Psychology vs Parapsychology

This was a rather large controversy a couple years back in the world of psychology, but my question is: does this carry over into parapsychology at all? I've heard a couple times before that the standards of parapsychologists are much more tight then other areas of science in what they publish or not

http://edge.org/response-detail/26682

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info...ed.0020124

This was a rather large controversy a couple years back in the world of psychology, but my question is: does this carry over into parapsychology at all? I've heard a couple times before that the standards of parapsychologists are much more tight then other areas of science in what they publish or not

Obviously this will remain a big potential problem for parapsychology until all experimental work is adequately pre-registered. (And until everyone uses rigorous methods to minimise the possibility of fraud by experimenters.)

Having said that, Caroline Watt certainly thinks parapsychologists have been "ahead of the game" in trying to tackle these problems, compared with mainstream psychologists. This is from a blog post written in 2016:
"Psychology’s ‘replication crisis’ was in part stimulated by Daryl Bem’s 2011 publication of studies about ‘Feeling the Future’ – read more about the wider importance and ramifications of Bem’s paper here. Psychology responded by starting to debate the need for study registration and introduced registered reports. Meantime, parapsychologists were already ahead of the game. In 1978, the European Journal of Parapsychology introduced registered reports – an editorial policy of accepting papers on the basis of their planned methods, as a way to tackle publication bias. Read about that here. In 2012, Jim Kennedy and I launched a registry for parapsychological studies. So far as we are aware it was the first registry of its kind in psychology – discover more about the KPU Registry here. In 2015, Jim and I published a paper for the wider psychological community making recommendations for how to improve study registration practices in psychology based on our experiences with parapsychological study registration. ... Finally, next month at the Parapsychological Association convention, Jim and I will be proposing a prospective meta-analysis of parapsychological studies. This is something that occasionally happens in medical research (check out the Cochrane Collaboration), but is rarely found elsewhere in behavioural research. ..."
https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/2016/...ogy-necss/

Obviously this will remain a big potential problem for parapsychology until all experimental work is adequately pre-registered. (And until everyone uses rigorous methods to minimise the possibility of fraud by experimenters.)

Having said that, Caroline Watt certainly thinks parapsychologists have been "ahead of the game" in trying to tackle these problems, compared with mainstream psychologists. This is from a blog post written in 2016:
"Psychology’s ‘replication crisis’ was in part stimulated by Daryl Bem’s 2011 publication of studies about ‘Feeling the Future’ – read more about the wider importance and ramifications of Bem’s paper here. Psychology responded by starting to debate the need for study registration and introduced registered reports. Meantime, parapsychologists were already ahead of the game. In 1978, the European Journal of Parapsychology introduced registered reports – an editorial policy of accepting papers on the basis of their planned methods, as a way to tackle publication bias. Read about that here. In 2012, Jim Kennedy and I launched a registry for parapsychological studies. So far as we are aware it was the first registry of its kind in psychology – discover more about the KPU Registry here. In 2015, Jim and I published a paper for the wider psychological community making recommendations for how to improve study registration practices in psychology based on our experiences with parapsychological study registration. ... Finally, next month at the Parapsychological Association convention, Jim and I will be proposing a prospective meta-analysis of parapsychological studies. This is something that occasionally happens in medical research (check out the Cochrane Collaboration), but is rarely found elsewhere in behavioural research. ..."
https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/2016/...ogy-necss/

Well I think it's always a "potential" but I doubt it is very probable, at least for most of parapsychology. Caroline Watt is definitely not the only person I know of saying parapsychology is ahead of the game in this

Well I think it's always a "potential" but I doubt it is very probable, at least for most of parapsychology.

The trouble is that, almost by definition, we don't have access to the information we'd need to gauge the extent of the problem. Proponents can argue that - for example - it's not believable that large numbers of unpublished studies could have been done. Sceptics can point to statistical anomalies in the published results that would be consistent with questionable research practices. But unless everything is pre-registered, the best we can do is make an educated guess at the truth.

But I think pre-registration needs to go hand in hand with anti-fraud measures, because otherwise (assuming that pre-registered studies give positive results) the criticism will just shift to the possibility of deliberate fraud.

All of those same precautions and criticisms can be applied to conventional psychology, and indeed other areas of science, only more so, since they are less likely to be scrutinised so closely from so many angles.

It is conventional science which needs to get its house in order first. That might uncover so many cans of worms that it probably won't happen. We're left with the situation where parapsychology is setting higher standards which others don't even attempt to reach.

All of those same precautions and criticisms can be applied to conventional psychology, and indeed other areas of science, only more so, since they are less likely to be scrutinised so closely from so many angles.

It is conventional science which needs to get its house in order first. That might uncover so many cans of worms that it probably won't happen. We're left with the situation where parapsychology is setting higher standards which others don't even attempt to reach.

I'm taking the view that adopting these precautions and safeguards is going to be beneficial to the field and strengthen it, rather than that it's a kind of penance for past misbehaviour. It may well be that standards in parapsychology are higher than in mainstream psychology, but realistically parapsychology really does need to be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.

The other aspect of this question is that experimenter psi effects are often discussed as a possible reason for the sometimes anomalous results of experimental parapsychology (though not by sceptics, obviously). But if such effects exist, there's absolutely no reason why they shouldn't also operate in conventional experimental science. If one really wanted to put the cat among the pigeons, one could suggest that some of the problems that have given rise to the "crisis" in experimental psychology might actually be manifestations of experimenter psi.

Having said that, Caroline Watt certainly thinks parapsychologists have been "ahead of the game" in trying to tackle these problems, compared with mainstream psychologists. This is from a blog post written in 2016:
"Psychology’s ‘replication crisis’ was in part stimulated by Daryl Bem’s 2011 publication of studies about ‘Feeling the Future’ – read more about the wider importance and ramifications of Bem’s paper here. Psychology responded by starting to debate the need for study registration and introduced registered reports. Meantime, parapsychologists were already ahead of the game. In 1978, the European Journal of Parapsychology introduced registered reports – an editorial policy of accepting papers on the basis of their planned methods, as a way to tackle publication bias. Read about that here. In 2012, Jim Kennedy and I launched a registry for parapsychological studies. So far as we are aware it was the first registry of its kind in psychology – discover more about the KPU Registry here. In 2015, Jim and I published a paper for the wider psychological community making recommendations for how to improve study registration practices in psychology based on our experiences with parapsychological study registration. ... Finally, next month at the Parapsychological Association convention, Jim and I will be proposing a prospective meta-analysis of parapsychological studies. This is something that occasionally happens in medical research (check out the Cochrane Collaboration), but is rarely found elsewhere in behavioural research. ..."
https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/2016/...ogy-necss/

Coincidentally, I have just been listening to this talk by Chris French, which also turned out to be quite pertinent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObXWLF6acuw

French's discussion of whether parapsychology is a science begins just before 42 minutes. Like Watt, he refers to parapsychology being "ahead of the game" - in terms of readiness to publish negative results. He also outlines work by Marie-Catherine Mousseau, who compared published work in mainstream scientific journals and "fringe" journals for characteristics associated with pseudoscience (her paper is here ). French's conclusion is that parapsychology is a science (though he doesn't believe psi exists).