6.37 sigma replication of Dean Radin's double slit consciousness experiments

Seems like a valid point.
We've talked about this in another thread: "outrageous" claims or not, experiments must take into account every source of interference, including of course that generated by the meditator themselves. Chanting, mantras, coughing, whatever can perturb the sensitivity of the intruments.

Maybe this has been addressed in the experiments but was not clarified in the paper? Unfortunately I did not have the time to go through the details.

Since they are being taken in and out of intent/relaxing phases, it would be odd for them to be chanting during the first (I can see them doing so during the relaxing phase if not instructed otherwise, but that wasn't the one that got the results). My point being that the people in these experiments were being told to visualize their influence in the result, not to actively meditate.

And I will ask the question again: 

When this type of setup was used (over the last 40-50 years) was special attention paid to how sound affects the measurements? Hundreds of PhD's have used this equipment for as long as it has been in use in this sort of application. What is the standard protocol? I don't think I'm going out on a limb here in suggesting that this problem has either been solved or been determined not to be a problem by the experts who use the tool on a daily basis.

In anticipation of the next question/comment- 
No: I have zero interest becoming a hack amateur physicist by googling it myself. This work has already been done and I have better uses for my time. 

Apparently you think you can look at all the available data, by googling it, and make a better decision than the experts who use the tool every day? That's fine I guess: for you that is. I'll stick with the experts who do this for a living, thanks.

What next? Are you going tell the guys at CERN what isotope of Helium to use?

Tell me Max: have you EVER even touched one of these devices? I don't know how you could do so w/o the ability to analyze the data.

For anybody who is interested, an easy article to understand about sources of vibration in the lab...

https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials/tables2.cfm

and another about standard commercial interferometers, which should give you a flavor of their sensitivity to the environment...

http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/...mance.html

For anybody who is interested, an easy article to understand about sources of vibration in the lab...

https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials/tables2.cfm

and another about standard commercial interferometers, which should give you a flavor of their sensitivity to the environment...

http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/...mance.html

Cool, thanks.
From the article #2

Interferometers are particularly sensitive to vibrations and acoustic noise in the range from 0 to 30 Hz, with the lower-frequency noise having the most dramatic effect (see Fig. 1).

Definitely not in the range of human voice

I haven't looked at that paper before. That's the online test one which is quite different to the previous studies we've been discussing.

Except that they are all testing the same thing - so if it's noise how can they still get a positive and significant result if people up to thousands of kilometres away are taking part?

I have to say that at the moment I don't see how the statistical analysis procedure can be justified.

I've only just found this thread, and will look at the paper later, but what are you're concerns?

Cool, thanks.
From the article #2

Definitely not in the range of human voice

Aye, but they are talking about commercial devices in that article for measuring surface profiles... have you seen the length of Radins device? I guess it's internal cavity is able to resonate strongly at it's fundamental frequency, and upwards... not qualified to hazzard a guess what Hz those might be... and remember this device has been put into a shielded metal room that will really resonate.

this got my PC speakers, everything on my desk, and my feet on the floor vibrating madly... "...richly harmonic..." ? heh heh

For anybody who is interested, an easy article to understand about sources of vibration in the lab...

https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials/tables2.cfm

and another about standard commercial interferometers, which should give you a flavor of their sensitivity to the environment...

http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/...mance.html

Oh God why do I keep at this???

Yes. Took a look. Not much surprising here, afterall the device is all about combining light and measuring the mis-alignment. Since light waves are pretty small (depending on freq of course) these devices are pretty sensitive,, which of course is the whole point.

The fact that a device has this level of sensitivity is a pretty good indicator that it will ALSO be sensitive to mechanical vibration which of course is also what sound is. 

What is it that makes you think that the people who use these devices DON'T KNOW THIS?

Except that they are all testing the same thing - so if it's noise how can they still get a positive and significant result if people up to thousands of kilometres away are taking part?

That's the point of running different experiments, but doing a completely different sort of experiment via the internet doesn't me you can rule out vibration (air pressure) as a factor responsible for the results in these other experiments. If you want to rule vibration out of those experiments you need to design them in such a way that vibration from air pressure can be excluded. That is going to mean you need to do some measurements of air pressure, resonance, and reinforcement etc.

Oh God why do I keep at this???

Yes. Took a look. Not much surprising here, afterall the device is all about combining light and measuring the mis-alignment. Since light waves are pretty small (depending on freq of course) these devices are pretty sensitive,, which of course is the whole point.

The fact that a device has this level of sensitivity is a pretty good indicator that it will ALSO be sensitive to mechanical vibration which of course is also what sound is. 

What is it that makes you think that the people who use these devices DON'T KNOW THIS?

Well Radin and the other guy don't apparently know it... because not only don't they measure for this type of vibration, they deliberately introduce 'richly harmonic' sounds into the room where the device is located.

I've only just found this thread, and will look at the paper later, but what are you're concerns?

I'd like to think a bit more about it before getting into details, but I thought it was fair to say it looked problematical to me.