PEAR's Global Conciousness hypothesis hit hard

[T'ai Chi]

If you actually read the article An Evening with Dean Radin

An article on a recollection of events by a biased and emotionally invested follower of the organized skeptical movement, with no actual transcript (written or video) of the event that we can compare to, isn't taken seriously.

If there is any data mining and deception going on, I don't think it's on the skeptic's side.

It is when you misunderstand the entire purpose of using the windows, and then use your misunderstanding to insinuate that intentional selection to attain significance took place.

 

[T'ai Chi]

I know that's what they say.

Super.

Maybe it would help if you describe in great detail what you don't quite understand about what they are predicting.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Maybe it would help if you describe in great detail what you don't quite understand about what they are predicting.

It's not a question of understanding. I'm simply asking whether they have made any predictions before the fact. I don't know, so I'm asking.

~~ Paul

 

[CFLarsen]

An article on a recollection of events by a biased and emotionally invested follower of the organized skeptical movement, with no actual transcript (written or video) of the event that we can compare to, isn't taken seriously.

We weren't allowed to either film or record. It is very telling that you blame that on the skeptics, and not on the believers.

If you don't take this "seriously", why do you take Rawlins' account of what happened when he recounted what Randi had said seriously? That is the height of hypocrisy.

 

[Delusions_O_Grandeur]

Alright guys, time for me to try replicating one of Radin's early REG experiments. In 1995 he published a report, I don't know where to find it though. He took an RNG to several emotionally charged events like rituals artistic performances etc. He reported a greater deviation than could be expected by chance, giving it a p value in the order of 10^-6. Now I've become so skeptical of Radin's attitude to science, that I need to see for myself.

So, here's where I come in. I'm going to take 1) A Geiger counter 2) A sample of radiactive material generating beta particles (not sure which type I can get my hands on at the lab supplies depot) and 3) A laptop to record 1's and 0's. This should be a good REG. Then'll I'll go take it to emotionally charged events like the ones Radin attended. With some looking I could find plenty of ceremonies performances and rituals my REG can 'witness'. I will construct a more detaild method and determine a suitable statistical procedure once I'm sure I can secure the needed equipment.

And since love is the most powerful emotion please remember the motto: "If you're going to shag, don't forget my REG."

 

[Yahzi]

2) What happens if I were to change the start/end time of each time window a little bit?

Good call!

I've got this love/hate relationship with science

Your poem seemed quite appropriate to me. I don't see the problem. Science is like your wife; and psuedo-science is like the mistress you pretend you have after seeing a photoshoped picture in a magazine. It doesn't have to real to be fun.

Unless you start sending flowers to your imaginary mistress. Then you're just nuts.

 

[fls]

Though the article "Shapes in the clouds" is not about the GCP, it does show they have a knack for poor experimental protocols at PEAR. The picture coming into focus is that PEAR simply isn't an institution that I can trust to abstain from poor experimental design and data selection...

Based on other articles I'm reading here and there I've got the feeling that if you go to any parapsychology research unit and yell "Beware it's the null hypothesis!" people will jump up run around screaming and fly out of windows all over the place.

I'm enjoying your way with words.

There have been several recent threads on the faults with paranormal research, and criticisms tend to get treated as cynicism. But I think the researchers and supporters don't realize that fearing the null hypothesis harms parapsychology the most. By trying to find a pattern that is assumed to exist, they have lost the ability to remove the false patterns that arise from chance and wishful thinking. Even if it exists, how does one pick out the one real pattern from all the false ones?

Ray Hyman touched on this idea in his essay "Commentary on John P.A. Ioannidis's 'Why Most Published Research Findings are False'" in the March/April 2006 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Instead of measuring an effect, significant results may just be a measure of the underlying bias within a particular field of study. Hyman applied this idea to the original ganzfeld psi data base and found that taking even just taking a few of the flaws into account, the bias was 30% or higher. Take away the bias and the psi disappears. How can that be fruitful?

Linda

 

[Delusions_O_Grandeur]

It is taking some effort to bring back joy to life after slowly peeling away the imagined inexplicable magic present in many pseudoscientific theories, they somehow seem to make reality more... easilly controllable by humans.

However, I've finally fallen for the idea of Darwinian evolution on aesthetical grounds besides merely logical grounds. It sounds unworthy of a critical thinker, but I think that showing the beauty of the accepted theory is also important to truly convincing oneself after the logic. In the article "The flagullum unspun" (K.R. Miller 2004) I read the following bit:

"This, however, is not what is meant by "intelligent design" in the parlance of the new anti-evolutionists. Their views demand not a universe in which the beauty and harmony of natural law has brought a world of vibrant and fruitful life into existence, but rather a universe in which the emergence and evolution of life is made expressly impossible by the very same rules. Their view requires that the source of each and every novelty of life was the direct and active involvement of an outside designer whose work violated the very laws of nature he had fashioned. The world of intelligent design is not the bright and innovative world of life that we have come to know through science. Rather, it is a brittle and unchanging landscape, frozen in form and unable to adapt except at the whims of its designer."

THIS, has given me a very powerful new insight: That the universe's actually rather simple laws of physics are all that is needed to drive the formation of the most wild and complex structures of matter over time, and eventually life. I won't suggest the laws of nature were tuned by an intelligence though, because my experiences with arguments from intelligence are simply depressing.