"String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal"

[PingOfPong]

I expect limbo might respond with this.

I wouldn't say that. I would simply say that unless one reads parapsychology proper journals, books, and textbooks, lectures, and actually listens...then one is getting only one side of the story. The debunker side. So that someone can't see the true strength of the mounds and mounds of cumulative, corroborative evidence.

Limbo, you haven't addressed what I think is very pertinent point. The evidence only exists for parapsychologists. Science should work for everyone including skeptics. If their experiments do indicate existence of the paranormal, whatever that means, then they should offer up an experiment for skeptics to verify. Sorry for the cliche, but they should take up the MDC before it's gone.

I remember reading about an offer from Randi to the PEAR folks. Randi extended the MDC to their random number generator experiment. All they had to do was open up their records for an independent statistical analysis. The PEAR response was (I'm paraphrasing) "We're not in the business of trying to convince skeptics". If you want to be right, skeptics are the people you should try to convince.

 

[Robin]

Sorry for the cliche, but they should take up the MDC before it's gone.

Absolutely - if the Radin 1997 experiment is genuine, as I point out, they ought to be able to use it to predict a coin toss before the coin is even thrown up. That would take out the million dollars with no problem. Not to mention a Nobel Prize.

It seems that Radin, the PEAR guys etc are not interested in either.

 

[Limbo]

If their experiments do indicate existence of the paranormal, whatever that means, then they should offer up an experiment for skeptics to verify.

See post #53

 

[Beth]

There was a paper that looked at the effects anticipation may have that showed it introduced a significant bias.

http://m0134.fmg.uva.nl/publications/2002/expectationbias_PA2002.pdf

There was another paper I saw that tried a few different models for anticipation that also demonstrated bias. I couldn't find it with a quick search, but I'll keep looking.

Linda

This is interesting, thanks. Unfortunately, some of the graphs and formulas are not readable on my computer.

 

[Dr B]

What's your explanation for the effect demonstrated by the paper in post #23?

I dont understand how that relates to PSI

 

[The Man]

Yes. What model does a prestimulus/presentiment effect let us construct, or make more accurate or refute?

Unfortunately I am unable to read the entire paper on this computer and will have to do that later.

First one would have to demonstrate that it is in fact a prestimulus/presentiment effect and not just a post-stimulus/post-sentiment effect. Given the randomization and experiences of the photographs, one, after experiencing a group of neutral pictures, would likely expect an emotional one to follow soon. So the expectation could simply be a result of the recent experience or a post-stimulus/post-sentiment expectation effect. Without being able to read the paper at this time, I can not say if the data was analyzed in a post-stimulus/post-sentiment expectation effect criteria. Also I can not see if proper control baselines were established for the subjects beforehand by perhaps telling them that they will see both types of pictures, providing a series of pre-identified examples, then only showing them a series of one type to establish what the expectation of the other type would be. That certainly could not be attributed to and kind of prestimulus/presentiment effect as in that controlled reference they will not see the expected excluded type.

From what you did quote from the paper.

Interestingly, Radin (1997) found that the baseline level of skin conductance preceding highly emotional stimuli was higher than the baseline level preceding calm stimuli.

This does tend to indicate that some “baseline level of skin conductance” was established, but again without being able to read the paper I can not know how that baseline was established. If it was by only showing them one type without the expectation of perhaps seeing the other then it is simply a post-stimulus/post-sentiment expectation effect, in other words just expecting what they were told to or what experience has indicated they should expect. The correlation is supposed to represent that expectations consistency with what one actually experiences next. If there is no expectation of the alternate type than the expectation should always correlate to the next experience. If there is the expectation but just no possibility of seeing the alternate type then the perceived expectation can in no why be due to any kind of a prestimulus/presentiment effect.

Another type of control might have been to show established patterns of images giving some baseline for that post-stimulus/post-sentiment expectation effect. Then randomly interjecting images into that pre-established pattern to see if the expectation pattern (based on experience) remains or is altered by those random interjections and if that expectation shows any correlation (other then chance) to the randomly interjected pictures.

