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Cumulative proof for psychic phenomena


Rolci

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I was VERY surprised not to find the video I'm presenting in this topic here on UM. But to be honest I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon it. Why? I read a book called Explaining the Unexplained about 6 years ago and it presented possible explanations for all types of psychic phenomena, and I remember that the very end of the book was about the highly promising ongoing tests called Ganzfeld test. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it and have your own opinions, but I've been wondering for the past 6 years "whatever happened with those experiments?" until a couple days ago when I found an amazing video from the Electric Universe Conference 2013. It's an hour-long speech by Dean Radin, PhD, and he talks about not only the cumulative results over the past few decades but also other areas of research, all of which strongly implies a role of consciousness in events of the external world. So here are the 2 videos of the presentation. It's a speech among many others at the conference, of which I would highly recommend Rupert Sheldrake: Science Set Free.

And this video is titled Dean Radin:: Men Who Stare at Photons

I would just like to add my opinion that skepticism is becoming an occupation where the job is denying obvious implications no matter what, at the cost of having to come up with more and more ludicrous, outrageous alternative explanations and desperately trying to find faults with increasingly impeccably carried out experiments. Is there a time for a skeptic where they admit: yes, consciousness does influence matter? Is having been brought up with a defective materialistic world-view and a lack of open-minded humility reason enough for ignorance? How long is it sensible/healthy to cling onto an outdated, obsolete paradigm?

Edited by Rolci
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Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, and the 'Insitutue of Noetic Sciences', huh? I suggest a little more googling might be in order, and may I say the only thing worse than 'meta-statistics' is 'meta-anecdotes' and unbelievably poorly set-up 'tests' being promoted as anything, let alone pseudo-science, let alone science..

But Rolci, I offer you this challenge - bring HERE the very best work that Radin, Sheldrake or any others have done to date - the work that shows indisputable evidence. And let's go through it in detail and I'll back up my counter claim that this is horribly flawed tinfoilhattery.

Are you game?

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It's all in the videos, no need to bring anything here, it's already there in the videos. They're clearly listed for you to research, and they're not done by them, they are presenting results of research done by reputable universities like Harward, Stanford, Duke, Cambridge, Edinburgh, etc. The question is, have you gone through it all in detail and evaluated it? Although there's not much need for evaluation, it's all pretty obvious by now. The decades' worth of Ganzfeld tests alone (122 experiments in 20 labs in almost 5000 sessions) show results which, if were down to chance, would have a chance of 300 trillion quadrillion to 1 to occur. Have you actually watched the videos?

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It's all in the videos, no need to bring anything here, it's already there in the videos. They're clearly listed for you to research, and they're not done by them, they are presenting results of research done by reputable universities like Harward, Stanford, Duke, Cambridge, Edinburgh, etc. The question is, have you gone through it all in detail and evaluated it? Although there's not much need for evaluation, it's all pretty obvious by now. The decades' worth of Ganzfeld tests alone (122 experiments in 20 labs in almost 5000 sessions) show results which, if were down to chance, would have a chance of 300 trillion quadrillion to 1 to occur. Have you actually watched the videos?

Show me some links to the journals of this work from Harvard, Stanford, Duke ( yes, Duke had a research department like this, but stopped funding after no results ), or any reputable Universities.

A youtube video will not work as " reputable ".

You can even contact the Universities and ask them where this information is, and pass it on to us please.

Until then, I am out....Nothing here but lies, mis-information, and ignorance.

Edit :

Speaking of Harvard and Edinburgh ( you said they back your post / statement up ) : Both are in this article, contradicting what you claim.

Study: Psychic ability doesn't hold up

A new study supports skeptics of psychic abilities. Researchers failed to find evidence to support claims that extrasensory perception is real.

Skeptics may scoff at the finding as obvious, but the research is important because it refutes a study published in a psychological journal last year that claimed to find evidence of extrasensory perception. That research, conducted by Daryl Bem of Cornell University, triggered outrage in the psychological community when the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology announced in 2010 that the paper had been accepted for publication. Psychologists immediately leapt on Bem's statistics and methods, finding reasons how he may have come up with the unbelievable results.

