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Precog Dreams May Have Something To Them

dogjones

Graduate Poster
dogjones
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/01/precognitive-dreaming-dismissed-science

Or not. Hmmm:

snip

20 years spent studying psychic research has convinced me that the parapsychologists are right. Wiseman's appeal to the Law of Large Numbers is arguably as subjective as the phenomena it attempts to explain. Where dreams are reported that match future events on a number of specific details – as is often the case – statistical probability is not particularly useful.

One such case, recorded in JW Dunne's 1930s bestseller An Experiment With Time, involves someone dreaming of meeting a woman wearing a striped blouse in a garden and suspecting her of being a German spy. Two days later the dreamer visits a country hotel where she is told of a woman staying there who other residents believe to be a spy. She later encounters the woman outside, and finds the garden and the pattern on the blouse exactly match her dream. Such reports – where the dream is recorded immediately afterwards and prior to the event it appears to foretell – cannot be dismissed as anecdotal.

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Anyone heard of this guy? He's written a book called "Randi's Prize: What Sceptical Scientists Say About the Paranormal, Why They are Wrong and Why it Matters". Sounds like an objective read alright!
 
He just comes across as a woo or the very least a woo sympathiser.
Giving science a bad name and attempting to give parapsychologists some credibility.

Brushing off a rational possible explanation and then mentioning in passing some highly dubious tests and studies.
 
I think the article needs reading once, and this part many times ....:rolleyes:.
I can accept that the case has not been proved either way. But accounts that exclude relevant data and credible scientific research should be treated with caution
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I don't see the likelyhood of any credible scientific data being produced in this article, basically it seems to me that the book is a only "Dawkins Flea" but for Randi, no doubt there are a few more....

Also quoting a study of eight people, is I think what Wiseman is going on about, that is that statistically relevant data is not going to occur at so low a sample size.
To address this I probably would be expectng a statistically larger (much) sample, with similar results to the 5/8 quoted in his article, not to be presented with a study that lends little, nay, actually takes away the value of his argument.

Cheapshot publicity off Randi's good work, using Wiseman's work in this area to promote his own misunderstanding of stats, and probablilty for that matter, just to puff his probably useless book.

So I advise a touch of caution there, after all where's this guy's own studies?

not there are they?

regards to everyone, BM
 
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Wiseman and McLuhan were interviewed together debating the paranormal on the Today programme on Tuesday. You can listen to it here
 
Looking forward to Mysterious Universe talking about this, I'm thinking it's going to be Forensics scientist Aaron Wright foaming at the mouth saying how pathetic skeptics are and that science is dogmatic and that that scientists are afraid of paradigm shifts. Should be funny.

Saying that I have had dreams that had elements that were pretty spot on what happened the next day.
 
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Not read McLuhan's book yet, though it was reviewed in latest Fortean Times and I will pick it up. My review of Wiseman's latest, Paranormality which is all over the UK media is here though : http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/...mality-a-good-but-fundamentally-limited-book/

The strangest point was made by my ex-wife, who notes with interest that in the UK there is much more money to be made by sceptical books (think Dawkins, Wiseman, and the excellent Shermer & especially Ben Goldacre) than by the woo stuff by the likes of Derek Acorah and the psychics, and very little to be made on the academic parapsychology books, that sell so few copies as to be marginal at best. I think this is abundantly true, as Paranormality has been in the Amazon top ten much of the week, and Wiseman received a five figure fee for it. Good for him! :) This however may be in marked contrat to the USA - but Sceptics in the Pub in my home town is getting at least ten times the number of people who attend the local psychic research group meetings, and the market sector seems prosperous.

Hey, I may have to write a really woo book denouncing sceptics fleecing unbelievers for their cash, lol! :) Problem is it wouldn't sell!:jaw-dropp

cj x
 
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