“Most brain regions did not show striking differences in anticipation before emotional and neutral stimuli. However, larger anticipatory activation preceding emotional stimuli compared to neutral stimuli was found in the right amygdala and in the caudate nucleus. For the male participants, as can be seen in Figure 2, this appeared before the erotic stimuli while for the female both erotic and violent stimuli produced this prestimulus effect (Van den Noort, 2003)”

In a post-stimulus/post-sentiment effect criteria, we might perhaps say that men might tend to have a higher expectation (or hope) to see an erotic image then women perhaps after a series of non-erotic images. This of course excludes the consideration that for some violence is an erotic stimulus (or vice versa).

Another type of control that might have been included would have been to have the subject indicate what type of picture they might expect next (neutral, violent or erotic) and then compare that to what type they did see next. Again at this time I can not confirm or deny the inclusion of such controls or analysis until I can actually read the paper.

Unfortunately I can not see how one might conclusively demonstrate that it is indeed a prestimulus/presentiment effect and not just a post-stimulus/post-sentiment expectation effect. However by having the subjects indicate what type of picture they might expect the next one to be, could demonstrate some reliability of that expectation if the correlation were significantly greater then chance.

 

[ferd burfle]

Brian D. Josephson and Fotini Pallikari-Viras:

The perception of reality by biosystems is based on different, and in certain respects more effective principles than those utilised by the more formal procedures of science. As a result, what appears as random pattern to the scientific method can be meaningful pattern to a living organism.

Do Josephson and/or Pakkikari-Viras have any formal affiliation with postmodernism? Because this sounds just like the proliferation of separate types of science, the scientific relativism, postmodernist wankers are so fond of.

And this from a Nobel laureate

Ferd

 

[Limbo]

Here is another presentiment paper:

Skin Conductance Prestimulus Response: Analyses, Artifacts and a Pilot Study

Abstract

"Previous studies have suggested that the human autonomic nervous system responds to stimuli 2–3 seconds before presentation. In these studies randomly chosen photographs with high and low affectivity were presented to participants. Ensemble averaging of skin conductance in the prestimulus epochs showed a differential response between high and low affectivity photographs.

In our protocol the problem of idiosyncratic responses to pictorial stimuli was avoided by using audio startle stimuli. Stimulus type was determined just before presentationby a true randomgenerator. Participants heard 20 stimuli per session with a 50% chance of an audio startle as against a silent control. Our dependent variable was the proportions of 3-second epochs prior to audio and control stimuli in which a skin conductance response, that is a minimum in skin conductance followed by a maximum, occurred. We found a significant effect (N ˆ 125, Z scoreˆ 3.27, effect size [ES] ˆ 0.0901 6 0.0275, pˆ 5.4 3 10¡4).

Explanations for this result as an artifact were examined and rejected. We show that a significant result from an average-based epoch analysis in this type of experiment is not a necessary requirement to demonstrate significant evidence for a prestimulus response. We also observed post hoc that the prestimulus response effect was correlated with participant lability (r ˆ 0.472, df ˆ 21, pˆ0.011)."

 

[fls]

Here is another presentiment paper:

Skin Conductance Prestimulus Response: Analyses, Artifacts and a Pilot Study

This is an interesting follow-up to that study.

http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/library/MPZjacm.pdf

Linda

 

[Limbo]

This is an interesting follow-up to that study.

http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/library/MPZjacm.pdf

Linda

Yes very interesting.

Were you under the impression that it supports a mundane explanation?

From the paper:

[...]

"To understand these results, we demonstrated, by Monte Carlo techniques, that a possible explanation is that experimenters may have used their own intuition to initiate experiment runs that somehow sort otherwise random...[...]"

"The results of these anticipatory studies imply a particular mechanism: individuals somehow appear to be able to respond psychophysiologically, in advance, of cognitive arousing or acoustical startle stimuli. However, we suggest an alternative interpretation that involves an anomalous anticipatory effect in such a way as to mimic physiological responses."

It seems to me that the anomalous alternative offered by this paper is one well known to parapsychologists. The 'experimenter psi effect' or the 'parapsychological experimenter effect'.

Sometimes the experimenter unknowingly uses his own psi during the experiment and so the psychic ability of the experimenters accidentally contributes to the results...to some degree.

Experimenter Effects in Parapsychology

What are experimenter effects and why are they important? Many parapsychologists have suggested that the belief of the experimenter may influence the outcome of their study – such that sceptics tend to find what they expect, and so do believers. Indeed, some have claimed that the experimenter’s own psi may affect the outcome of the study. This is an important issue for parapsychology because without an understanding of what causes experimenter effects, parapsychologists will not be able to specify the conditions under which other scientists can replicate their findings.

