Desperation - the scientistic materialists strike back against PSI

A new PSI-debunking article: Disquieting Features of Two ‘Confirmatory’ Psi Studies by Patrizio Tressoldi, at https://davidfmarkscom.wordpress.com/202...tressoldi/ .

"The case for the existence of laboratory psi appears to rely almost entirely on studies led by a single, notable researcher, Dr. Patrizio Tressoldi at the University of Padua in Italy. Tressoldi’s collaborators include John Kruth, Executive Director of the Rhine Research Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA, Rupert Sheldrake and other notable figures in Parapsychology.

In total Tressoldi has registered 11 studies that are claimed to be confirmatory at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit. Nine of these preregistered studies have already published findings and findings for two of the studies are yet to be announced.

An ongoing investigation is examining the documentation of Tressoldi’s extraordinary claims. I say ‘extraordinary’ not only because of the nature of the claims, which fly in the face of accepted Science, but because they are the outliers of the majority of confirmatory studies, which are pointing to the non-existence of psi. Thus Tressoldi’s findings are exceptional.

As noted in my previous post, all of the studies claimed as fully confirmatory come from Patrizio Tressoldi’s laboratory. This preliminary report considers the status of two of Tressoldi’s confirmatory studies that are claimed to have found evidence of psi. An analysis is ongoing but is already revealing some disquieting features.

There is a case for voiding two studies with IDs 1002 and 1013 registered at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit for the reasons outlined below....."

This is a sham article it appears, since it mainly references one researcher (Tressoldi) as having questionable findings. But the total database of successful PSI and ESP laboratory research includes a host of other researchers who have obtained highly evidential results.

This was well covered in a 2018 survey article by Etzel Cardena in American Psychologist, The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review, at https://ameribeiraopreto.files.wordpress...nomena.pdf . 

In this article, Tables 1 and 2 (occupying 2 pages) list 11 categories of multiple peer-reviewed studies and meta-analyses with high probability against chance conducted by numerous researchers. The researchers referenced in the list don't even appear to include Tressoldi.

This article seems to be just another last-ditch attempt in the face of increasing pressure for change, to destroy parapsychology by claiming that the multiple research studies finding highly evidential results for PSI replication in the laboratory (compiled and summarized by Cardena) are either impossible regardless of the quality and quantity of the research evidence because of conflicting with current physics paradigms, or because the basic research methodology commonly used in most psychology research is (claimed to be) faulty, and calls for an overall reform. For the latter rationalization, in other words, if you don't like the baby, claim the bathwater is dirty so you can throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Tressoldi is actually mentioned in the first diagram of Cardena's paper, his studies make up some of the Remote Viewing and Presentiment ones.

Edit: I would say that the criticisms levelled in this post and others by him are not insignificant to the studies he is referencing. In another post, discussing the Koestler Unit of Parapsychology's findings, there is this:

The Table reproduces the descriptions of 43 confirmatory studies registered to date (14 September 2022). For these 43 confirmatory studies, there are 27 reports of findings to the present date. For these 27 studies, 6 are listed as positively confirming the original exploratory findings (including one with only partial confirmation). All five of the fully confirmatory studies reporting positive findings are from a single leading investigator, Patrizio Tressoldi, of Università di Padova, Italy.

Of the remaining 21 studies, 17 are associated with a reported disconfirmation,  one was halted before completion, one failed to recruit a sufficient N and one presented an inconclusive report. Removing these last 3 studies provides 5 confirmations, one partial confirmation and 19 disconfirmations from a total of 27 conclusive/completed studies for an overall confirmation rate of 22.2% and a disconfirmation rate of 77.8%.

This is not something that should be scoffed at, and is a pretty significant result one way or the other. It doesn't account for all parapsychological studies as a whole, but we shouldn't ignore these findings when they appear, nor the critiques of them.

This is a sham article it appears, since it mainly references one researcher (Tressoldi) as having questionable findings. But the total database of successful PSI and ESP laboratory research includes a host of other researchers who have obtained highly evidential results.

But he's specifically referencing the pre-registered experiments at Koestler, which was set up to avoid issues of publication bias. Given that Tressoldi is responsible for so many of the successful results, it's fair to take a second look at his work.

Marks mentions an "ongoing investigation". Is he talking about his own work for his blog or are there official parapsych institutions looking into this? This is all new to me.

But he's specifically referencing the pre-registered experiments at Koestler, which was set up to avoid issues of publication bias. Given that Tressoldi is responsible for so many of the successful results, it's fair to take a second look at his work.

Marks mentions an "ongoing investigation". Is he talking about his own work for his blog or are there official parapsych institutions looking into this? This is all new to me.

I think what makes this blogger suspect is the line:

"The case for the existence of laboratory psi appears to rely almost entirely on studies led by a single, notable researcher, Dr. Patrizio Tressoldi at the University of Padua in Italy."

As for the specific studies we would probably need a response from T[r]essoldi himself.