But the real key to a strong scientific finding is reproducibility. If no other researchers can replicate a particular result, it's not likely that the result is real. So University of Edinburgh psychologist Stuart Ritchie and colleagues decided to mimic one of Bem's experiments almost exactly to see if they would also find evidence of psychic powers.

Backward causality

The researchers chose the strongest of the eight positive findings that Bem originally published. In the experiment, Bem's participants seemed to reverse the usual cause-effect sequence of time. They saw a list of 48 words flashed onto a computer screen and were then treated to a surprise memory test in which they were asked to type in as many of the words as they remembered.

Next, a random sample of 24 of the previous 48 words was presented again. The participants did some practice exercises with these words, and then the experiment ended. Analyzing the memory-test results, Bem and his colleagues found that the students were more likely to recall the words that they'd soon see again than the words that were not on the later exercise list, as if they could see the future.

"It's almost as if you study for an exam, you do the exam and then you study for it afterwards and then you get a better mark," Ritchie told LiveScience. "So you can see why we were kind of surprised by that." [Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Bem encouraged replication of his results, and he put the computer program he used in his experiment online so other researchers could use it. Ritchie, University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman and University of London psychologist Christopher French all conducted the experiment separately at their respective universities with 50 participants each.

Reply hazy, try again

The results were clear.

"We found nothing," Ritchie said.

In other words, seeing words after taking a test on them didn't improve the participants' test scores. Ritchie said he and the other researchers couldn't be sure why their version of Bem's experiment worked differently.

"It might just be because the statistics were a fluke," he said. "You're going to get some false positives sometimes."

In a response to be published alongside Ritchie and his colleagues' research in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, Bem wrote that it was still "premature to conclude anything about the replicability" of his experiment. It takes multiple replication failures to definitively refute a study, he said.

Bem also suggested that because Ritchie, Wiseman and French are skeptical of psychic abilities, they might have unwittingly influenced their participants not to display any clairvoyance. (The computer-based design of the study, however, is supposed to help prevent researchers from biasing their participants.)

"This does not mean that psi[psychic phenomena] results are unverifiable by independent investigators, but that we must begin regarding the experimenter as a variable in the experiments that should be included in the research designs," Bem wrote.

[/url]

Replication publication

Wiseman has a registry of attempts to replicate Bem's work and has plans to analyze all of the data together, Ritchie said. One big problem facing the work is reluctance on the part of journals to publish studies with negative findings, especially those that are replications.

When Ritchie and his colleagues submitted their paper to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the journal that had originally published Bem's work, they were told that the journal does not publish replications.

"There's a real problem with finding shocking findings and then not being interested in publishing replications," Ritchie said.

In that way, Bem's surprising psychic study has been a boon to psychology, Ritchie said.

"It's kicked up a huge debate about how scientists do work and how journals publish that work, and I think that's very valuable in itself — even if I'm not that confident that these findings are real," Ritchie said.

Edited by Sakari
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I was VERY surprised not to find the video I'm presenting in this topic here on UM.

Awesome.. Thanks for posting these..

Personally I think the reason why you are surprised not to find this video posted here is because of such a strong corrupted skeptical here at UM.. True healthy skeptics aren't in the business of denying research without even Friggen looking at the clips first..

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Rolci, I was simply offering YOU the chance to pick what you thought was best.

Now, I guess I'll have to pick one. Don't blame anyone but yourself if it doesn't turn out well.

BTW, I dispute and completely and utterly reject your/their 'conclusion' about the '300 trillion quadrillion' odds claim.

BBL8R

Edited by ChrLzs
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I would just like to add my opinion that skepticism is becoming an occupation where the job is denying obvious implications no matter what, at the cost of having to come up with more and more ludicrous, outrageous alternative explanations and desperately trying to find faults with increasingly impeccably carried out experiments

I would like to add that the moment you posted this, you made it clear that you were here for an argument not a discussion, and your post's credibility dropped like a lead balloon.

Haven't you heard that you should always let the other guy get the first punch in? It makes you look better in comparison.

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True healthy skeptics aren't in the business of denying research without even Friggen looking at the clips first..

Putting aside what True Scotsmen would do or not, what research are you talking about?