How did you study this?

A series of KPU studies (e.g.Watt & Ramakers, 2003) have looked at the question of experimenter effects in parapsychology. We selected a number of individuals who scored extremely high or extremely low on a paranormal belief questionnaire, and then trained them to administer a psi task to naive participants. So, the 'experimenters' were either strong believers or disbelievers in the paranormal. The psi task was a simple 'remote helping' task involving two sensorially isolated individuals - the 'helper' and the 'helpee'. The helpees sat in a sound-shielded room and were asked to focus their attention on a candle and to press a button every time they noticed they had become distracted from this focus.

A computer recorded the number of self-reported distractions and the time that they occurred during the session. At the same time, in a distant room, the helper was following a randomised schedule of 'help' and 'no help' periods. During the help periods, the helper was asked to attempt to mentally assist the distant helpee to have fewer distractions on the task. Since the experimenter and the helpee did not know the times when the helper was attempting to help, one would expect there to be no systematic relationship between the helpee's distractions and whatever the helper was doing. The psi hypothesis, on the other hand, would predict that the helpee would have fewer distractions during those randomly-scheduled periods when the helper was thinking of them. The results for all sessions combined showed overall significant positive scoring on the psi task - that is, fewer distractions during help periods. More interestingly, when comparing sessions conducted by believer experimenters with sessions conducted by sceptics, the effect was entirely limited to those participants tested by believer experimenters. Participants tested by sceptical experimenters obtained chance results on the psi task.

What does this mean?

The positive psi result could not be due to subtle cueing of the experimenters or helpees, because all were blind to the randomised condition manipulations that were taking place during the psi task. Sensory leakage was also ruled out by locating helpees and helpers in separate isolated rooms. Questionnaire measures suggested that participants’ expectancy and motivation were unaffected by their experimenters’ paranormal belief, raising the possibility that it was the experimenter’s psi that influenced the outcome of the study. Note, however, that other researchers have not yet attempted to replicate this finding. So, although it is statistically significant, the study's findings should be regarded as suggestive but not conclusive. If experimenter psi effects are real then this raises challenging questions not only for parapsychology but also for science in general. Traditionally the experimenter is regarded as an objective observer of the data, rather than being another participant in the study.

 

[Robin]

I would still like to hear from Limbo or Beth on my previous question.

If these results are genuine then the presentiment is not only of the emotion, it is also of the result of the randomiser.

So could an experiment be set up in which skin conductance or MRI could predict the result of coin tosses?

 

[fls]

Yes very interesting.

Were you under the impression that it supports a mundane explanation?

I'm more interested in the uncovering of a bias that seems to come about from selecting only a small number of intervals to include in the analysis. I realize that they explain it away by invoking a different vague idea that has yet to be established. But results that are dependent upon rare events can easily end up having an unbalanced distribution between groups. Then it's merely a 50/50 chance that the bias favours the hypothesis.

Experimenter Effects in Parapsychology

Since you seem to be familiar with this paper, maybe you (or anyone else who has looked at it) can help me out with something that has always bothered me about it. How do you get a t-value of 2.737 from the results given in Table 2 (since that forms the basis of their claim)?

http://www.koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.uk/Documents/WATTRAME.PDF

Linda

 

[Limbo]

Since you seem to be familiar with this paper, maybe you (or anyone else who has looked at it) can help me out with something that has always bothered me about it. How do you get a t-value of 2.737 from the results given in Table 2 (since that forms the basis of their claim)?

http://www.koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.uk/Documents/WATTRAME.PDF

Linda

I e-mailed Caroline Watt and asked her that. I haven't found Peter Ramakers e-mail yet...maybe this weekend I'll have a chance to look a bit more.

When I hear back from either of them I'll let ya know.

 

[fls]

I e-mailed Caroline Watt and asked her that. I haven't found Peter Ramakers e-mail yet...maybe this weekend I'll have a chance to look a bit more.

When I hear back from either of them I'll let ya know.

Thanks. That would be helpful.

Linda

 

[fls]

I would still like to hear from Limbo or Beth on my previous question.

If these results are genuine then the presentiment is not only of the emotion, it is also of the result of the randomiser.

So could an experiment be set up in which skin conductance or MRI could predict the result of coin tosses?