Marks mentions an "ongoing investigation". Is he talking about his own work for his blog or are there official parapsych institutions looking into this? This is all new to me.

I don't know, but that would be worth confirming. Koestler conducting an investigation would have different meaning than a lone critic with a blog.

So I decided to leave a comment on one of the blog posts from the author, since I actually enjoyed a number of the posts he's put up. It's nice getting a sceptic who isn't overly belligerant in his analysis. 

I’ve been reading a few of your parapsychology articles over the last few days and I have to say I appreciate your firm but non hostile approach, it’s very refreshing compared to a lot of other anti-parapsychology blogs that are out there who are going on about how people are delusion, stupid, this or that.

I do wonder what your thoughts are on things like Etzel Cardena’s “The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review”, or even some of Julie Beischel’s mediumship studies, since you seem to do a lot of stuff on the Koestler Unit and it’s associated studies but not a lot of other areas of parapsychological research.

And I got back an interesting reply. 

I have reviewed the main evidence in parapsychology in my 2020 book “Psychology and the Paranormal: Exploring Anomalous Experience”. Here I propose the theory that, if it exists at all, psi is a spontaneous experience not amenable to laboratory research. I believe this theory is fully consistent with the scientific evidence which indicates a total failure to replicate any laboratory finding. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of remarkable spontaneous experiences such as synchronicity that defy logical explanation. So I am not saying psi does not exist only that psi has neither been confirmed or disconfirmed.

Mediumship has never yielded any solid evidence of the paranormal when well controlled. Cardena fails to consider the negative results obtained with the confirmatory studies that I review in my blog posts. Cherry picking can produce ‘proof’ for anything you like but confirmatory or replication research is the only robust procedure for validating findings and in the case of psi that validating evidence simply isn’t there.

Felt like it was an interesting opinion he had on the matter, and definitely not what you would think if you just assumed he was a die hard skeptic and left it at that. I'm not able to say anything to his opinion on Cardena's paper, but I do wonder if he has actually read any of Bieschel's studies since he mentions controls. Her mediumship studies have some of the most remarkable controls I've seen, at least at first glance, unless he just means field studied mediumship tests.

Here I propose the theory that, if it exists at all, psi is a spontaneous experience not amenable to laboratory research.

This is my position exactly.

Here I propose the theory that, if it exists at all, psi is a spontaneous experience not amenable to laboratory research.

I've always felt that the spontaneous occurrences can be massive and powerful, even overwhelmingly convincing. Laboratory studies are possible, but usually have to take a different approach, since the intense emotions and personal attachments between people are not something that can ethically be subject to tests.

Lab tests usually generate smaller effects, which means large numbers of trials and statistics which is a valid approach, but less accessible to the general public. The biggest obstacle, in my opinion, is not the difficulty of the experiments, but getting researchers to actually do them. i.e. social/political pressures.

That reminds me of the post about physicists research into entanglement, which is straight, ordinary science.
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...e-shrugged

Returning to the topic of spontaneous phenomena. These are also possible to be studied. Earthquakes and thunderstorms, even supernovae are not things which can be tested in a lab but research is still possible.

I've always felt that the spontaneous occurrences can be massive and powerful, even overwhelmingly convincing. Laboratory studies are possible, but usually have to take a different approach, since the intense emotions and personal attachments between people are not something that can ethically be subject to tests.

Lab tests usually generate smaller effects, which means large numbers of trials and statistics which is a valid approach, but less accessible to the general public. The biggest obstacle, in my opinion, is not the difficulty of the experiments, but getting researchers to actually do them. i.e. social/political pressures.

That reminds me of the post about physicists research into entanglement, which is straight, ordinary science.
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...e-shrugged

Returning to the topic of spontaneous phenomena. These are also possible to be studied. Earthquakes and thunderstorms, even supernovae are not things which can be tested in a lab but research is still possible.

It is unfortunate that laboratory research into the paranormal has major built-in problems due to the basic nature of what is being studied. The first one is of course that powerful effects are rare and spontaneous and also for several other reasons (like violating reasonable research ethics rules) can't be forced to happen in the lab. Another difficulty is the phenomenon of a sort of psi and esp experimenter effect, where the researchers themselves can psychically affect the outcome due to their expectations and desires. And there is always the possibility that double-blinding and other schemes to prevent this will be overcome by hidden psychic effects. The output results may be anomalous, but not the ones the researchers were looking for.

So I decided to leave a comment on one of the blog posts from the author, since I actually enjoyed a number of the posts he's put up. It's nice getting a sceptic who isn't overly belligerant in his analysis. 




And I got back an interesting reply. 



Felt like it was an interesting opinion he had on the matter, and definitely not what you would think if you just assumed he was a die hard skeptic and left it at that. I'm not able to say anything to his opinion on Cardena's paper, but I do wonder if he has actually read any of Bieschel's studies since he mentions controls. Her mediumship studies have some of the most remarkable controls I've seen, at least at first glance, unless he just means field studied mediumship tests.

You might ask him who is conducting the ongoing investigation he mentioned.