My Psychic Told Me to Date a Psychopath

Of course, whether "the problems make the results invalid" needs to be argued rather than just assumed.

Oh definitely, I appreciate different perspectives but anyone can claim to be anything or claim any fact - best to double check things especially when you suspect bias.

That being said...What do you think about the state of parapsychology, re: the criticisms mentioned above? How many nails are in that coffin?

Oh definitely, I appreciate different perspectives but anyone can claim to be anything or claim any fact - best to double check things especially when you suspect bias.

That being said...What do you think about the state of parapsychology, re: the criticisms mentioned above? How many nails are in that coffin?

I think Caroline Watt generally has a fairly balanced view. I think on the one hand there are some experimental data that sceptics are unable to offer a plausible explanation for (other than just assuming fraud). But on the other, scientific opinion in general obviously hasn't been persuaded that psi exists. However, I don't think scientific opinion in general is impervious to evidence, and to my mind the overriding priority should be to produce evidence strong enough to settle the argument about the existence of psi one way or the other.

I think Caroline Watt generally has a fairly balanced view. I think on the one hand there are some experimental data that sceptics are unable to offer a plausible explanation for (other than just assuming fraud). But on the other, scientific opinion in general obviously hasn't been persuaded that psi exists. However, I don't think scientific opinion in general is impervious to evidence, and to my mind the overriding priority should be to produce evidence strong enough to settle the argument about the existence of psi one way or the other.

If you get the chance can you give examples of this best data? Curious if it aligns with some of the studies the AI designer and entrepreneur Ben Goertzel was apparently convinced by.

If you get the chance can you give examples of this best data? Curious if it aligns with some of the studies the AI designer and entrepreneur Ben Goertzel was apparently convinced by.

I think the three I picked for this thread last year are good examples:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...2#pid16462

I think the three I picked for this thread last year are good examples:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...2#pid16462

Interesting, given the controversy around Bem's work I wouldn't have thought that'd be a pick - which isn't to say I agree with the criticisms per se. My first job out of college was in clinical research, and back then I'd follow studies more closely but it's been years since I delved deeper into statistics or study design. 

I do recall the past head of Yale's psych department felt there was value in the dream telepathy experiments:

The knock on parapsychology studies has long been that any so-called evidence of ESP is usually limited to negligible effects only detectable after scouring massive bodies of data. "Those to whom this criticism has any appeal should be aware that the Maimonides experiments are clearly exempt from it," wrote Irvin Child, Yale's former psychology department chair, in American Psychologist, the APA's flagship journal. "I believe many psychologists would, like myself, consider the ESP hypothesis to merit serious consideration and continued research if they read the Maimonides reports for themselves."

Personally [IMO] now matter how good the studies I think there will have to be factors outside the field to buttress parapsychology & make it mainstream - the continued decline of both the pseudo-skeptic & fundamentalist religious movements (in the West at least), increases in NDEs due to improved resuscitation technology, the falling of materialism as the default scientific position, potential advancements in quantum biology...

Interesting, given the controversy around Bem's work I wouldn't have thought that'd be a pick - which isn't to say I agree with the criticisms per se. My first job out of college was in clinical research, and back then I'd follow studies more closely but it's been years since I delved deeper into statistics or study design.

Obviously it depends on whether the criticisms amount to a plausible explanation of the results. There are some valid criticisms of the work, but that doesn't in itself mean there is a plausible conventional explanation of the results. If people believe there is, they need to state it clearly and demonstrate its plausibility. I should really like to see someone try to do that. Ulrich Schimmack did put forward a suggested explanation, but I didn't find it at all plausible.

Obviously it depends on whether the criticisms amount to a plausible explanation of the results. There are some valid criticisms of the work, but that doesn't in itself mean there is a plausible conventional explanation of the results. If people believe there is, they need to state it clearly and demonstrate its plausibility. I should really like to see someone try to do that. Ulrich Schimmack did put forward a suggested explanation, but I didn't find it at all plausible.

The APA - or some members therein - might tacitly agree with you. Bem's work is mentioned in their publication Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness, along with a variety of other studies.

More than 90 similar implicit precognition experiments were conducted between 2000 and 2013. Some produced results matching Bem’s original results, and some did not. A recent meta-analysis that examined these studies showed that, taken together, the results seem to be robustly statistically significant significant and in support of implicit precognition (Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, & Duggan, 2016). One result of this meta-analysis seems especially pertinent to our understanding of potential mechanisms underlying implicit precognition. Specifically, tasks that demanded faster responses (in the millisecond range) and provided immediate feedback were more likely to produce significant results than those that demanded slower responses. In fact, one of the strongest results in the original study, that practice with words following a memory test improves performance on that test, was among the slower response tasks that was generally not replicated (Bem et al., 2016). One reason for the disparity between fast- and slow-response tasks given by the authors of the meta-analysis is that cognitive systems operating quickly suffer less from conscious judgment and alteration of the information that was originally derived from nonconscious sources (Bem et al., 2016). Another explanation is that the tasks requiring faster responses also used more emotionally charged stimuli, which are known to be more engaging to participants (Barušs & Rabier, 2014). A third possibility is that implicit precognition may follow a similar time course as that found for direct or conscious precognition (Honorton & Ferrari, 1989). If so, this would suggest that both conscious and implicit precognition rely on nonconscious processes that seem to access information about future events, but that for some reason these nonconscious processes have more accurate information about events in the very near future...

Of course I'm sure there can be challenges to the meta-analysis, or the concept of meta-analysis itself...

Personally I just think information coming from the future into the past is nonsensical, so whatever is going on isn't that.

Personally I just think information coming from the future into the past is nonsensical, so whatever is going on isn't that.

So you don't accept the work of Andy Paquette, who did extensive recording of dreams, which showed psi phenomena including precognition?

Oh definitely, I appreciate different perspectives but anyone can claim to be anything or claim any fact - best to double check things especially when you suspect bias.

This is a perfect example of my original complaint, because despite years of linking to the research and findings from the study of validity, bias (please note that bias in this use refers to “the combination of various design, data, analysis, and presentation factors that tend to produce research findings when they should not be produced”, in particular, “false positives”, not the way in which you use it, as “prejudice”) and quality, I’ve never seen a proponent actually engage with that information. If you did, you would discover that when any research is produced under a risk of bias, the “positive” results turn out to be false most of the time. So taking a stance of, “well yeah, there may be problems, but unless you prove it’s a false positive it’s okay for me to believe it’s a true positive,” is unjustified by the evidence. Which is why most scientists are unconvinced by parapsychology research, because most of it is produced under conditions where positive findings are most likely false positives. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you reference “Why Most Published Research Findings are False”. Table 4 tells you that false positives outnumber true positives, sometimes grossly so, in all but the very best research.

Linda

Bias is certainly very dangerous.

It can lead to such absurd assertions as "Where there is a risk of bias, most positive results will turn out to be false"!