On the thread about the German version of the "Randi Prize" there was a bit of discussion about demonstrations of unusually strong psi ability under controlled conditions.
One example is the testing of Sean Harribance by various parapsychologists, starting in 1969, which was described by Bryan J. Williams in a report published in "Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports", edited by Damien Broderick and Ben Goertzel (2015). There is a preview on Google Books, which (for me) allows access to the whole text of Williams's report, though not the notes at the end of it:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KVyQ...J&pg=PA102
This includes some very strong results - for example, a series of ten experiments carried out by the Psychical Research Foundation in 1969-71, in which Harribance had to guess the genders of people shown in a set of ten concealed photographs. The chance success rate would have been 50%, but in six of the ten experiments, Harribance achieved a success rate of over 60% over 500-1050 trials, associated with p values between 1.44x10^-6 and 10^-28.
These experiments seem to have been quite carefully conducted, with a view to excluding any kind of sensory leakage. Some of them involved only a single experimenter, and would therefore be open to criticism, but the other five were done by two experimenters each, and produced three significant results (p values 5.05x10^-8, 10^-19 and 1.44x10^-6). Five different experimenters worked on these three experiments, so collusion would have to have been widespread to provide an explanation.
I wondered if anyone knew of any sceptical commentary on these experiments, which don't seem to be particularly well known, but on the face of it provide incredibly strong evidence for psi. C. E. M. Hansel doesn't mention Harribance in his 1980 volume criticising the evidence from experimental parapsychology. I did find some discussion of Harribance on the International Skeptics Forum, but the sceptics there seemed to be unaware of these studies, and initially suggested applying much the same methodology that had been used in them. Some time later someone posted the details, but there was no sceptical response:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/for...p?t=127435
One example is the testing of Sean Harribance by various parapsychologists, starting in 1969, which was described by Bryan J. Williams in a report published in "Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports", edited by Damien Broderick and Ben Goertzel (2015). There is a preview on Google Books, which (for me) allows access to the whole text of Williams's report, though not the notes at the end of it:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KVyQ...J&pg=PA102
This includes some very strong results - for example, a series of ten experiments carried out by the Psychical Research Foundation in 1969-71, in which Harribance had to guess the genders of people shown in a set of ten concealed photographs. The chance success rate would have been 50%, but in six of the ten experiments, Harribance achieved a success rate of over 60% over 500-1050 trials, associated with p values between 1.44x10^-6 and 10^-28.
These experiments seem to have been quite carefully conducted, with a view to excluding any kind of sensory leakage. Some of them involved only a single experimenter, and would therefore be open to criticism, but the other five were done by two experimenters each, and produced three significant results (p values 5.05x10^-8, 10^-19 and 1.44x10^-6). Five different experimenters worked on these three experiments, so collusion would have to have been widespread to provide an explanation.
I wondered if anyone knew of any sceptical commentary on these experiments, which don't seem to be particularly well known, but on the face of it provide incredibly strong evidence for psi. C. E. M. Hansel doesn't mention Harribance in his 1980 volume criticising the evidence from experimental parapsychology. I did find some discussion of Harribance on the International Skeptics Forum, but the sceptics there seemed to be unaware of these studies, and initially suggested applying much the same methodology that had been used in them. Some time later someone posted the details, but there was no sceptical response:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/for...p?t=127435
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