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

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.

So I have had some correspondence with the folks at Windbridge to clarify some things about Julie's protocols and findings. I have some material to read in order to get more up to speed on the details, but one thing that was made very clear to me is the the proxy sitter protocol isn't designed to eliminate the possibility of telepathy. The purpose seems to be more related to making it less likely for the medium to "cold" read, or lead the sitter.  

After giving this more thought, it seems clear to me that nothing they do can preclude the claim that telepathy is behind the reading. Whether the actual sitter is located right in front of the medium or 10000 miles away, a claim of telepathy could still be used.

Unfortunately it seems to me that no test of communication with the deceased could be created that would eliminate the claim that the actual sitter's mind is being "read". Or if the sitter was dead, the alternative claim could be made that through some mechanism of quantum entanglement, the data was preserved in "the ether". 

So what we have left is the fact that a persistent/ardent skeptic really has an unassailable case for disbelief if they so desire.

I guess I should have reached this conclusion years ago. 

Oh well. Better late than never.

So what we have left is the fact that a persistent/ardent skeptic really has an unassailable case for disbelief if they so desire.

The trouble is, the persistent/ardent skeptic denies the existence of the other phenomena too (telepathy etc.).

It leads to the contradictory position of having to claim to suddenly believe in the reality of some phenomenon which a moment before or a moment later they will again deny.

It hardly seems an unassailable position.

Greg Taylor's article is self-published. He does not attempt to refute Tanner's criticisms in depth, he only mentions her name a few times. I find it unlikely that Taylor has actually read Tanner's book. His article does not cite any pages to her book nor does he cite a bibliography. He takes his few criticisms of Tanner directly from a review by Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick.

Amy Tanner was a very influential early female psychologist (http://www.feministvoices.com/amy-tanner/).

Do you think Greg Taylor is a reliable source?


https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Greg_Taylor

As for Tanner's book it was positively reviewed in a top psychology journal.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1413084

The reviewer started the review with:


Jastrow, Joseph. (1911). The American Journal of Psychology 22 (1): 122-124.

Please don't post rational wiki links like it's a credible source. The website does the 'skeptical' side a disservice, and regularly insults famous proponents and parapsychologists. Not very rational really.

Unfortunately it seems to me that no test of communication with the deceased could be created that would eliminate the claim that the actual sitter's mind is being "read". Or if the sitter was dead, the alternative claim could be made that through some mechanism of quantum entanglement, the data was preserved in "the ether". 

So what we have left is the fact that a persistent/ardent skeptic really has an unassailable case for disbelief if they so desire.

I guess I should have reached this conclusion years ago. 

Oh well. Better late than never.

It depends what kind of mediumship you're referring to.

The trouble is, the persistent/ardent skeptic denies the existence of the other phenomena too (telepathy etc.).

It leads to the contradictory position of having to claim to suddenly believe in  the reality  of some phenomenon which a moment before or a moment later they will again deny.

It hardly seems an unassailable position.

Well I wouldn't say that about all people who use this argument, for example Max used it and I'm not sure what his belief is in telepathy. If he doesn't believe in it either, then,,, see below #. 

But if you wish to claim that telepathy, (which you might argue is possible because of some QM or electromagnetic effect) is responsible, and we both agree that telepathy is possible, and there is no way to prove something is NOT telepathy,, then yes, I would call that unassailable.

# That of course is always the thing that makes me laugh and/or cry. Some nitwits will use something they don't believe in to counter something else they don't believe in... That just tells me they aren't serious people, and personally, I don't bother with people like that as they are not worth my time.

It depends what kind of mediumship you're referring to.

Such as?

Trying to decide what kind of mediumship you might use to communicate with the dead, to gather information where it couldn't be claimed as telepathy... I'm stumped. What "kind" are you referring to?

Just to follow up on Pollux' post, in the video interview I posted with Mavis Pittilla (here), she mentions that in the last 15-17 years or so there seems to have developed a new form of mental mediumship (as opposed to clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience) that is called "claircognitive", but doesn't seem to be what the medium in this video is doing.

X2

I asked this mental medium Cindy Kaza in a MeetnGreet session that very question. She concurred (as she should considering the incredible demonstration of evidential claircognition). Mental and physical mediumship is evolving, rapidly in many cases, one evolution is the amount of information that is coming through many modern mental mediums per sitter. Kaza can work with a single sitter or a group of related sitters and a single discarnate or a group of (loosely) related discarnates for 15-20 minutes or more.

Such as?

Are you asking me what the different types of mediumship are?

Please don't post rational wiki links like it's a credible source. The website does the 'skeptical' side a disservice, and regularly insults famous proponents and parapsychologists. Not very rational really.

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus against rational wiki. It is so one sided and predictable in it's POV that only a confirmed skeptic, or an ignoramus would use it as a neutral source of information. 

And the confirmed skeptic doesn't count because they aren't really looking for a neutral source just confirmation. So that just leaves the ignoramus...

What do you think of this..

SAUNDERS, E Private 116024 21/10/191 Gun Corps (Infantry) United Kingdom I. A. 9. HIGHLAND CEMETERY, LE CATEAU

(sorry if it is one you've already mentioned) The only other info I could get was this:
"SAUNDERS, Pte. E., 116024 18thBn. Machine Gun Corps (inf). 21st Oct., 1918. Age 24.Son of Henry and Mary Saunders, of "South View" Mulfoirds Hill, Tadley, Basingstoke. " Apparently this is the name on the gravestone too. I am guessing he'd have been born around 1894?

I'll try and check the census for 1911 and see if he appears in full name on it.

Looking at the ancestry.co.uk version of "Soldiers Died in the Great War", that date of death returns an Ernest Saunders.

Unfortunately Erics were a lot rarer than Ernies in those days.