Or are you just talking about a YouTube clip? Think carefully about what it is that you are actually complaining about. Do you know that the actual research is? Do you know what the results are? Do you actually understand what the results mean?

It's one thing to complain that no one believes what you believe. It is quite another to call people corrupt when you aren't even sure how the system works in the first place.

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Professor T, I trust you will be engaging in the discussion that follows? Would YOU like to pick what you think is the best evidence?

Why are people so afraid to do that very simple and obvious task? (OK, I confess - I know the answer..)

BTW, the first notable quote from that first video is this:

Most of my research starts from paying attention to what people report..

The problem is revealing itself almost immediately, but let's go on anyway..

I get hundreds of emails a week..

He then retells an anonymous story, and happily states that the odds of what the emailer said about picking safe roads were 1/229. Now even though he does grudgingly admit that this was just an anecdote and could be dismissed, that 'calculation' of odds is absolutely ludicrous. He presents himself as a scientist, yet he actually believes that such choices are truly binary and both options are equally likely? And his favorite initial anecdote is one where he made no effort whatsoever to even check whether he was having his leg pulled?

Good Grief. This really is muck for the gullible masses.

It gets MUCH worse, but I think we need to look at some of his research claims...

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Awesome.. Thanks for posting these..

Personally I think the reason why you are surprised not to find this video posted here is because of such a strong corrupted skeptical here at UM.. True healthy skeptics aren't in the business of denying research without even Friggen looking at the clips first..

Before I watched a 24 minute " youtube " video ( yes, great reliable evidence there, youtube ) I spent 3 minutes looking up what I posted. And that can be verified. In 3 minutes, I was able to find enough to show this is all hogwash, and using Harvard and other Universities names was mis-leading.

( like we did not know that all ready )

So, you are wrong, sorry.

Chrlzs will be tearing this up now, and I am going to enjoy reading.

Edited by Sakari
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Putting aside what True Scotsmen would do or not, what research are you talking about?

Or are you just talking about a YouTube clip? Think carefully about what it is that you are actually complaining about. Do you know that the actual research is? Do you know what the results are? Do you actually understand what the results mean?

It's one thing to complain that no one believes what you believe. It is quite another to call people corrupt when you aren't even sure how the system works in the first place.

Professor T, I trust you will be engaging in the discussion that follows? Would YOU like to pick what you think is the best evidence?

Why are people so afraid to do that very simple and obvious task? (OK, I confess - I know the answer..)

*snip size*

Before I watched a 24 minute " youtube " video ( yes, great reliable evidence there, youtube ) I spent 3 minutes looking up what I posted. And that can be verified. In 3 minutes, I was able to find enough to show this is all hogwash, and using Harvard and other Universities names was mis-leading.

( like we did not know that all ready )

So, you are wrong, sorry.

Chrlzs will be tearing this up now, and I am going to enjoy reading.

It's quite clear that my statement about skeptic's has gotten under ya'll skin.

Good... :tu:

I'm not interested having such an ego battle with anyone.. Nor will I waste any of my Energy on a debate..

People do not like their beliefs challenged, though challenging other peoples beliefs is critical to our growth as a society.. My beliefs and the beliefs of others including yourselves is their business alone so long as it does no harm.. and whether they are corrupt or clearly wrong isnt the issue.. Instead of attacking any research or belief system outside counter to yours, why not ask why these peoples beliefs get under your skin. lol..

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Instead of attacking any research or belief system outside counter to yours, why not ask why these peoples beliefs get under your skin. lol..

Rolci: "Is having been brought up with a defective materialistic world-view and a lack of open-minded humility reason enough for ignorance? How long is it sensible/healthy to cling onto an outdated, obsolete paradigm?"

For many, that pretty much does it.

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It's quite clear that my statement about skeptic's has gotten under ya'll skin.

Good... :tu:

Gee, who would have thought that insulting people could result in that?

I'm not interested having such an ego battle with anyone..

Then you shouldn't have made such an egotistical comment.

Nor will I waste any of my Energy on a debate..

Yes, we know that you didn't come here to discuss anything. You made that very clear in your initial post. You came to pick and fight, and you succeeded.

Unfortunately for you, skeptics still include relevant information in their fights, not just snarky comments.

