(2017-08-28, 01:52 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]It seems there's something wrong with that story, but it's difficult to know what.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'wrong', but it's not as complete as one would hope for that's true. That's often the way with 'drop in' communicators, there isn't much time to think of the right questions to ask and sometimes people seem to be taken-aback or shocked by the experience. Wisdom of hindsight and all that
(2017-08-28, 12:43 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]Well I did try again to dig in to a fresh Beischel medium paper from 2015 over a few days, it was fiendishly difficult to understand... but I finally realised that there is not enough detail in the paper to allow me to decide in principle whether there may be a real anomalous effect, or not. This is what I said back then...
Some very rough notes below... in no particular order.
My suspicion is that there may be a problem in the experiment design which allows some information to pass between the 3 experimenters, such that the target reading is unconsciously signalled to the sitter. This would unconsciously bias the sitters scoring on statements that are more open to interpretation. Results from separate sitter scoring on the more factual statements about the deceased was not significant. Indicating that where interpretation by the sitter is reduced, the effect drops away, which would seem to support the idea of unconscious signalling to the sitter.
Without more practical information about how the readings were passed between the experimenters it wasn't possible for me to untangle the experiment.
I do get concerned when people work together for long periods of time with the same people, and claim they have found anomalous transfer of information. This does remind me a little of the recent Diane Powell claims.
In any case, the experiments design prevents us from checking whether the information provided by mediums about the deceased was accurate. The judge of accuracy is left to the sitters alone. This also suggests that the results obtained are due to something at the sitter end of the experiment, and probably have nothing to do with the mediums.
It seems to me that the sitters are merely being asked to make a yes/no choice about two bits of information which are wide open to interpretation. The results are then caused by some bias, due to an effect between the experimenter and sitter, and probably has little to do with the accuracy of the information.
Whether this effect is anomalous remains unclear, but it doesn't appear to be related to the medium at all. If it were anomalous it seems more related to the experimenter effect, the UBC Ouija board study, hypnotism, etc. That is an effect caused by one person on another.
I am under the impression that there are multiple researchers using this technique of third party sitters. I'll poke around and see if I can find the other examples..
In the mean time, are there others out there than can point to additional studies which have used substitute sitters that we can look at to clear this up?
(2017-08-28, 02:47 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]My investigation and notes from 2015 (above), only refer to the Beischel study, which I was referred to as an apparently good recent example of a medium study producing significant results using a '...third party sitters...' method you mentioned earlier.
Apparently it is not "good" enough to be convincing for you. I want to see if any others are.
This has been done many times as far as I know and I find it unlikely that in multiple cases they are leading the sitter. This is something most researchers take great pains to avoid.
(2017-08-28, 02:05 PM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]That's a hasty conclusion, because as Obiwan said the WWI records accessible to us may not be completely reliable.
Yes, it's possible that the name may be missing from the database, but in statistical terms it's unlikely. I've just been having a look, and the Commission currently commemorates about 1.7 million dead from both World Wars. There's an organisation called the In From the Cold Project which has been looking for missing names. A press report in 2013 said they estimated 10,000 names might then be missing, but on that basis the index would still be 99.4% complete:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/brita...vered.html
I think the lack of a death record is a problem.
(2017-08-28, 03:26 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, it's possible that the name may be missing from the database, but in statistical terms it's unlikely. I've just been having a look, and the Commission currently commemorates about 1.7 million dead from both World Wars. There's an organisation called the In From the Cold Project which has been looking for missing names. A press report in 2013 said they estimated 10,000 names might then be missing, but on that basis the index would still be 99.4% complete:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/brita...vered.html
I think the lack of a death record is a problem.
Well as I said, I couldn't find my great grandad and I know for a fact he existed.
(2017-08-28, 03:43 PM)Obiwan Wrote: [ -> ]Well as I said, I couldn't find my great grandad and I know for a fact he existed.
But was that in the death records, or in something like the soldiers' documents that are known to have quite big gaps?
(2017-08-28, 03:59 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]But was that in the death records, or in something like the soldiers' documents that are known to have quite big gaps?
I don't think he was killed in the war. I used to spend weekends with him until 1970. He is now.
what about the name I suggested earlier in the thread?
(2017-08-28, 06:39 PM)Obiwan Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think he was killed in the war. I used to spend weekends with him until 1970. He is now. what about the name I suggested earlier in the thread?
I think it's difficult to try to make it fit one of the men we've found in the death records - with either a different Christian name or a date of death earlier than August 1917 - because then what do you do about the pocket diary, which confirmed those details, and which is really the only proof that the medium got it right?
Now Findlay never claimed to have confirmed that Eric Saunders died in the war, so you could suppose that statement was a mistake, and look for an Eric Saunders who survived. I did check the seven Eric Saunders entries in the ancestry.co.uk WWI medal rolls database, but none of them was described as a gunner. But some men just have initials, and there are 279 E. Saunders entries ...
(2017-08-20, 04:56 PM)Ninshub Wrote: [ -> ]Chris, I'd posted this other one quite a while back on Skeptiko, which had gotten some traction - I don't remember if you were there then. This is stronger in regards to the criticisms with the previous video.
This one was part of a mediumship research/experiment project (Donna Smith-Moncrieffe).
Excellent researcher, btw.
(2017-08-28, 07:16 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]I think it's difficult to try to make it fit one of the men we've found in the death records - with either a different Christian name or a date of death earlier than August 1917 - because then what do you do about the pocket diary, which confirmed those details, and which is really the only proof that the medium got it right?
Now Findlay never claimed to have confirmed that Eric Saunders died in the war, so you could suppose that statement was a mistake, and look for an Eric Saunders who survived. I did check the seven Eric Saunders entries in the ancestry.co.uk WWI medal rolls database, but none of them was described as a gunner. But some men just have initials, and there are 279 E. Saunders entries ...
Yet I found a machine gunner called Eric Saunders who died in 1917. I can't find out the month without paying which I'm not really inclined to do. No matter.