear reactor.

Never heard of it! Can you provide a link?