People do not like their beliefs challenged, though challenging other peoples beliefs is critical to our growth as a society..

Thank you, armchair psychologist. Now, instead of talking about society in general, how about sticking to the subject of scientific research, which is what your OP is titled after?

My beliefs and the beliefs of others including yourselves is their business alone so long as it does no harm.. and whether they are corrupt or clearly wrong isnt the issue..

so...what, you are admitting that you just insulted skeptics for not reason other than a whim, and not because it had anything to do with your argument? That actually sounds better to you?

Instead of attacking any research or belief system outside counter to yours,

Like referring to it as corrupt?

why not ask why these peoples beliefs get under your skin. lol..

Well, check those last three letters in your sentence there, and realize that you sound like a 10 year old who is cackling at his own cleverness at fooling the adults who were indulging his latest little game.

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It's quite clear that my statement about skeptic's has gotten under ya'll skin.

When all else fails, call your opponents afraid of the truth, or assert you've 'gotten under their skin', thereby claiming you know what they are thinking, and would rather NOT believe that they might just be showing you the way to the truth, and how to avoid being scammed. Whatever you do, at all costs, do NOT ever try to debate with someone who knows what they are talking about..

Good... :tu:

No, I think such ad hominems and obvious avoidance tactics are shameful.. Each to his own though.

I'm not interested having such an ego battle with anyone.. Nor will I waste any of my Energy on a debate..

Oh, what a surprise!!! Professor T thinks it is about egos, and would rather not actually debate anything, it being such a waste of energy and all.

Anyway, who on earth would want to have a debate on a discussion forum? It's unheard of - these forums are obviously to locate equally ill-informed people who also don't want to debate and instead pat each other on the back, right? :td:

People do not like their beliefs challenged

The astonishing irony...

, though challenging other peoples beliefs is critical to our growth as a society..

Only if you have a decent 'challenge'. If your challenge is tested and shown to be hogwash, as shown already above by Sakari's examples, then you need to accept that maybe the debate you are so eager to run away from is a good thing..

My beliefs and the beliefs of others including yourselves is their business alone so long as it does no harm..

Thing is false beliefs can do harm, ranging from fools being parted from their money to horrible things like the Jonestown massacre, or perhaps even Nancy Lieder's dog, or passing on such cult-like behavior to innocent people or children to keep the circle of scamming alive ...

whether they are corrupt or clearly wrong isnt the issue..

I beg to differ, I like to fight corruption and wrongness.

Instead of attacking any research or belief system outside counter to yours, why not ask why these peoples beliefs get under your skin. lol..

LOL? How old are you?

And instead of attacking people who disagree with you, why are you so terrified of debating it and seeing where the corruptness actually IS?

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Stop feeding it you guys :)

Let it die of starvation.

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To follow on from Sakari's excellent post on the previous page - which I can pretty much guarantee won't be addressed by the promoters of this stuff - I'd like to make a few preliminary points before addressing some of this execrable pseudo-research.

First up, to be fair, it IS very difficult to come up with tests and experiments relating to many aspects of psychology, as it is highly subjective and requires interpretation - anyone who has watched a 'psychic' or magician like James Randi or Criss Angel or Derren Brown will quickly see why. But that doesn't mean it cannot be done properly. There are ways to set up OBJECTIVE test regimes to test these alleged powers, and such tests have been done by some major research institutions. Unfortunately for Radin, Sheldrake (Ed Mitchell..) etc, when the properly peer reviewed tests are reported, they show no significant statistical evidence of anything other than random chance. What's more, when claims are made by the likes of Radin, there are plenty of real scientists and statisticians who will happily point out how ridiculous or flawed those tests and interpretations are. Like I did above with his ludicrous claim about the guy who supposedly made 29 lucky guesses at forks in the road - let's face it, if you're giving lectures, you really should start off with some of your best stuff, and he used THAT??? BTW, I invite Mr 'Lucky 29' to show up here and let's talk about his claims...

That is why this research doesn't normally get past peer-review by any credible journals, or if on the very odd occasion it slips through, there is an outcry and immediately others will not only point out the flaws, but also try to replicate the research - refer Sakari's post above. In that way, science is self correcting - it does make mistakes, but those are picked up over time and the hogwash is spat out.

