Controversial Psychic Ability Claim Doesn’t Hold up in New Experiments | LiveScience.

http://www.livescience.com/19058-controver...ding-fails.html

A new study has failed to find evidence that psychic ability 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.

The researchers chose the strongest of the eight positive findings that Bem originally published.

[Stuart] 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.

The results were clear.

“We found nothing,” Ritchie said.

Bem suggested that because the researchers are skeptical, they “influenced their participants not to display any clairvoyance”. That’s an example of “special pleading” and it’s a cop-out. It also suggests that ESP is non-scientifically testable. And, that just throws cold water on the whole idea, making Bem’s study also meaningless.

But, as noted by the researchers, Bem’s study prompted a closer look at more than just ESP. Journals were apt to public the initial studies but NOT the replications, even those that failed casting doubts on the original. That’s a critical aspect of science. Thankfully, with the help of the internet, a registry for replication was set up for this study which provides a documented source to supplement the original works. This has changed psychology, hopefully, all of science, for the better.

UPDATE: A piece in The Guardian from Chris French explains more, particularly with regards to the problems of publishing replications:

Given that the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology was responsible for publishing the controversial claims in the first and that Bem’s paper included an explicit appeal to other psychologists to attempt replications, we figured that this journal was the obvious choice to target in terms of publishing our own findings. The editor of the journal, however, did not agree and rejected our paper without even sending it out for peer review on the grounds that his journal “does not publish replications”.

We then submitted it to Science Brevia and received the same response. The same thing happened when we submitted it to Psychological Science. Our failure to even get our paper sent for peer review became something of a story in itself.

It is highly suspected that Bem himself was selected as a peer reviewer for one journal, causing a conflict of interest and ultimately resulting in rejection. What a mess. But, it IS finally published and it was an illustrative example of a problem that needs to be addressed.

How surprising...not. Is a shame though as I would truly like their to be some psychic ability.

Argument # 17: Experiments that show positive results for psi must be replicable to count as evidence.



Corollary: “I won’t consider successful psi experiments as evidence of psi unless the results are replicated and peer reviewed.”



Besides claiming lack of controls, pseudoskeptics also demand psi experiments to be replicable to count as evidence. While this standard may seem reasonable scientifically, it is usually just another tactic to try to raise the bar, because no matter how many times a successful psi experiment is replicated, they still will demand a never-ending higher rate of replication. (If the 2,549 sessions of the Ganzfeld and Autoganzfeld experiments from 1974 to 1997 by different research laboratories which produced above chance results doesn’t count as replicable, then what would?) This is because these guys are all about arguing and playing hopscotch games. No matter what, they never concede that they are wrong, and will use every slimy tactic they can find to deny what they don't believe in. If cornered, they will change the topic or rant about something irrelevant. That's just the way they are.



The first problem with this argument is that just because something hasn’t been replicated doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. For example, if an Olympic Track and Field runner breaks a world record, and other athletes don’t repeat it, it doesn’t mean that it never happened. Likewise, if I won a slot machine jackpot or threw a quarter that landed on its edge (against astronomical odds), but I wasn’t able to repeat it, it doesn’t mean that it never happened the first time. Similarly, phenomena such as supernovas, balls of lightning, and comets are outer phenomena not replicable under our control but are acknowledged to exist anyway. Therefore, replicating the appearance of UFO’s or ghosts may not be possible because they are out of our control, but that doesn’t mean they never happen or don’t exist. All it would take is one genuine case of a UFO or ghost to prove that they were real and possible. As an unnamed law says: “If it happens once, then it is possible.”



In fact, the very nature of psychic phenomena makes them not easy to replicate. Dean Radin, Ph.D, Director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, and author of The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, lists 8 reasons why this is so: (page 40)



“Psi effects do not fall into the class of easily replicated effects. There are eight typical reasons why replication is difficult to achieve: (1) the phenomenon may not be replicable; (2) the written experimental procedures may be incomplete, or the skills needed to perform the replication may not be well understood; (3) the effect under study may change over time or react to the experimental procedure; (4) investigators may inadvertently affect the results of their experiments; (5) experiments sometimes fail for sociological reasons; (6) there are psychological reasons that prevent replications from being easy to conduct; (7) the statistical aspects of replication are much more confusing than more people think; and (78) complications in experimental design affect some replications.”


Read more http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Page17.htm

(My bolding)

How does this refute the original findings? I'll need someone to fill in some gaps for me here. Were Bem's findings based on Ganzfeld? And if so, did Chris French and co use the same methods?