Sorry to jump in here, but since you haven't yet had a response...

These tests seem to be based on blips (what they call SCR's (skin conductance responses)), which are uncommon but should be identifiable at the time they occur once a baseline is established. So they should be able to be used to predict an upcoming event. I'm not sure a coin toss or roulette colour would work, though. The predicted event may have to be unpleasant.

Linda

 

[Limbo]

The predicted event may have to be unpleasant

Mua-ha-ha...

...who is scared of SPIDERS...



THE PRECOGNITIVE HABITUATION EFFECT: AN ADAPTATION USING SPIDER STIMULI

Louie Savva, Robert Child & Matthew D. Smith
Parapsychology Research Group, Department of Psychology
Liverpool Hope University College

Abstract

"There has been a recent trend in precognition research to examine established conventional psychological paradigms for temporally reversed effects. The precognitive habituation (PH) effect is a newly emerging paradigm based upon a temporally reversed mere exposure (ME) study. Where in conventional psychology the ME effect involves exposing stimuli to participants and then measuring liking for it, the PH effect involves the opposite procedure.

Participants are presented with a pair of photographs and are then asked to make a preference choice between the two. Previous research has argued that precognitive exposure to one target over another, results in diminished arousal and that negatively arousing targets are made less negative. The PH hypothesis is that negatively arousing targets will be preferred over the non-targets and that no effect (or a precognitive boredom effect) is expected on non-arousing (low-affect) trial.

In this study, we sought to conceptually replicate and extend Bem’s (2003) findings by using less ethically problematic images. In the Bem studies, many of the images were disturbing (graphic images of gun shot victims etc) and Bem reported that some participants did make attempts to avoid looking at the stimuli through closing of the eyes or averting the gaze. To help circumvent the problem of showing potentially disturbing stimuli to participants, the authors sought to replace the negatively arousing images used by Bem with pictures of spiders. This was based on the work of Savva and French (2001; 2002), where spider pictures had been used to replace more disturbing images in a number of paradigms, including the presentiment effect.

Fifty participants contributed to the current study and provided a self-report measure of spider fear, where 25 were categorized as ‘spider fearing’ and 25 as ‘no-spider fear’. The overall hit rates obtained by the different fear groups were not significant but the data did suggest that an analogous effect was to be found. A significant difference was found for the mean number of hits obtained on the spider stimuli versus the low affect pictures and only for the spider fearing group. This effect may be interpreted as a precognitive habituation or a temporally reversed mere-exposure effect. The results are discussed and future direction of research suggested.

[...]

DISCUSSION

The results of this study are very encouraging. After replacing the stimuli found in earlier PH studies with spider-stimuli, it was found that participants who rated themselves as being afraid of spiders seemed to precognitively habituate to spider-stimuli and seemed to exhibit a precognitive boredom effect for low-affect stimuli. No psi effect was found in the no-fear group. These results seem to suggest that participants who are afraid of spiders show preference to one picture over another matched picture, if they are then shown that picture in the future.

This appears to be a temporally reversed ME effect. These participants also show a precognitive boredom effect for the low-affect stimuli, showing a tendency to select the picture that they will not be shown in the future. Although neither effect is very striking, the difference between the two effects is significant and not found in the no-fear group. This adapted PH methodology therefore provides parapsychologists with an ethically less problematic tool than that developed by Bem. Whilst it is unlikely that the ethics committee at Liverpool Hope University College would have passed the PH experiment in its original form, it was more than happy to accept the version reported here. As such it provides a means of making use of what claims to be a replicable and simple methodology without subjecting participants to extremely unpleasant stimuli. Although some may argue that spider stimuli can be just as disturbing as Bem’s original stimuli it was felt that, since participants would be informed that they would be presented with spider pictures, such stimuli, however unpleasant, were not as surprising as some of the images in Bem’s stimuli set."

 

[aggle-rithm]

That's not what the research suggests.

The research suggests that, the more carefully the research is conducted, the less it appears that there are any paranormal phenomena at all. Only when research or reporting is sloppy, or if meta-analysis of the data obfuscates the results, does it appear anything is going on.

If the phenomena were real, you would expect to see the opposite.

 

[fls]

Mua-ha-ha...

...who is scared of SPIDERS...