So what do the 'believers' like the Radin's and Sheldrake's and Mitchell's of the world do? I'll tell you:

1. They reject skeptics and mainstream science and lambast them as closed minded (when the reverse is true as shown by what follows)

2. They set up their own research institute which deliberately and unashamedly pushes fringe and beyond-fringe science by relaxing the peer review and 'publishing' every Tom, Dick or Harriet's hypotheses and experiments, no matter how flawed, as long as it supports the aims of the 'Noetic Sciences'. That Institute is rightly regarded with scorn.

3. They refuse to use proper controls or apply any methodologies to remove confirmation bias and subjective interpretations in their tests, and also refuse to acknowledge past failures.

4. They NEVER repeat experiments or address the refutations.

So ... who are close-minded?

To Sakari - nah, I want to make sure this stuff gets the reception it deserves. I've seen Radin and Sheldrake's hogwash cited too many times and am sick of it.

Edited by ChrLzs
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To Sakari - nah, I want to make sure this stuff gets the reception it deserves. I've seen Radin and Sheldrake's hogwash cited too many times and am sick of it.

Understand that 100%

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While we await anyone who wants to tell us which study was the best one (or I'll just pick it myself if no-one gets brave..), I note that the 'Ganzfeld Experiment' has been given some credence....

I would invite readers to thoroughly read the Wiki, which includes:

Consistent, independent replication of the ganzfeld experiment has not been achieved.

.. and also browse over this article at 'The Straight Dope', which states:

Ray Hyman found statistical anomalies in the original ganzfeld experiments. His analysis of various experiments "showed that this database did not justify concluding that ESP was demonstrated" (Skeptical Inquirer, March 1996, www.csicop.org/si/9603/claims.html). He went on to note that "both Honorton and I agreed that there were sufficient problems with this original database that nothing could be concluded until further replications, conducted according to specified criteria, appeared." In later experiments, he found that the experimenter interacted with the subject during the process of judging whether or not a hit was made. He notes: "This means the judgments from trial to trial were not strictly independent." He discovered other flaws in the experimental procedure as well.

The Ganzfeld experiments were mostly terribly flawed and contained unbelievably vague criteria for 'hits', along with many issues that would introduce confirmation bias. Plus there were no controls like nulls or falsification tests. These people didn't have the first clue about how to go about proper testing. And yet the flawed results of them were all piled together in a silly meta-analysis, and even then, the results were only weakly positive. So even including the obvious 'cheating', they still couldn't get conclusive results..!

I'd be delighted to go into more detail on the Ganzfeld side of things, but if no-one is going to pick their favorite on that side either, I'll leave that topic for now and will see if I can pick the most promising-looking Radin 'research'...

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As the old saying goes, "1000 cups of weak coffee do not make one cup of strong coffee."

It isn't enough to have a ton of evidence; It has to be good evidence as well.

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And one more distraction before moving onto some 'published' Radin 'research' - I'd like to refer to his own chosen example of a successful (in his opinion) Ganzfeld experiment...

In the video, he first gives a hypothetical example to show you what the basic principle is - the subject is isolated (supposedly), and then another subject tries to send a mental image to him/her. In his hypothetical case, the sender is trying to send an image of an elephant. The receiver might vocalise "Grey animal"... Then they later go through 4 random (supposedly) images and look to find a match. If they find one, in this case the elephant - hey presto, that's a 100% successful hit. Here's the image he used to give that hypothetical example:

post-95887-0-93125100-1390800428_thumb.j

Now remember, that was a hypothetical example of a successful result. OK so far?

But now he goes on to show his CHOSEN example of a 'real' hit, presumably one of the better ones...

post-95887-0-18716300-1390800450_thumb.j

Before we even begin dealing with whether it should be a 'hit' or not, can you spot the difference? Instead of the 'receiver' giving just one try (ie grey animal), they are invited to give as many adjectives and nouns as they wish. Then, when the 4 images are displayed, both the person and the researcher are invited to jointly decide what was a hit.. Talk about guaranteeing a positive result!!! Now before reading on, which one do you think her phrases most accurately and obviously portray? I admit I struggled a bit until I was told...

