Reber and Alcock respond to Cardeña's paper in the American Psychologist

The rules of QM are used to probabilistically predict future observations (objective facts - shared classical stuff). But those QM rules also depend on virtual particles, which really do affect the probabilistic predictions of future observations. These virtual particles do violate the conservation laws of both energy and momentum. The shorter their virtual existence, the more they can violate the conservation laws of energy and momentum. And although they are emitted and quickly reabsorbed, they really do affect the probabilistic predictions of future observations (classical facts). There is not really any way of getting around that. So I’d say the authors claim is sort of meaningless... these virtual particles might be considered real or not real depending on ones perspective, but they do violate conservation laws, and informationally they have a very real effect upon QM probabilistic predictions of future observations.

My problem with that quotation is a simpler one. The authors seem to be saying that in precognition the energy used by the brain in making a choice in the present would need to be supplied from the future. But the choice is made whether precognition exists or not, and clearly the energy comes from the same source as for all the body's other physical processes.

They could more reasonably argue that if a signal from the future did work when it affected the brain in the present, then that would violate energy conservation. That seems as though it might be a valid argument against some views of how precognition might work, but perhaps not against others which don't work in terms of signals.

To be fair, you could say the same about appeals to quantum mechanics in psi-friendly papers written by non-physicists.

I agree that can sometimes be a problem.

What Cardeña said in the Jeffrey Mishlove interview was that in his paper he referred to what physicists had said about these issues, rather than trying to speak from his own authority, and that does appear to be the case.

Admittedly Reber and Alcock do occasionally refer to physicists, though only occasionally, and when they do they don't always give a very accurate representation of what those physicists wrote.

For example, in their section on Time Reversal they have a paragraph on why relativity isn't any help to parapsychologists, in which they talk about time dilation and the twin paradox, and refer to a paper by Frank Wilczek, who they say "discussed this and other "time's arrow" issues." In fact Wilczek isn't talking about paradoxes or even mainly about relativity, but about the extent to which physical laws are time-reversible, and why that should be so. He says that physical laws are time-reversible, with only one very weak exception, which is obviously of no help at all to Reber's and Alcock's contention that "time is not reversed," even in quantum mechanics.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-axion...-20160107/

Then they cite an article by Jan Faye in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (who is again talking primarily about quantum mechanics, not relativity). From that article they draw the conclusion that "it is clear there has never been any actual demonstration of backward causality." But that's not a fair represention of Faye's position, because what he actually says is that there is still disagreement on how experimental observations should be interpreted, and that one school of thought does favour a backward causation interpretation of some phenomena:
"as long as no common agreement exists among philosophers and physicists about what in the physical description of the world corresponds to our everyday notion of causation, it would still be a matter of theoretical dispute what counts as empirical examples of backward causation."
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/causation-backwards/

To be fair, you could say the same about appeals to quantum mechanics in psi-friendly papers written by non-physicists.

You can until you start to get to people like Tom Campbell who is a physicist (formerly for NASA), who in this interview from 2018:



Talks about, among other things, his plans to run some QM experiments he's designing in 2019 to help answer some questions about its possible role in consciousness. As well as a surprisingly coherent idea of the logic of "love" and how it could relate to the universe in an informational way.

I think Chris Roe's article "The Egregious State of Scepticism," in the latest issue of the SPR's Paranormal Review, is an effective response to the paper by Reber and Alcock. It's a shame that it's available only to members of the Society, rather than to a wider audience.

There is some correspondence in the current Skeptical Inquirer about Reber's and Alcock's article there. It's behind a paywall, but there's a preview here:
https://pocketmags.com/skeptical-inquire...the-editor

This seems to be two letters - one (from someone at Leiden) criticising the authors' reasoning but arguing that the failure of experiment parapsychologists to find proof of psi means that it doesn't exist, and the other (evidently by Ted Goertzel) just criticising their reasoning and citing his chapter with Ben Goertzel entitled "Skeptical Responses to Psi" (published in "Evidence for Psi," 2015):
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/Skepti...ponses.pdf

There is some correspondence in the current Skeptical Inquirer about Reber's and Alcock's article there. It's behind a paywall, but there's a preview here:
https://pocketmags.com/skeptical-inquire...the-editor

This seems to be two letters - one (from someone at Leiden) criticising the authors' reasoning but arguing that the failure of experiment parapsychologists to find proof of psi means that it doesn't exist, and the other (evidently by Ted Goertzel) just criticising their reasoning and citing his chapter with Ben Goertzel entitled "Skeptical Responses to Psi" (published in "Evidence for Psi," 2015):
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/Skepti...ponses.pdf

Someone kindly sent me a copy of the correspondence. In fact there are four letters, and a response from the authors.

