Merged Was the medium Leonora Piper credible?

[Stray Cat]

At Straycat: Taylor presents detailed criticisms of Gardner, so I would keep on reading.

Detailed criticisms of Gardner are irrelevant to whether Piper was a fraud.
The only way to show Piper was not a fraud is to present evidence that she could actually contact and communicate with dead people.
It is possible that Gardner was crap at critcising and that Piper was a fraud, the two things are not mutually exclusive.

Of course I agree with all of you that there is an extremely strong presumption against genuine mediumship, which is why I was surprised to read about the work done on Piper by pretty decent researchers who could not explain her results.

The history of the SPR is littered with "pretty decent researchers" being hoodwinked by frauds (the Fox Sisters case for example).

 

[Pixel42]

It may be possible to check the significance of the hits in retrospect (depending on the details of their reports; but they are apparently quite detailed). Or is there some reason why this is not possible even if we have that information?

You can assess the significance of the hits on some arbitrarily scale, but you have no way of determining whether it is sufficient for them to be the result of a paranormal ability.

In order to determine whether someone's hit rate is better than would be expected by chance you need to know what that expected chance success rate is. In a blind test you can calculate the expected chance success rate and then compare the actual success rate with it. When all you've got is a list of hits - it's unlikely that the misses would have been recorded - you have nothing to compare it to.

 

[Michael C]

Well, I guess I can't ask anyone to read the original sources, as I don't even know how to get my hands on them myself.

Here are links to two of Hodgson's papers on Piper. They contain some detailed reports of his experiments.

On reading through the first few pages, it becomes clear that Hodgson was prone to a very common error: if he couldn't find a rational explanation for some that happened, he attributed it to a supernatural cause. Piper claimed to be in contact with the spirit of a French doctor, "Phinuit". Here Hodgson simply decides to assume that "Phinuit" is something supernatural:

Admitting, then, and emphasising the shortcomings of Phinuit, and allowing that many statements correctly made by Phinuit might be accounted for on the supposition that Mrs. Piper had "got up" the information beforehand, I shall here assume that there is nevertheless a large residuum to be attributed to some supernormal faculty. From this point of view the really important questions for consideration are: (1) What is Phinuit? and (2) By what supernormal means does he get his information?

 

[aggle-rithm]

Thanks, your points about their intuitive assessment of the significance of the hits have persuaded me there is a deep problem with the research.

I would still like to take a look at the original sources some time. It may be possible to check the significance of the hits in retrospect (depending on the details of their reports; but they are apparently quite detailed). Or is there some reason why this is not possible even if we have that information?

A few years ago I wrote an article for Skeptic Report that explained why the very idea of doing life-after-death research is nonsense:

http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=185

 

[aggle-rithm]

A few years ago I wrote an article for Skeptic Report that explained why the very idea of doing life-after-death research is nonsense:

http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=185

Sorry, where I ARGUED that the very idea is nonsense. I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

 

[HighRiser]

Sorry, where I ARGUED that the very idea is nonsense. I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

I think you make a pretty convincing argument.

 

[daan_e]

By the way: the title of my entry was probably misleading. I was primarily interested in the question whether there was a reasonable explanation of what seemed like a striking number of hits by Piper under fairly (but I now think insufficiently) controlled circumstances.

I didn't mean to suggest that even if there were no known explanation for her success, we could immediately infer that there is an afterlife, or that her knowledge must have been acquired through contact with spirits, or something like that. That would not be warranted.

 

[aggle-rithm]

By the way: the title of my entry was probably misleading. I was primarily interested in the question whether there was a reasonable explanation of what seemed like a striking number of hits by Piper under fairly (but I now think insufficiently) controlled circumstances.

It's not really my job to make a determination, but I would guess it's one of the two usual explanations:

1. Fraud
2. Self-delusion