Yes, of course, it was the pyramid!!! :D

Now look at the phrases, and remember this was his chosen example so it is one of the better ones. Of the five phrases, the Yosemite and monolith ones are the only ones that vaguely come close and are only partially satisified by one image. The nest is at least partially rough and is normally high up, the flowers look more suited to an art gallery, the pyramid is shot from above so is hardly looking up.. and so on.

Now I think you'll agree that the number of possible matches with those phrases given this sort of ridiculously subjective interpretation makes this sort of testing into an absolute joke, especially given that the researcher was often there *discussing* the match with the person - gee, no chance of (un)intentional bias there at all...

Also note that in these tests, the same images were re-used!! If someone did multiple tests, they would quickly learn what sort of imagery is up for description, and even what some of the images actually might be when they are reshuffled for the next test.

Another example of what Radin's team of eager researchers calls a 'hit' is given at this link which I gave earlier. Here are ALL of the phrases the 'receiver' of the image was allowed to reel off - read it and then weep at what the image was that matched, according to the 'researcher':

I see the Lincoln Memorial...

And Abraham Lincoln sitting there...

It's the 4th of July...

All kinds of fireworks...

Now I'm at Valley Forge...

There are fireworks...

And I think of bombs bursting in the air...

And Francis Scott Key...

And Charleston...

Now I'm sure you have a good mental picture of what this is, right? Yes.. GEORGE WASHINGTON of course... That's what the researcher decided was a perfect match.. It's sooo obvious, when you think about it... :cry:

Words almost fail me - that sort of rubbish is not science.

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I was thinking Planet of the Apes, but then, the force is not with me (in fact, it is usually directly opposed to me).

I can't help but wonder how many of these experiments would simply have not gotten past the structuring phase if they had gone through the simple and proper step of defining your metric (what would constitute a "hit" and how (meaning by which unit or standard) that success would be measured).

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Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, and the 'Insitutue of Noetic Sciences', huh? I suggest a little more googling might be in order, and may I say the only thing worse than 'meta-statistics' is 'meta-anecdotes' and unbelievably poorly set-up 'tests' being promoted as anything, let alone pseudo-science, let alone science..

Not sure where you're basing these conclusions from, but everything you say about Radin and Shedrake is flat out ignorant. Radin & Rupert (if you actually bothered to read their books) never claimed that psi is real in the basis of anecdotes. Instead of accepting anecdotes for evidence of psi, they actually dismiss them via conventional means. Which is something that even an informed skeptic should be able to realize. Even if their studies were flawed, that still wouldn't justify 'meta-anecdotes' as you claim it to be.

You also need to be more specific when you talk about 'poorly set-up tests'. What tests are you talking about? Ganzfeld, PRL, PK? What reason/proof do you have to say that those tests are biased?

Skepticism is not only about questioning believers, but also questioning those who attack it without any degree of justification.

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And one more distraction before moving onto some 'published' Radin 'research' - I'd like to refer to his own chosen example of a successful (in his opinion) Ganzfeld experiment...

In the video, he first gives a hypothetical example to show you what the basic principle is - the subject is isolated (supposedly), and then another subject tries to send a mental image to him/her. In his hypothetical case, the sender is trying to send an image of an elephant. The receiver might vocalise "Grey animal"... Then they later go through 4 random (supposedly) images and look to find a match. If they find one, in this case the elephant - hey presto, that's a 100% successful hit. Here's the image he used to give that hypothetical example:

post-95887-0-93125100-1390800428_thumb.j

Now remember, that was a hypothetical example of a successful result. OK so far?

But now he goes on to show his CHOSEN example of a 'real' hit, presumably one of the better ones...

post-95887-0-18716300-1390800450_thumb.j

Before we even begin dealing with whether it should be a 'hit' or not, can you spot the difference? Instead of the 'receiver' giving just one try (ie grey animal), they are invited to give as many adjectives and nouns as they wish. Then, when the 4 images are displayed, both the person and the researcher are invited to jointly decide what was a hit.. Talk about guaranteeing a positive result!!! Now before reading on, which one do you think her phrases most accurately and obviously portray? I admit I struggled a bit until I was told...