In case people are interested, I've summarised the exchange in my own words:

(1) G. M. Woerlee (Leiden, the Netherlands)
The reasoning in the article is disturbingly flawed. The first priority of a serious parapsychologist is to determine whether the phenomena occur, and only if they do to look for explanations. No proof has been forthcoming. The authors' post hoc arguments to prove the phenomena cannot exist are suspect. For example, the inverse square law doesn't apply to quantum entanglement. Nevertheless, the history of parapsychology reveals the bankrupt reality of claims for psi.

(2) Ted Goertzel (Camden, New Jersey)
It's disturbing when skeptics are proud of refusing to look at the evidence. They hide behind the slogan "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," but it's not actually true. Ordinary evidence would suffice. Parapsychological research is frustrating because of the typical weakness of the effects, the lack of a theoretical rationale and the conflict with accepted theories. But the methodological issues are not unusual - for example replication is a difficulty in psychology - and to say that it cannot be true sounds like religious fundamentalism.

(3) Roger McCann (email)
Words like cannot and impossible should act as warning sirens. Non-existence is virtually impossible to establish except in axiomatic systems. Arguments purporting to show non-existence often contain unstated erroneous assmptions. The inverse square law argument is an example. As a counterexample, a parabolic mirror can produce a beam of light whose intensity doesn't obey the inverse square law. The authors' argument is inadequate.

(4) David Zeigler (Wimberley, Texas)
Was surprised to hear parapsychology research was still ongoing considering its failure to show knowledge. If psi existed, evolution would have produced it in all of us. The more bizarre hypotheses in physics have been used to argue for psi, but few of these ideas are supported by empirical evidence. Some are supported by complex mathematics, but mathematics is not a science, only an invented set of useful ideas.

(5) Authors' response
Criticism of conclusion that psi cannot be true misses the premise, which is that the rest of science is correct. It is a simple statement about the coherency of fundamental scientific principles, like declaring that a perpetual motion machine is impossible. The data are irrelevant because if something cannot be true, then data suggesting it is must be spurious. We are open to any replicable demonstration, but none is in the offing. Quantum entanglement doesn't violate the inverse square law because there is no transmission of energy. The example of a parabolic mirror is theoretical, because no such mirror has been built, and it is unlikely that it can be. Evidence can be simple but extraordinary. Would be satisfied by a psychokinetic effect on a sensitive balance, but this has not been observed. Parapsychological research was not irrational in the 19th century, but given what we now know, and in the light of the failure of 150 years of research, it is irrational today.

I have to say the critics have missed the most absurd aspect of the inverse square law argument.

The American Psychologist paper version shows it most starkly. It starts by saying "Signal strength in psi studies does not fall off with the square of the distance traveled." Then it argues that that's impossible for any physical effect. Therefore it concludes that psi cannot exist.

But of course the authors don't accept the evidence of psi studies - in fact they claim in the Inquirer article that the data are irrelevant. Yet their argument depends not only on psi being real but also on the data relating to distance-dependence being accurate. Clearly there's nothing intrinsic about the definition psi that would require it to be unaffected by distance. That comes only from the experimental studies that they say can't be right (or else theoretical speculations that they don't accept).

For that matter, the fundamental objection to "time reversal and the flipping of cause and effect" - if it applies at all - can only relate to precognition and retropsychokinesis, not to other phenomena. And the "laws of thermodynamics"objection is only claimed by them to relate to precognition and psychokinesis (though it doesn't apply to the best-evidenced form of psychokinesis - microPK - for which there's no indication that physical work is done).

In terms of real fundamental objections to all psi phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance and microPK, all they really have is the lack of an explanatory theory. But they admit themselves in the paper that that doesn't make things impossible. They say "the appropriate response is, and should be, skepticism or an existential agnosticism" [my emphasis]. And then they give examples of phenomena initially without explanatory theories, whose existence was later confirmed!

A quintet of critics - Etzel Cardena, Bryan J. Williams, Andrew Westcombe, George R. Williams and Bernard Carr - weigh in with commentary on the paper by Reber and Alcock in the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. There's also an editorial by Stephen E. Braude, entitled "Science Doesn’t Dictate What’s “Impossible”":
https://www.scientificexploration.org/jo...sue-4-2019

Reber and Alcock have also gone too far for Mark Newbrook, writing in the latest issue of the Skeptical Intelligencer (on page 8):
"Arthur C. Clarke famously said that if a distinguished but elderly scholar states that something is impossible (s)he is very probably wrong. And youth does not necessarily exempt a scholar from this precept. ..."
http://www.aske-skeptics.org.uk/Intellig...19%204.pdf

Not that Newbrook thinks psi is at all likely to exist, but he concludes that the use of the word "impossible" is exaggerated and misleading.

He also says a  longer article by Reber and Alcock along the same lines is on its way. I suspect many of the more sensible sceptics must wish it wasn't!