THE PRECOGNITIVE HABITUATION EFFECT: AN ADAPTATION USING SPIDER STIMULI

Louie Savva, Robert Child & Matthew D. Smith
Parapsychology Research Group, Department of Psychology
Liverpool Hope University College

For anyone who isn't familiar with Louie Savva (who occasionally posts here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/search.php?searchid=1634659):

http://www.everythingispointless.com/2006/11/why-i-quit-studying-parapsychology.html

Linda

 

[Limbo]

For anyone who isn't familiar with Louie Savva (who occasionally posts here http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/search.php?searchid=1634659):

"Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

http://www.everythingispointless.com/2006/11/why-i-quit-studying-parapsychology.html

I read a bit of his blog. Poor guy.

"So at a parapsychology conference I realized that there is no god. No afterlife. And that there is no point to anything. So, I quit parapsychology completely." -Louie Savvy

I wish I could sit down with him for lunch and a conversation. Buy him a beer or something.

But anyway...

And now for something completely different.

The Effects of THC and Psilocybin on Paranormal Phenomena by Dick Bierman

Abstract

"Two experiments are reported dealing with the effect of psychoactive drugs on paranormal phenomena. In the first experiment 40 subjects did two Ganzfeld ESP sessions in which they tried to get impressions of a remote target. One session while being, and one session while not-being intoxicated by Marijuana intake. When asked to select the actual target from 4 possible targets, the scoring rates were 30% (THC) and 15% (control), suggesting that there is an effect of THC intake on the performance in a standardized ESP task.

In the second experiment 20 subjects did two Ganzfeld sessions. As in the THC experiment, a within subject design was used in order to evaluate the effect of Psilocybin intake. The scoring rates in the two conditions did NOT differ and only when breaking down the result for negative and positive targets a clear picture arises. There is a positive effect of Psilocybin intake on psi performance when the material used is positive (scoring rate is 45%) and a negative effect when the material is negative (scoring rate is 8%). For the control conditions the opposite is true.

Introduction

Near the end of the sixties, psychologist Charles Tart surveyed experiences of Marijuana users. This research was quite original at the time and triggered much interest (Tart, 1971). One of the remarkable outcomes was that many respondents did report clairvoyant and telepathic experiences (ESP). Of course these were subjective reports and Tart did not undertake the huge task to try to verify the reports because his focus was on the subjective data. One could have expected that at least other researchers would have been stimulated by these reports to start lab-research to explore if these subjective experiences were based upon objective instances of ESP. But this was not the case. The field of Parapsychological research was already highly controversial by itself and did not need an extra portion of controversy especially not in the United States.

However, one Dutch research group did embark on validating the effects of a psychoactive drug on paranormal phenomena. Rather than Cannabis they used Psylocybin (van Asperen de Boer et al, 1965).

[...]

Conclusions

We should stress that a single experiment especially with a limited number of subjects, can never give rise to strong conclusions. The statistical power is too low. Nevertheless the findings reported here seem to suggest that:

a) Psi performance is affected by the use of psychoactive drugs.

b) Cannabis induces increased scoring rates but it seems that in within subject designs the major difference comes from psi missing in the control condition.

c) Psilocybin increases scoring rates if the material is positive. It might decrease scoring rates when the material is negative. This conclusion could be dependent on the context. If the context is very pleasant and subjects feel they can allow themselves to experience negative feelings, also negative clips might show a positive rather than a negative effect.

Although it is common to confine experimental research reports to the 'numbers' we would like to add two qualitative observations. In the first place we discovered a strong judging effect in the Marijuana experiment. This was quite accidental because the student experimenters who served as judges had spontaneously decided to use a joint themselves in the first part of the study. This resulted in very high scoring rates. In the second part of the study the judges were explicitly required to be in a normal state. It turned out that this judging effect then disappeared.

Similarly, we found that in spite of the high scoring rate in the pilot phase of the Psilocybin study the impressions of the subjects were not clearly associated with the target. In fact, tripping persons do report so many images that there are correspondences with each target in the target-set and choosing from them becomes quite difficult. When asked, the subjects said they 'felt in their stomach' which target was the real target. Both observations suggest that further research should focus on the effect of the drugs not only in the phase where the impressions are supposed to 'come in' but also in the judging phase where the final choice has to be made."

 

[fls]

"Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

Yeah, I wasn't sure that would work.

Here's his profile, anyway.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/member.php?u=8631

Linda