Yes, of course, it was the pyramid!!! :D

Now look at the phrases, and remember this was his chosen example so it is one of the better ones. Of the five phrases, the Yosemite and monolith ones are the only ones that vaguely come close and are only partially satisified by one image. The nest is at least partially rough and is normally high up, the flowers look more suited to an art gallery, the pyramid is shot from above so is hardly looking up.. and so on.

Wrong at so many levels. The Ganzfeld hit rates were not based on the impressions from the researcher nor the receiver as you claim it to be. It's not where the target is a bunny, then the receiver says, "I see two white cute ears and a carrot", and bang! A hit to the bunny picture. You're saying that those hits are based on impressions, but that's not really the case in general. Instead, the procedure gives the receiver 4 randomly selected pictures and is asked to rank those 4 pictures from 1-4.

According to the standard Ganzfeld protocol, the receiver is required to rank one of the four pictures. If the correct target is ranked 1 by the receiver, it's a hit. Otherwise, it's a direct miss (even if the subject ranked the correct target 2). The hits are based on the 1-4 ranking criteria, not the impressions themselves. Whether or not the impressions match the target, it's irrelevant. The receiver must give the correct target a 1st rank in order to qualify as a hit. You probably got this misleading information from the Skeptic's Dictionary. I suggest you look up the comments in reply to the author who wrote the Ganzfeld in that site if you want to see how completely ignorant the author was.

Now I think you'll agree that the number of possible matches with those phrases given this sort of ridiculously subjective interpretation makes this sort of testing into an absolute joke, especially given that the researcher was often there *discussing* the match with the person - gee, no chance of (un)intentional bias there at all...

Wrong again. The target in the Ganzfeld always remained isolated from not only the receiver, but the researcher (I call it experimenter) as well. How does this work?

In the Ganzfeld a computer (instead of a human) selects a pool of 4 pictures out of a pool of 200 or more random pictures. The computer automatically selects the target and only shows it to the sender locked in an electromagnetic, sound-proof chamber. The sender’s objective is to try and send that image to the receiver who is locked up and sensory-deprivated in another electromagnetic, sound-proof chamber. To adjust the sender’s sending strategy, an audio is already given to the sender. The sender can hear the receiver’s impressions as a way for feedback, but cannot talk to the receiver with it. Pre-testing, especially in the University of Edinburgh, were given to ensure the protocols did not violate the potential error of the experimenter and the receiver obtaining the actual target. Thus, both the receiver and experimenter were completely ignorant to the actual target. The target is only revealed once the ganzfeld protocol is over.

Also note that in these tests, the same images were re-used!! If someone did multiple tests, they would quickly learn what sort of imagery is up for description, and even what some of the images actually might be when they are reshuffled for the next test.

Another example of what Radin's team of eager researchers calls a 'hit' is given at this link which I gave earlier. Here are ALL of the phrases the 'receiver' of the image was allowed to reel off - read it and then weep at what the image was that matched, according to the 'researcher':

Now I'm sure you have a good mental picture of what this is, right? Yes.. GEORGE WASHINGTON of course... That's what the researcher decided was a perfect match.. It's sooo obvious, when you think about it... :cry:

Words almost fail me - that sort of rubbish is not science.

Yep, you clearly sound like the author from Skeptic's Dictionary. Always failing to grasp the truth :nw:

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Good grief, did you not LOOK at the video? - my examples were from the video supplied. The video was of RADIN himself offering the examples. How could that have whooshed over your head?

You're telling me how Ganzfeld should happen - but RADIN clearly disagrees with you. Perhaps you need to take that up with him..

I'll leave it to the reader to note that instead of addressing the ACTUAL examples that RADIN himself offered up, Nighmaker47 simply went off and handwaved about other stuff. It's no wonder these people can make a buck from this garbage - there are obviously people born every minute who refuse to address any fact that goes against their deep beliefs.

Nightmaker47, I suspect you won't even address the images above that are from RADIN himself, so instead, why not do what the others won't - point at the VERY BEST example, in your opinion, of RADIN's 'research'.

No more handwaving, no more dodging - you tell us what has convinced you, and I'll happily walk you through it, step by step.

If you won't do either task, then it is quite clear you are not here to debate.

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