Thanks.

im not sure what to think about this, its possible that the results of this experiment were just a false positive, if it cant be replicated even with the same people.

of course an experiment must be replicated for it to be proven as a success. good scientists try things more than once before saying its a success, especially if the results prove to be something thats unusual.

in an experiment, if a test is repeated loads of times, and one result is wildly different than the others, generally it is a fault with the equipment or the testing in some way is flawed. it works the same with any other kind of science, so why not testing the paranormal.

it would be a good idea for them to work out exactly what the difference is between the experiments-what conditions were different on the test that had the unusual results, does this rule out psychic ability, or could psychic ability only work under certain conditions.

the only bit that seems to be different from reading it is that the person who got the results that suggested psychic ability was a believer, but the other experiments were done by sceptics.

the explanation given by one of the people involved was:

i dont know how this could influence it, i guess it would depend on the conditions in the test, but i imagine that the participants did not know the scientists opinions on it (because its not a good idea to tell the participants what you expect to happen in case you influence them), and didnt know what was going to happen next, other than using psychic abilities or guessing.

i can think of how the researchers opinions could influence it though. it would depend how the question was worded and how they went about doing it.

im guessing some of the researchers might have tried to prove that they were right (instead of just doing the experiment to see what happens), and misinterpreted the results as more positive (towards them being right) than they really were, because they were a bit biased.

generally, seeing as four researchers did this experiment-bem, richie, wiseman and french, and bem got the result that was different, i think he should try it again and see whether he still gets the same results...or maybe all of them do it together and make sure they used the same conditions on all of their seperate experiments.

Most of this is waffle that uses arguments that cut both ways.

Victor can flap his gums all he wants but reducing this down to its simplest point

Bem's results CANNOT BE REPLICATED by independent labs, end of story. Go build a better test.

See that right there, that's why Psi and the paranormal will never attain any credibility or be taken seriously by science and if you don't understand that, you are part of the problem. Don't blame science and sceptics for not ignoring inadequate testing or not ignoring inconvenient data. Good science doesn't work that way, no matter how much Victor and Sheldrake pout.

The thing is there's much more information out there that no one of us can possibly put in here. And even if we did it wouldn't be believed by everyone.

People from differing areas of science are interested enough to physically conduct and take part in experiments the world over. For other peoples of science I think they need to at least partly accept that the natural laws of science might not work for the sort of replication they want. Simply because it's an area we are still struggling to unfold.

Of course he did, got your blood group, toenail length and cholesterol count as well I bet :rolleyes: but the one thing you didn't get was a transcript. Shame that.

Science - from the Latin to mean 'Knowledge' - is a frame work to enable us to understand how things work and why. If it cannot be explained, then it isn't science fact. PSI, et al, is not science fact, that is why it is ignored. Until someone can demonstrate how those paranormal things work, it will always be outside science. Presumption is not knowledge, and therefore, not science.

Trying to criticise science for being sceptic, is like criticising chalk for not being cheese.

Frankly, a lot, if not most of what believers believe, is scientific nonsense; the rest is unproven. Saying things like this or that is proof of the afterlife, without demonstrable examples, is simply guessing.

Science is a tool. It's a way of exploring things. It isn't anything in and of itself. The things that believers believe are often based on experience. The Ganzfeld experiments yeilded some positive results with regards to telepathy. I'm still not sure whether Chris French and co used the same methodology to do their experiments. Anyone know?

May I be rude and offer some adjustments...

No. :D

This is the difference in between scientific analysis and presumption! :P

Laughing man - Les


Zombie - Is the medium Patrick Hutchinson known as the spirit toucher - or something like that? If so I saw him several years ago.

I was only pulling your leg, RB. :D My point still holds good there. :)

Oh my, the spirit toucher really? I remember all the first hand accounts about that creepy little fraud. Surprised he is still getting work, he should be in prison.

Nothing up on Skeptical Inq yet but I would assume there will be a lengthy number of articles coming just to nail this one shut. I shall post in detail :)

Hi Duck. I went to see the Spirit toucher when he came to a local town. He'd hired out a room at the top of a pub, probably about 5o people went. Everyone turned against him as he had such a bad attitude.

He said things like - someone on this table was abused as a child - or someone on this table was raped - knows someone close who died of aids. Nobody would acknowledge anything he said. He tried to blame it on a table of psychics (he didn't know them or that they would be there) so they never returned after the break.

Then he'd say something like, I have a David, does anyone know a David? Someone said, 'Yes, but he's not dead'. He'd snap, 'Did I say he was dead?'

After the break and the audience had had time to talk of their disgust without him there, some spoke of it when he came was. He ended up giving everyone a fiver back out of the 9.00 they paid to see him, and he bought a glass of wine for everyone. Said he'd never go back to Ripley again. I doubt he'd get any custom if he does.

Thanks for jogging my memory Sherry, that does ring true with other peoples accounts where he seems to take pleasure in suggestions of child abuse and rape. Psychic or not (and I'd say the odious little worm certainly wasn't) those are subjects he is neither qualified or has the right to touch on in private let alone a public forum.

Yes, it certainly got peoples backs up very quickly. Never seen anything like his performance, and I've seen a few. He wanted to hold my friends hand to get a reading and she refused :lol: Very embarrassing night all round really.

soooooooo most of the readings he does involve horrible things?

i heard a story about him last night, that he guessed that someone was abused as a child and it was true.

i thought that no cold reader could never sink that low and would instead choose less offensive and more general things....but he does this all the time?

Zombie,

Why do you suppose the scientific community uses the scientific method (observe, hypothesise, test, amend, test, theorise, peer review) for non-paranormal discoveries? Can you think of a reason why falsifiability might be important?

What benefit do you think it has?