From Skeptic to Believer: News Anchor Gets a First Time Reading from a Medium

1. Cages don't filter out magnetic fields. But where we do filter out magnetic fields we sometimes observe unusual effects. 
- So we can agree that electric fields can be ruled out? Hey- we're making progress.

2. I'm only proposing a localised effect as one single possibility. 
White Crow theorum says that I don't have to prove this effect is always invalid, I just need to show a case where it is. It is a possibility that can be ruled out based on the test results I cite. Another assertion ruled out. Great. 

3. The studies I guess your referring to seem complicated and flawed to me. 
That seems quite fortuitous for your argument. Also seems a bit arbitrary. Sorry, you can't get away with such a soft argument such as that. Not with me anyway. These tests exist, in great numbers. The fact that that they prove your argument wrong is unfortunate for you, but they can't be simply dismissed with your notion of complexity. Please point out the flaws or accept the data. Those are your two choices if you want your opinion on the matter to carry and weight.

4. QM suggests that no correlation between particles is ever lost, no matter how far away in spacetime.
It always amazes me that people think they can just mention QM and use it like a get out of jail free card. So what you are saying seems to be that when considering QM, all things are possible and explainable. 

If that's your approach I don't see why you need to look any further. You have your answer: its all just the magic of QM. 
Pam Reynolds NDE experience? QM. 
Maria's "sneaker on the window sill" in the Seattle hospital? QM.  
The few thousand veridical reincarnation stories? QM. 
The physical birthmarks matching previous lives of others? QM. 
Shared dreams? QM
Veridical OBEs? QM
Channeled books? QM
Precognition? QM
Visitations? QM

Hey, this works pretty well. Almost wish it worked for me. It would save me a lot of time and effort.

Sorry about the barf about QM. Although I stand by the spirit of what I said, I'm not happy with my pithy and dismissive way of saying it. My apologies. 

I do want to focus on item # 3 (above) though.

Here's the thing: this test protocol using stand-in sitters was developed specifically for people with the concern that has been voiced in this thread: that perhaps what we are seeing is telepathy. So if one has any real desire to get to the answers, they are duty-bound to take a look at these tests and see whether their concerns have been addressed.

For someone to simply wave this data away tells me that for whatever reason, they are not approaching this challenge with an open mind. 

Personally I don't care if these people accept this data, or whether they are approaching this problem with an open mind, or whether I am able to get them to see validity of these things. I wish those people well on their private path to understanding.

In a thread like this, I like to imagine that it is not only to the principal of the post with whom I speak. In addition, there are certainly more, perhaps dozens of other people, who will read the thread in a genuine attempt to digest the information and draw their own conclusions.  It is for those people that I want to emphasize that there is well conceived and gathered test data that specifically disproves what is being asserted here, and they that might consider that fact, and FOLLOW THE DATA (no, Alex did not invent this sentiment and I am not quoting him here). 

For me personally I participate in these forums not only to learn more, and consider new ideas, but also I do it to refute those ideas which I have already determined to be false, and I try to do it in a way where others can consider the question and draw their own conclusions. I do this not to convince a particular person that they are missing something (this is sometimes just wasted effort), but rather to offer my opinions to the others who might be reading along, looking for ideas, and who might be more open to considering them.

To all: I wish you good luck in your hunt for the truth. May we all find it in our own ways. I do believe that whatever we each personally find, it will be the right thing for us at our individual stage of development.

I'm certainly not an expert in WWI records, but I know the soldiers' documents are incomplete because many were destroyed by fire.

But I would think the records of deaths would be more complete. I just tried a search for Saunders with initial E who died in 1917 on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, and that turns up the Eric Stanley Saunders who died 19 June 1917 and is buried at Poperinghe (in Belgium). 

The only other one I couldn't rule out as an Eric with the help of ancestry.co.uk was an E. Saunders who was a private in the Royal Canadian Regiment, who died 1 May 1917 and is buried at Wimereux (in France). But now I see he was an Ernest:
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembranc...tail/84840

Also both the E. Sanders in 1917 can be ruled out as Erics with the help of ancestry.co.uk.

So the only possibility there of an Eric (first or middle name) who died in 1917 is Eric Stanley, which isn't an exact match for the information in the book, because it's two months too early and in Belgium rather than France.

I just realised I had stupidly taken "gone out" to mean "died" rather than "gone to France". So he could have died after 1917. But another search of the CWGC database still shows no possible Eric.

I came across a copy of Findlay's "An Investigation into Psychic Phenomena" (1924), which relates the Eric Saunders incident (starting on p. 13). Presumably he reused the text in his later book:
http://www.iapsop.com/ssoc/1924__findlay...nomena.pdf

As Obiwan pointed out, Findlay said he didn't know which regiment the man came from, as the men came from all over the country.

It seems there's something wrong with that story, but it's difficult to know what.

[Ninshub]

It seems there's something wrong with that story

That's a hasty conclusion, because as Obiwan said the WWI records accessible to us may not be completely reliable.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.